unruly idiom

last night's popcorn

2012-02-14T19:13:00.000-08:00

was chili lime. I humbly recommend it to you: Pop kernels in olive oil, drizzle with melted butter and fresh-squeezed lime juice, then sprinkle on salt and powdered cayenne pepper (all to taste). Bam! Makes your lips tingle a little bit when you eat it.

llamas and peacocks

2012-02-13T19:53:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend on a ranch – or, as I like to call it, a "ranch." However, as Marc Antony didn't say, I come not to bury Caesar, but to praise him: This ranch included a pool, a hot tub, a ping pong table, a pool table, foosball, air hockey, tennis courts, basketball courts, two old video game machines, a jukebox, beds for twenty-some-odd people, multiple kitchens, more. Also the ranch was populated with horses, cows, dogs, chickens, burros, llamas, uncountable peacocks, and wild bunnies. I passed my time sleeping, eating, walking, talking to the llamas, eating, drinking, sleeping, talking to people, walking, drinking, sleeping, reading, and eating. I think that's a pretty comprehensive list.

I enjoyed talking to the llamas immensely, and yes I was anthropomorphizing them, but every time someone points that out, I think so what? They were obviously trying to communicate with me, too. If we both failed, that doesn't mean I can't have my own translation of it all.

It seems like it must be pretty nice to live on a massive ranch in Paicines, to make your own olive oil and host guests. To entertain your hobbies to your heart's content. How does one ever get here? we wondered. Not so much here but here in life. The quiet and the valley and the stars. I have trouble looking ahead into my life and planning backwards in this fashion, where would I like to be in twenty years and then think how to get there. But I also have trouble thinking where I'd like to be in five years. Or twenty months. And I was reading about the restlessness of Bruce Chatwin on this trip, his strong and genuine sense that surely we were not meant to be sedentary, that putting down roots was against his nature, and yes from that he extrapolated, so for all humanity, and wrongly so, but perhaps it is true for some of us, this difficulty of settling, this urge to move. That movement for the sake of movement is not at all bad. That there is a sake of movement.

dancing and failing

2012-02-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

I took a hip hop class yesterday morning. This wasn't the first hip hop class I've taken, but I haven't had many. Perhaps five? Over the past few years I've taken a grab-bag of classes, including Afro-Brazilian, Modern, Bhangra, Salsa, Afro-Cuban, and Vogue. And Nearly every one has been a small study in fear and disappointment.

Warm-ups are usually ok. We stretch and it feels good. But after about the first fifteen minutes of choreography, I usually want to leave. I think, You could just walk out. The door's right there. No one will care if you leave. The instant feedback loop in a dance class can be terribly disheartening, even shaming. The teacher does a move. You are supposed to do the move. You try. You fail. You try. You fail. You are staring into the mirror, watching yourself fail. There is no outside agent, no intermediary, no tool or device on which to place the blame. It is your body, it is not doing the thing you are telling it to do, you are failing. Over and over.

And it seems like it should work, that it should be simple: Your eyes take in information, your brain tells your body to replicate it, and bam! there you'd be. But it's as if someone says to you, "Repeat after me: cucumber," and you respond with "tennis racket." Why? you ask yourself frantically. Isn't this my language?

It isn't, of course; that's the catch. Dance is its own vocabulary, with ideas and conjunctions, intonations and nuances, formalities and slang. It's easy to forget that, though, at least for me.

Lousy as I am (by my own estimation, I am usually in the bottom 30-40%, skill-wise, in most any class I take), my competitive brain and threatened ego at some point start judging someone else who's also doing something wrong. The irony, of course, is that as soon as I do I'm lost. There is perhaps nothing else in my life that requires my full focus and attention so thoroughly as dance class. The instant I start paying attention to what someone else is doing instead of what I need to be doing, I mess up. Every time. It's a great lesson in being present, and in humility. And I think that having regular reminders to be humble is good for me.

The class is an hour and a half. The feeling of miserable failure usually lasts through about the first forty five minutes of class. And even when, eventually, I start having some physical understanding of what I should be doing, I continue to make mistakes. Pieces I'd thought I'd mastered ten minutes ago suddenly trip me up and throw me off. But by the end of the class, I have a loose grasp of the piece. There are a few moves I do passably well. And my sense of accomplishment is wild, overwhelming and entirely out of proportion to the small task I've accomplished. And after ninety minutes of dipping and shaking, trying to be beautiful, tough, elegant, cool, it is incredible to feel near to that grace, that fluid elegance, to feel that if I have not grasped it, I am at least reaching in the right direction.

So I keep going back.

transitions

2012-01-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

I've just come back from vacation in Chile and I feel intangible. As though wafting through. It's rather pleasant.

The opening up of the mind and returning to San Francisco where I like the air, the welcomeness of riding my bike, a dance class and I think: Maybe this is it. Maybe I have it. The feeling passes, or settles, or slides off, but it lightens me. Maybe it is only ever a feeling, not a state achievable. Love and a home. I feel improbable, and infinitely fortunate.

it's beginning to look a lot like

2011-12-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

Today is SantaCon in San Francisco. Earlier in the week, I'd read that this was going to happen, but promptly forgot until biking just now past the groups and clumps of people dressed in Santa costumes, or at least Santa hats, heading...where are they heading? They don't even seem to be moving in the same direction. Maybe it's over.

(Pocket definition of SantaCon: People dress up in Santa costumes and go bar-hopping. Lots of people. There are official bar stops and routes. Then they get drunk and peel off as their sobriety/tolerance levels dictate. This is not unique to San Francisco, and it's only quite recently that it's become a big-deal thing here.)

All of this raises a lot of questions.

Why is this happening? is, at the most superficial level, the easiest of my questions to answer. SantaCon started in San Francisco, and it started as a weird prank. Now that flash dance mobs are everywhere and all the time and unimpressive, it's harder to imagine how a sudden and unannounced appearance of a group of Santas might have felt in, say, the 80s. But SantaCon used to be culture jamming, and now it's just pub-crawling and public drunkenness. More on that later.

Why Santa? Some quick theories would be, in no particular order:

1) It's funny/ironic to deconstruct/dismantle/demythologize/you-get-the-picture the childhood arbiter of Goodness by putting on his signature uniform and getting publicly drunk.
2) Santa is supposed to be unique, so again it's funny/ironic for him to suddenly be multiple.
3) The costume, or some version of it, is readily available on the cheap.

Why public drinking? or, Why is this happening, part 2? Now this is where I start to get confused. Because I'm not really sure what this is really about. As in, I'm not sure why it's fun to dress up as Santa and go bar-hopping with a whole lot of other people, some of whom you know and some of whom you don't, also dressed as Santa. I'm not sure why that is the thing one would want to do with one's Saturday afternoon.* We can look at some of the obvious answers: People like drinking, and even more when they're with their friends. But what is the specific appeal of the crowd? This, for me, is the most intriguing part. I tend to not enjoy large drunken crowds. It is a guarantee that some people will get too drunk. They will vomit, maybe near you, maybe on you. They may get pushy. The bars will all be crowded because you are bringing a crowd.

Now my central problem lies, I suspect, where it so often does: a failure to understand the appeal of doing something because a lot of other people are doing it. I think I've always been a contrarian, and mass culture and its seeming desire to get me (and everyone) join in has always gotten my back up. This may just be a fancy way of not calling myself an elitist. I'd like to think that's not all there is to it, though. The strongest feeling I have when viewing SantaCon (which, yes, I'm using as a stand-in for a lot of things right now) is not superiority, but confusion. I have a fundamental distrust of things that say, "If you do this thing that other people are doing, it will make you happy," that there is an objective "happiness" that we can all work towards, at the same time, in the same fashion, and that once we get there, it will be the same for all of us. I just don't think that's true. Nonetheless, that seems to be the messaging that most people receive and act on.

I know this is getting long, but I can't help but feel that this is also related to my confusion around beauty, and the ways in which most of us most of the time work so hard to change our appearances to chase after an abstract beauty. And then some people end up not looking like people anymore. They're going after the Form "Beauty," which is presumably something they've seen in a magazine, on TV, in films, etc., but it's not what they actually look like and then people end up looking generic and interchangeable.

I want people to be encouraged to pursue an individual idea of happiness, an individual idea of aesthetic. I guess I'm that much of an idealist/hippie, I guess I'm that naive. But I think it could work.

I invite your comments.

*I have friends who were at SantaCon today. I'm positive. And I'm positive that they're people I like and think are awesome. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not so much interested in criticizing SantaCon as I am in trying to understand it.

grl lookit that body

2011-11-26T21:18:00.000-08:00

For reasons too complex and irrelevant to detail here, I've spent a fair amount of time this fall driving around the suburbs of the south bay listening to contemporary pop music. There only seem to be four or five songs in contemporary pop music right now. At least, that's the conclusion I've been forced to draw, since the radio plays the same four or five songs every hour over a six hour period. This is enough to make me lose my mind.*

But it got me thinking about pop music again (which doesn't happen all that often) and it seems to me that with the rise of the internet, culture is experiencing a simultaneous unification and fracturing. We seem to me to be moving towards an increasingly graphic, increasingly bland, hyper-mass culture, while simultaneously creating countless increasingly specialized micro-cultures. And perhaps we are losing (or eroding? or destroying?) our middle ground. I'm not sure what I think that means, quite frankly. Except that it does seem to only deepen issues of access and diversity when the "dominant" culture is only becoming more dominant and more narrow in its message and representation.

What is that message? As far as I can tell (and as the above links more than suggest), it's party like there's no tomorrow. And it doesn't even feel like editorializing to say that this sounds like the music of a civilization in decline.

*Hey kids! Want to do something really surreal? Watch those music videos with the sound off.

the external world

2011-11-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about validation, about what is worthwhile, about – at the risk of putting it far too dramatically – what it is we live for. Not to pretend it is or should be the same for everyone; more, I've been trying to find a means to measure myself and the best means I can find is myself. I do not think there is a thing that exists that is the thing I want. I think the external world lacks it. And if I do not value existing metrics, what can will read true to me? To stop this constant pushing away, this dismissal, this roving for a way to know.

I think I need to create my own ruler. This is a strange problem, once you think about it, because it is more than a question of scaling a system to me. The question is: What is the system and what is the scale?

nothing like a lack of color here

2011-08-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes things

resemble other things.

(I flatter myself Lydia Davis would approve.)

north carolina

2011-08-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

writes poems in pork

crocodile now seeking new management

2011-08-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

(1) Babies are illogical;

(2) Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile;

(3) Illogical persons are despised.

(Concl.) Babies cannot manage crocodiles.

Thank you, Lewis Carroll.

preconditions

2011-07-31T22:37:00.000-07:00

"What happens when busyness and sociability leave no room for solitude? The ability to engage in introspection, I put it to my students that day, is the essential precondition for living an intellectual life, and the essential precondition for introspection is solitude."

– William Deresiewicz

the perks of being unemployed

2011-07-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

decidedly include, but are by no means limited to, the preparation of elaborate lunches.

how our garden does grow

2011-07-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hooray for summer, for green beans and fresh potatoes! I will freely confess: While I knew a fresh potato to be an exceptionally delicious thing to eat, I had no idea how much fun they would be to harvest. (Yes, I am the smallest of small-scale farmer/gardeners. No, I do not romanticize farm life. My mother grew up on a working dairy farm. I have already heard all about it. Now, let us move on.) Potatoes are fun to harvest because you have to stick your hand deep into the soil and then feel around, thinking: Is there a potato here? How big will it be? Oo, is that one? No, that's a stone. More dirt. Oh, wait!! A potato!!! It is better than finding Easter eggs, and much better than panning for gold, because when you are done, you get to cook and eat delicious potatoes!

the better part of valor

2011-07-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

I should have known better because I did. Long before I met you, I said to myself: Indiscreet use of charm is a dangerous thing.

I think about how careless you are with yours, to leave it lying around like so many suddenly unnecessary and summarily discarded sweaters. And when we, happy for an excuse, called you to return them, with hope in our throats you said oh, don’t bother, I’ve got another one. And even your rejection was charming, your ways charm us still, but we are crushed like so much ice, like a small and poorly planned uprising, like crocuses in a late snow.

We try to find out whether we can breathe underwater and look! We can. It is difficult, very difficult, and if you asked us we’d probably admit that we don’t actually like it, and yet we don’t admit it, we don’t think about that, we are instead proud of our ability, we are practically crowing, we are sure now that we can follow you to the bottom of the sea and we try to, we follow you down to where it’s very dark and we try to see but we can’t. By now we are very strong swimmers so we say, just wait a second, please, and we swim back up to the surface, strap flashlights to our heads, and plunge back into the darkness again, breathing as always with extreme difficulty. But it is dark, and you did not wait, and you are gone, and even though we look for a long time, we cannot find you.

Oh, I would reach for the moon and drown in a pool, I know. That’s the only way I’ve ever known how to be.

my latest motto

2011-07-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

(this wonderful print was done by Molly Meng)

feel good lost

2011-06-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

"The only way to survive over the long run is to be made of materials large and worthless, like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, or to become lost."
– Danny Hills

(Thanks, vt!)

the meaning of life

2011-06-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

"Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar, but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you."
"You are cryptic," said Phillip.
"I am drunk," answered Cronshaw.

– W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

wild and wilder

2011-06-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

"The girl who came into the bedroom that night...was languid and mysterious, her hair graying at the age of twenty, and he soon detected the marks of the virtue he valued most in a woman: untamed intelligence."

– Gabriel Garcia Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

yes sir, that's my baby*

2011-06-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

From when Vincent (pictured here) and I and some truly lovely people all went bike touring to Marin a few weekends ago. Just a couple of stylish city gals gettin' out in the country. Oh yes we can go camping just as readily and well-appareled as to an art opening.

(*if you don't know this song already, you really should)

some thoughts on happiness

2011-06-13T17:22:00.000-07:00

That I am a happy person is something I have learned. I have learned it through repetition. It did not occur to me. I did not say, nor do I now say, to myself: I am happy. Rather, people ask me often, always, Why are you so happy? It has never ceased to startle me. Rarely when I am asked this am I conscious of feeling particularly happy, a feeling which I associate with being somehow different/more/better than my daily feeling – that, at least, is the definition I feel I have learned. You are at a zero, a neutral, and happiness is something above zero. Let's say five. With seven being ecstasy.

Why are you so happy, I am asked. Am I, I wonder, and also, are you not? And if I am, why? And if you are not, why not? The confusion of others confuses me. They want something from me, I can sense it. An answer, an explanation, an excuse – I drank a lot of coffee. I passed the bar. I just got engaged. I'm having a good day. I used to say, I don't know. Or, What do you mean? Then for a while I said, I'm just like this. Now, when possible, when I think the questioner is listening, is genuinely wanting to know, I say, I think there's something wrong with my brain. I think there's a chemical imbalance in my brain. It's like clinical depression, but the opposite. I think I have that. And it's true, that's what I think. And I sense the jealousy in it, I'm not as happy as you. What does that mean? That happiness is somehow comparative. Or competitive?

And I think about the way we talk about happiness. We say: That makes me happy, She makes me happy, I think I could make you happy. The very language is transformative/descriptive: I am tall, I am old, I am happy. A characteristic? We describe other temporary things the same way: I am tired, I am bored. But make? To make is to force, also to create. You could make me dinner. You could make me a ceramic pot. You could make me happy. Or could you. We want to cling to things that are unclingable (happiness is not a scarf, not a rope, not the edge of a cliff, either). We want the agency to come from outside ourselves. When do we say, I made myself happy?

I think: Happiness is not a seashell. You won't just be walking along one day and suddenly find it and then pick it up and get to carry it around with you for as long as you want. I think: Happiness is not a present. Other people can't give it to you.

I also think that people have weird ideas about happiness. If I could just be happy, they think. Or, things are fine, but I could be happier. Sure. You could. And what then? What do you think happiness will do for you? What will it give you? I really think it won't give you what you want. Worrying about happiness is funny (if you can get yourself there).

yosemite

2011-06-06T23:20:00.000-07:00

Until this past Memorial Day weekend, I hadn't been to Yosemite since I was in sixth grade. I remember that trip well: I bested my sixth grade enemy (as I would have described him then) in a snowball fight, and the valley flooded and everyone had to evacuate.

This time, I thought I would do a lot of writing. I didn't. But I did a lot of other things that were equally necessary, such as stare at trees, and climb rocks, and cook with friends, and get a little raucous in the wee hours, and gasp ever so slightly.

And if I had to pick a song for this trip, it would be "This Will Be Our Year." And if I had to pick a color for this trip, it would be lime. And if I had to pick a food for this trip, it would be eggs. And if I had to pick a poem for this trip, it would be "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".* And if I had to pick a sound for this trip, it would be laughter half-heard while sleeping.

*"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year's horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

in the end, is it all in the timing?

2011-06-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

I was given a card on Tuesday that I didn't have a chance to read until today. An excerpt:

"Flannery O'Connor wrote that 'the way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience,' which just about sums up everything NOT you!"

This is, in so many ways, every kind of reminder I need right now. (Bonus: The card-giver didn't even know how much I love Flannery O'Connor! Serendipity, I thank you. Don't desert me now.)

lost time

2011-05-22T11:48:00.001-07:00

"Remember this, Lenny; develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important."
– Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

how we read and how we are

2011-05-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

"You used to read dictionaries like other people read novels. Each entry is a character, you'd say, that might be encountered under another rubric . . . A dictionary resembles the world more than a novel does, because the world is not a coherent sequence of actions but a constellation of things perceived. It is looked at, unrelated things congregate, and geographic proximity gives them meaning. If events follow one another, they are believed to be a story. But in a dictionary, time doesn't exist: ABC is neither more nor less chronological than BCA."

– Suicide, by Eduoard Levé, translated from the French by Jan Steyn, excerpted in Harper's, April 2011

stuff and nonsense

2011-05-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

If I were in love with Me (and I would, how could I not be?), I would send Me cute funny text messages all the time. I would send Me distracting funny YouTube videos at work that are so short it will only take a minute! I would have really nice flowers delivered to Me, too, but probably only once because I is not rich. Not roses because roses are boring or orchids which are too serious or daisies which are too silly. Maybe wildflowers because that is very romantic or maybe ornamental kale because that is funny! I would pay a lot of attention to Me because Me is so funny and interesting and smart and I would laugh at all of Me’s jokes and I would make jokes and Me would laugh too, ha ha. I and Me would get bored with traditional romance very quickly though of course because we are too interesting and different and strange and Me would suggest we move to Central America and live in the trees and eat bananas like monkeys and I would agree. I would say, "Me and I should fling our poop at people’s heads and shriek loudly" and Me would laugh and laugh in a shrieking monkey voice.

I would not have wasted time asking Me on a date. Well, I imagine that once I had met Me, I would be excited and a little confused (because Me can be confusing!) but because I am persistent I would have started trying to get close to Me, to talk to Me frequently, and to persuade I's friends to say subtle but flattering things about I to Me so that Me would want to talk to I, too. As Me would. I am a catch. So is Me. We will catch each other! This is a new game. I will score 100 points and so will Me and we will both win. Yippee! Me would make eyes at I and I would be so blushing, oh my! Flip flop and hip hop and skip the heart through the jump rope, please. Me would chat up I so coy and sly I would not know which way was up and would say so only to have Me reply, “Don’t be so normative, please.” Oh Me, oh my.

I would call Me regularly and we would talk and pretty soon I would be calling Me everyday or Me would be calling I because hello Me is not passive but one day Me might say “Me am very busy. Me cannot talk to I everyday. Me have to work!” and this is when we would leave to go live with the monkeys. After that we would go live with the fishes in the Caribbean and sometimes we would be fishes and sometimes we would be beautiful mermaids who lived in an underwater sandcastle and we would be so pretty and I would say to all the fishes “Look at Me! Look at Me!” and Me would smile and hold up a mirror to I's face and I and Me would laugh and laugh.

And Me and I are very happy and have lots of sex but no babies because we are the same gender! And this is why sex with the same gender is the safest sex: Babies are very dangerous! But we decide we want to be dangerous, we are wild and wacky, and so we both get artificially inseminated and have two little babies, Myself and Me Too, and we sing songs all day, hooray! We sing in four-part harmony, I, Me, Myself, and Me Too, we are in love and we are so happy we cry and our tears make rainbows in the sky and then we bake cupcakes and don’t even burn them because we are so good at baking cupcakes and we put lots of frosting on top. I would spoil Me rotten, and Myself, and Me Too. All of our teeth would fall out and we could only eat mush but then our friends the oysters would make us new teeth out of pearls and we would blow them bubble kisses and they would wink back so flirty and say, ooh, your pearly whites! And we would take very good care of our new teeth and eat our vegetables and maybe even live above ground again for a while and send Myself and Me Too to preschool where they could learn important things like counting and coloring inside the lines and then when they got home we would tell them they are only allowed to count backwards and to color outside the lines.

I was telling this story and someone said to I, “But wait! But wait! There’s no You.”

And I said, "That’s true."

recently at the breakfast table

2011-04-18T22:35:00.000-07:00

the colors! I was delighted. I had to stop chopping things to documents them. (The observant reader will note that, in view of the position of the plunger on the French press, I hadn't even had my coffee yet. A true sign of my excitement level re: this breakfast's aesthetic appeal.)

to jump to fall to fail

2011-04-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

To talk is always to jump. To jump off of something. Once in the air, the force is stronger than you. No matter what your feelings as you fall, you are falling now. The other thing about words: Until you speak them, they aren't there. And then irrevocable. We say, "I take it back" but of course there isn't this. There is only the contradiction, the change, the new decision. Once voiced, words speed away from you with your outreaching hands. They are gone and building walls and banging into people and changing everything. And you are left wondering at the new, the invisible architecture of the air, the structures you may not have meant to make.

and I love adverbs

2011-04-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

"Since when did 'literally' start meaning 'not literally?' An adverb meant, quite obviously, to point out the literal nature of something being said, now is being thrown about merely to punctuate figures of speech which are not literal. Stop that. If what you're saying is literal, then you may say 'literally.' If what you mean was figurative, then you may not."
- btq

Always appreciate more people joining my team.

in other words

2011-04-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

"Michel Butor says that to travel is to write, because to travel is to read. This can be developed further: To write is to travel, to write is to read, to read is to write and to read is to travel. But George Steiner says that to translate is also to read, and to translate is to write, as to write is to translate and to read is to translate. So that we may say: To translate is to travel and to travel is to translate. To translate a travel writing, to read a writing, to write a writing, and to travel. But if because you are translating you read, and because writing translate, because traveling write, because traveling read, and because translating travel; that is if to read is to translate, and to translate is to write, to write to travel, to read to travel, to write to read, to read to write, and to travel to translate; then to write is also to write, and to read is also to read, and even more, because when you read you read, but also travel, and because traveling read, therefore read and read; and when reading also write, therefore read; and reading also translate, therefore read; therefore read, read, read, and read. The same argument may be made for translating, traveling, and writing."

– Lydia Davis, "To Reiterate," Almost No Memory

the purpose of literature

2011-04-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

"The answer to the use-pleasure conundrum is not neither, but both. What is more, they are the same thing. 'Use' does not mean instruction, as it did to Horace or the Victorians, the inculcation of virtue through the presentation of moral exempla. It means awareness. Literature is 'useful' because it wakes us up from the sleepwalk of self-involvement—of plans, anxieties, resentments, habits, the fog that clings to our eyes as we stumble through the day, stumble through our lives—and shows us the world, shows us ourselves, shows us life and experience and the reality of other people, and forces us to think about them all. The pleasure of serious literature is not escape or fantasy, it is this very shiver of consciousness, this troubling exhilaration. Reading is thinking and feeling, both at once and both together, simultaneous and identical. Pleasure is use, use pleasure."

– William Deresiewicz, slaughtering Marjorie Garber's The Use and Abuse of Literature

Can I get a hell yes?

ODing on SF

2011-03-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

all the dolphins say

2011-03-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

"He goes in the living room. He lies on the sofa. Not waving but drowning. No future. The future is now. Meaningless. Wave of the future. Everything is clichéd and melodramatic. He should eat. He used to think things like, This organic soymilk will make me healthy and that'll make my brain work better and that'll improve my writing. Also things like, The less I eat and the less money I spend on publicly owned companies the less pain and suffering will exist in the world. Now he thinks things like, It is impossible to be happy. Why would anyone think that? Things like, Godsford Park is the worst movie ever. Gosford? Godsford?
'Godsford,' Andrew says out loud. 'Gosford.' "

– Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

love is and love is not

2011-02-13T23:29:00.000-08:00

"As we will show, LOVE is not a concept that has a clearly delineated structure; whatever structure it has it gets only via metaphors."

– Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

And, while we're on the topic of metaphors, allow me to offer the following:

1. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: well-mixed.

2. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: shaken, not stirred.

3. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: frequently.

4. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: gin-based.

5. I like my metaphors like I like my cocktails: nonsensical.

6. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: self-referential.

7. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: surprising to the point of alienating.

8. I like my cocktails like I like my metaphors: stronger than me.

A love letter, sort of

2011-02-13T23:20:00.000-08:00

Before you end up married and buying a house in the Berkeley hills, before you become respected and a fixture of your community and successful at your profession, before you take your daughter to kindergarten, having played trucks and bulldozers with her for years because you’re so progressive and you’re such a great dad, and before you have a dinner party where you and your wife cook together and she’s not even boring or unattractive in fact I kind of like her, I quite like her, she’s funny in a subtle way and like you she has a good career, a graphic designer, I think, or maybe a psychiatrist, and sure you have your ups and downs sometimes it’s hard, even, but you love one another and you love your daughter and you’re talking about maybe having a second child and you’re fun, you’re fun people, you do strange things and you have costume parties still and in a lot of ways you’re grown up but in other ways you’re still quite raucous, in fact I think she must be a graphic designer or maybe a programmer, freelance, anyway, like you, because even though you’re not rich you still pick up and move from time to time, those three months you spent in Maine house-sitting and clam-digging and that long month in Uruguay where you stayed with friends and the internet connection was poor and you got a lot of writing done, and anyway you’ve decided to buy this house in Berkeley, reasonably close to all of the grandparents and a community garden and when you get up in the morning you usually feel pretty good, at least once you have some coffee, before all of that, before all of that, I’m saying, I’d like to take you out, I’d like to take you out now, when you have a lot of options and let’s face it probably a lot of offers but a lot of things have happened to you already and I think a lot will continue to and all I’m asking is please, before anything else happens, can we please go out. And after that, anything.

Kiki Smith

2011-01-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

at the de Young. So delightful.

Also, some of my favorite things at the de Young are the strange views.

Just moving spaces around.

I go out walking

2011-01-20T23:56:00.000-08:00

On the 33 bus from the Mission to the Haight, I looked to my right and saw a hill, somewhat craggy, with people and dogs on top. I thought, I don't know where that is; a rare experience for me after six years in the city. A quick map consultation suggested that this was Corona Heights. I couldn't remember having heard of Corona Heights. On a sunny day, I decided to walk there.

That's it, that hill far away.

I took that narrow stairway to get there, which made me feel clever and sneaky.

At the top of the hill, there's this: (forgive us if you can, this is San Francisco, now).

And then, of course, you turn

and look out.

oh scone, oh scone

2011-01-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you about this scone.

Actually, to begin my life with the beginning of my life, let me tell you about my relationship with scones. I definitely ate scones growing up. Those dry, crumbly triangular things you can find at most cafes. They didn't tend to taste like much and they usually had cranberries in them. The first time I had a life-changing scone experience (understatement is for other people) was in Kraków, Poland. I was at a little potluck party, and a Scottish fellow brought scones he'd made and, significantly, clotted cream. Spare a moment, if you can, to pity the poor me who, until the wise age of twenty-three, had never known the joys of clotted cream. What is this? I remember asking. And then eating. A lot. From that day forward, I had a different idea about scones. The scones, as I recall, were less dry, less tired-seeming than the scones to which I'd been accustomed. But it was the addition of clotted cream that did me in.

Picture me now, cozy in San Francisco, coming home from a late Saturday morning run to find two trays of scones being pulled from the oven. My housemate Tim has recently taken up baking (as if he needed to be more charming), much to everyone's delight. So there they were, these scones. Tim made them from the Cheeseboard cookbook. They have lots of things in them, including blueberries, buttermilk, and heavy cream. And pure joy. These are the best scones I have ever had. In my life. I don't know how to tell you this. They were so good, I not only didn't want clotted cream, I didn't add butter. I can think of no higher praise.

representing it visually

2011-01-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

At a recent party at my house, I overheard two people, who hadn't known one another previously, begin an animated conversation over their shared enthusiasm for carpentry and table-making. There were so many people who didn't know each other. I am always wanting to introduce people and particularly those with overlapping areas of interest. I began a kind of Venn diagram on the chalk board in my kitchen of people and the things they liked, experiences they'd had, qualities they possessed. Then I let everyone else take it over. (pictured here)

I would not describe this as a functional image, necessarily. No doubt there are far more elegant and scannable ways of displaying the same content visually. But it was a lot of fun to make and to puzzle out later. I've dubbed it a disinformation graphic, which is amusing but not quite apt. Perhaps a hermeneutic circle of a party? I'll accept suggestions.

stay the execution of 2010

2010-12-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

My friends,

It has recently come to our attention that the Year commonly known as 2010 is about to expire. This grieves us mightily since, as you are well aware if you have kept abreast of our efforts, we have been diligently lobbying Time to abolish its artificial and tyrannical construct The Calendar, a monstrous creation which, in addition to relying on arbitrary and senseless groups of numbers (7? 12? Outrageous!) for its foundational structure, unnecessarily and cruelly privileges certain categories (Days and Months) by allowing them to recur with great frequency while simultaneously discriminating in the most blatant and baseless fashion against others. I refer, of course, to Years, which are allowed to appear but once and then fade away, seemingly forever.

We have nothing but scorn for the defense offered by Calendarials: namely that, by virtue of the greater length of its existence, the Year is not suffering unfair treatment. That other categories, including such deeply unpopular representatives as the dreaded Monday, are granted immortal recurrence while Years are banished to the annals of memory is an untenable situation, and one which has no place in a free society.

Sisters and brothers! We ask that you join us in decrying the foul massacre of 2010, a noble Year that, while certainly in possession of many flaws could, we firmly believe, progress and improve – given Time! Lend your voice to the growing chorus and sing out against that heartless despot, The Calendar! Let us abolish this ridiculous notion that we must destroy the Past in order to create the Future, and let us instead float together in harmonious accord in a boundless Present!

As members of the Society for the Abolishment of Chronological Hierarchy, we work towards a more fair and equitable system of Time, with the ultimate goal of liberating humanity and the universe from the cruel shackles of clocks and segmented experience. One Day, we shall all be joyfully emancipated into the pure and unregulated realm of Timelessness.

As always, we welcome your letters and are grateful for your ongoing support.

Yours eternally,
MRM
President at-Large, Society for the Abolishment of Chronological Hierarchy (formerly the Anti-Calendarian Association)

some thoughts from Nabokov

2010-12-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

"The magic has endured, and whenever a grammar book comes my way, I instantly turn to the last page to enjoy a forbidden glimpse of the laborious student's future, of that promised land where, at last, words are meant to mean what they mean."

"One's home is always in one's past..."

"...something, in short, that I could appreciate only after the things and beings that I had most loved in the security of my childhood had been turned to ashes or shot through the heart."

— Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

pandora, I love you but

2010-12-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

hello, purple prose! Seriously? Seriously.

stampede of approval

2010-12-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

English muffins from scratch? New housemate Jay is ace.

attention to detail

2010-12-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

is always appreciated.
(for comparison, see one of my other former zip codes in the city:)

I'm going

2010-12-11T00:20:00.000-08:00

to start a new blog called "Please stop blogging" and all it will do is tell people who really should stop to stop. I'm sure I will get to everyone eventually and this of course includes me. But I'll be the last.

consumerism satirizes itself for my benefit

2010-11-28T13:39:00.000-08:00

This has to be the worst thing that will ever happen. I say this based solely on the information provided below.

You would think Hallmark, of all people (and by people I mean soulless megacoporations, as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court) would know what month Christmas is in. Or do you think they might be attempting to start the consumer frenzy even earlier? What if you could send people "Happy November Christmas" cards in addition to the "Merry Christmas" cards you send them in December? My god, that would probably double their business! Someone give that CEO a raise. And give me his address. I'd like to send him a card.

finding unreason

2010-11-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

There's something pleasing about this:

remnants

2010-11-21T16:31:00.000-08:00

from this year's Dia de los Muertos, a decisive day, and also as weird a mix of legitimate ritual and weird, privileged white-person appropriation as you'll find anywhere, I imagine. I observed and purchased food.

This is Esmerelda. She is made of sugar. (All of this, of course, was at the beginning of November. But she's still here. I quite like her.)

alchemy

2010-11-20T16:50:00.000-08:00

I was chatting with someone today at Mission Pie who told me that she always felt that cooking was a little like alchemy. To take a squash, for example, and turn it into muffins.

There are so many ways to distract one's self from the things one knows one should be doing.

These were tasty – squash, butter, flour, milk, sugar, one egg, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, chopped walnuts on top – but I think next time, I want to go the savory route. I'm thinking out with the sweet stuff, and in with some cheddar and rosemary.

repetition is the better part of propaganda

2010-11-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

My own editorial process makes me laugh:

the root of the problem is not cohabitation

2010-11-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Prudie,
I'm in my early 30s and have been dating the love of my life for three years. We moved in together a year ago. Before we began dating, I explained to my boyfriend that I was looking for marriage and children. I thought he wanted the same things. He says that he still does, but after a year of living together, we are not married and there is no engagement ring in sight. (Believe me, I know.) We have been invited to his cousin's house for Thanksgiving. He has a large family, and I am looking forward to going. However, my parents are the only family I have in town, and they were not invited. For the record, my parents have invited his over for parties, dinner, and holidays. I asked my boyfriend whether, if we were married, my parents would have been invited, and he said yes, which made me wish I hadn't asked. What should I do about all this?
—Not So Thankful

Dear Not,
Your letter is a perfect example of how moving in together can get you further away from your life goals if a clear plan for achieving those goals is not part of the discussion you have before signing the lease. I actually don't understand why, after two years together, you would agree to an open-ended cohabitation. You want marriage and children, and you don't have lots of time to waste, but here you are, snooping in his sock drawer to see if there's a wedding ring hidden there, and waiting for your boyfriend to decide your fate. In the meantime, you're supposed to leave your parents alone on Thanksgiving because his family doesn't consider your family to be part of the family. I suggest you take more control of your life, and start with Thanksgiving. Tell your boyfriend either his family finds two more seats at the table, or you are going to have to decline their invitation and spend Thanksgiving with your parents. You could also tell him that the discouraging way this holiday is playing out is making you realize that after three years together, you two really need to talk turkey.
—Prudie

more available here.

emphasis – need I say it? – mine

oh. my. god.

2010-11-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of things I should be doing besides watching this. A lot. But how to say no to something entitled "Zombie vs. Shark"?

my question

2010-11-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

is, does this man look delighted to you?

I've got news for you, honey

2010-11-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

tUnE-yArDs! I will easily forgive you the nonsensical capitalization for this.

save the words!

2010-10-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

I just realized what I need to be doing with my life. I need to create a preserve. A place for words, for the abused words of the world, where they have meadows to frolic in and shade to lie in and plenty of hills to roam and hide behind, far from the prying eyes of this world, this cruel world that maltreats them so. Kristin and I were discussing our empathy for "random" and "literally," respectively, and that was when I realized what I should do. I need to create the equivalent of the San Diego Wild Animal Park for words.

Join me. Donate now.

why not, indeed

2010-10-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

My housemate Annabel asked me over dinner, "Why don't we dance everyday?" and I said "I don't know" to which she replied "We do!"

cauliflower cake

2010-10-21T22:57:00.000-07:00

Who even knew there was such a thing? I love my home. Kristin made this for dinner tonight, and it was scrumptious. And so fluffy! And it held its texture so well, just look!

Am I the luckiest girl on the block? It's arguable.

grasses

2010-10-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot to say to flatter my hometown, but I do enjoy the train ride from San Francisco (really, from Richmond) up to Sacramento, along the bay and through the marshlands.

The marsh grasses are unreal. I have seen the colors in all seasons. This being fall, there are tall and short grasses in colors ranging from lime and sage green to cranberry, burgundy, and lilac, and matte silver, and lion's mane gold. And pampas grass with creamy, feathery tufts that wave in the breeze. (This is all just before Fairfield, if you're heading northeast.) All set off by pools and slow, winding streams, slate blue. I'm not making this stuff up. Fairfield itself, of course, a terror of a town. Telephone wires and concrete block buildings and housing developments. Gas stations and storage units. But those fields, marshes, somehow unsung.

satisfaction

2010-10-17T22:33:00.000-07:00

"Early on the first day of summer, I found myself sitting in the middle of an impossibly green pasture, resting. 'The longest day of the year' is what I would jot down in my notebook in bed late that night, followed by 'literally,' which was then struck out and replaced with 'figuratively.' What can I say? I was tired."

– Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

I'm always pleased when someone tips their hat to one of my pet hates. Thanks, Michael Pollan.

biscuits

2010-10-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

"Overcome by these perspectives Murphy fell forward on his face on the grass, beside those biscuits of which it could be said as truly as the stars, that one differed from another, but of which he could not partake in their fullness until he had learnt not to prefer any one to any other."

– Murphy, Samuel Beckett

sight

2010-10-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished reading Jose Saramago's Seeing, the sequel to Blindness. While I loved the latter, Seeing left me feeling like I'd been punched in the gut, then kicked in the face. Even so, there's this:

He walked through the garden and stopped for a moment to study the statue of the woman with the empty jar, They left me here, she seemed to be saying, and now all I'm good for is staring into this grubby water, there was a time when the stone I'm made from was white, when a fountain flowed day and night from this jar, they never told me where all the water came from, I was just here to tip up the jar, but now not a drop falls from it, and no one has come to tell me why it stopped.

+2.5lb tomato

2010-09-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

From my mom's garden. No joke! 100% heirloom & 100% delicious.

we five

2010-09-05T17:27:00.001-07:00

If you can show me something cuter than this, I'll probably make out with you.

tonight

2010-08-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

it's warm and there's an almost-full moon and a cloudless sky. It's so gorgeous I want to roll out my sleeping bag and fall asleep there, straight under the sky, even on the concrete of my backyard, the moon in my eye. I won't, though. I'm not all I should be.

puns

2010-08-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

"[Headline] Stretching the Business of Yoga
An obvious groaner. Wordplay should bring smiles, not scowls."
– NYT, "After Deadline"

Agreed! Motion passed. No dissidents.

the present moment

2010-08-20T22:43:00.000-07:00

"Who are you? Why do you walk down the street? Where tonight will you sleep, and then, tomorrow? Oh, how it whirls and surges – floats me afresh! I start after them. People drive this way and that. The white light sputter and pours. Plate-glass windows. Carnations; chrysanthemums. Ivy in dark gardens. Milk carts at the door. Wherever I go, mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Gray is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw to me – adorable world!"

– Virginia Woolf, "An Unwritten Novel"

tomatoes

2010-08-16T22:44:00.001-07:00

We have so many tomatoes. It's almost disgusting. Except it's delicious. At times like these, I love California.

I don't think I even want to know why this is happening

2010-08-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sponsored links in gmail. Give a girl a break, why don't you.

episodes like this

2010-08-08T14:55:00.001-07:00

"What can one make of episodes like this, unforseen, unplanned, out of character? Are they just holes, holes in the heart, into which one steps and falls and then goes on falling?"

– J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello

overturning prop 8

2010-08-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

I remember when they legalized gay marriage in San Francisco. I remember the joy. I remember having a job interview near City Hall, and arriving early, on I think the 16th of February. Not even the first day of the weddings. And I remember the line still stretched around the block. I remember standing in the rain, and watching the couples emerge, some carrying signs, "Together for 30 years, and finally married." I remember wishing I was a reverend so that I could help. I remember how much I liked the phrase "spouses for life." I remember the brides in matching dresses, the couples in sneakers and jeans, in every color and style of clothing, I remember the laughing, I remember applauding for every single pair of newlyweds walking down the stairs of City Hall, under my umbrella, crying and smiling and standing and watching them and feeling it so much.

And this is not the final victory, but it's a start.

the most fun a youtube video can have with its clothes on

2010-07-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

All credit and extraordinary thanks go to Bryan at A Curious for introducing me (and so many others) to this little bit of wonderfulness.

no dodos

2010-07-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

Today, at the Maira Kalman exhibition at the Jewish Contemporary Museum. This wasn't there, but a lot of great things were.

My favorite things, though, were her books. (Of course, says housemate Davis. I'm so g*&d#@$^ predictable.) I intend to acquire some soon. Hopefully the ones about Max. They are whimsical, rhyming, and (need I add) beautifully illustrated.

moving pictures

2010-07-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

I saw three films at the Silent Film Festival last weekend, and I kind of wish I could do that all the time. To sit in the theater while the music responds to the screen. Those old images. The way people moved. The intensity of it all.

Movies don't usually allow me to empty myself. Somehow, imagining the dialogue as their lips move, hearing only in my head the few sentences that flash by on title cards, transports me in a way that films so rarely do. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. It's closer to reading than watching a talkie is. And why text has such a direct line to my mind and heart I don't suppose I'll ever know. I primarily experience the world through words, and that's been true for a long, long time now.

look up

2010-07-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I went on an impromptu trip to Muir Woods with some lovely people.

and I mean good design

2010-07-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

Community organizations and graphic designers collaborating on public service/social justice projects – can I get a hell yes?

pesto

2010-07-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

is a truly wonderful thing, particularly if you've managed to acquire a Cuisinart ($25 at a yard sale, I kid you not). Below, last night's mint/basil/pistachio pesto. May I say it was tasty?

stone fruit

2010-07-11T23:55:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it: left to my own devices, I would have taken the lazy route. I've have had a few epic failures in the past whenever that have shaken my faith in my ability to bake sweet treats, and so I was planning on just showing up and paying the $5 at Omnivore's stone fruit cooking contest. For such crises of confidence as these, however, the right housemate at the right time is the best if not only remedy. Micah was so jazzed at the thought of this competition that, mere minutes after emerging from his bedroom, he scaled a tree all monkey-like and tossed plums into a bowl below held aloft by yrs truly.

In a quick hour and a half, he whipped up an Italian pistachio plum cake and plum compote (both vegan). Kristin & I assisted. We cabbed it over to Noe (time was of the essence!) and entered.

What I love about Omnivore's food contests is that they're community-judged, so you get to eat everything and cast your vote. Which also means that you get to eat everything:

We didn't win, but I'm claiming for us an unofficial third place (they only announced the first and second place winners, so really, who's to gainsay me?).

dancing with myself

2010-07-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

is not something I've ever minded (and if you know me at all, you know that already). I also like to take myself out on a nice date from time to time. And so it was that Friday night found me at the de Young, listening to some opera, drinking wine. There was a circus performance, which involved a contortionist act by two tiny girl-child acrobats, one so young she stuck out her belly, beaming all the while, cheeks like tangerines. Once their act was over, she danced twitchily on the side of the stage, while two dancers performed a ballet duet to a soft-rock/adult contemporary cover of "Don't Stop Believin'." I kid you not. Sometimes things like this really make me want to make art, in the most combative way. Sometimes they make me want to never make art again. Then I bought myself a nice dinner.

in new york

2010-07-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

in Times Square

Didn't I just. Scott Joplin's "Solace," specifically; my favorite for a long time, now.

languidezza

2010-07-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

My time in Cambridge and Boston could be considered an extended exploration of Leopardi's observation that

"...in fact, most human pleasure consists in some sort of languor" ("...anzi forse la maggior parte dei diletti umani consistono in qualche sorta di languidezza," from "Parini's Discourse on Glory," Operette Morali, Giacomo Leopardi, trans. Giovanni Cecchetti).

Consider that thesis well supported.

I would go to bed with at best a vague idea of what I'd be doing the next day, and wake up and form a very loose sort of plan. This is so far from my usual M.O., especially when on vacation, and I think it did me a world of good. Lounging about, while far from my permanent state, is not to be underrated. Of course, my idea of lounging involves walking all over town, but with nice breaks for coffee, for snacks, for reading in a pleasantly shady spot along the Charles. And eating. Frequently and well. On that, I think, more to come.

museum of fine arts, boston

2010-07-05T19:22:00.001-07:00

My art education was always a gradual and ad hoc thing. Untaught in what is strangely called "art appreciation," I was somehow always a classicist (in form, in technique, in metrical scheme – I was writing sonnets regularly by seventh grade) and it wasn't until entering high school that an odd assignment for world history found me studying Picasso. With a hard heart and a harder head, I can admit it; I was convinced his art didn't interest me. But here of course is the wonder of immersion, the complete unseating, shifting, the changing of a heart; and that was the beginning of it all for me, as far as I can tell.

I continued to carry around tiny pockets of art knowledge until later in high school when my involvement in Academic Decathlon (the Olympics of nerd-sports) found me studying art again, with a truly incredible art teacher. The way the competition works is this: each year, the selection committee (whoever they are) choose several pieces of art from a specific U.S. art museum, and the lucky contestants study the pieces, their makers, their eras, techniques used, &tc., &tc. And the first year that I was on the team, the pieces were selected from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I took a redeye from San Francisco to Boston and arrived on the 15th, beat tired and kind of hazy in my mind. I dropped my bag off at the hotel, took a nap in Boston Common, and headed over to the MFA, a place I'd been hoping to get to for about ten years now.

By now of course, things are somewhat different than they were when I was sixteen. I moved from the Sacramento suburbs to la città dell'Arte, and have had the ridiculous good fortune to spend time in some of the best art museums of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, the U.S., and the Netherlands. And yet the MFA was one of the pleasantest art museum experiences I've ever had. I would enter a room, look around at its contents, and then find myself startled to see something so familiar that I'd also never seen before, in person at least. A bit like meeting a pen pal, I imagine.* It was surprisingly soothing, comforting, casual.

My thanks forever to Ms. Jill Pease for her inspiration and infectious enthusiasm.

*when I was a child, I had a pen pal for about four years. His name was Karthik and he lived in India. We have never met.

holiday

2010-06-30T19:36:00.001-07:00

I have too much to say. I was asked today, what were the three highlights of your trip? I thought that was a good question. "Tell me about your trip" is so broad, and "what was the best thing" is so narrow. A perfect solution, no, but a nice middle way. Yet without a doubt, the main highlight was seeing my good friends. Deeply affirming. People who've known you a long time remind you who you are. I think a lot about Florence, where I could in ten or fifteen minutes walk to the house of anyone I wanted to see. I missed a lot of my friends in the states, of course, but while I was there, all of my friends there were so conveniently located. Someday I'll found a town. It'll be an invitation-only town, a curated town. Only people I like. If you're reading this, the odds are pretty good that you'll be invited to come live there. (Say yes.)

More details shortly.

cosi secreti

2010-06-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

"Again, had he been in love...himself, I fancy that the tender passion would, with him, have been so vague and feeble a sentiment that he might have gone down to his grave with a dim sense of some uneasy sensation which might be love or indigestion, and with, beyond that, no knowledge whatever of his state."

– Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (published 1861)

Oh, I do love an overwrought Victorian novel every now and then.

why indeed

2010-06-01T23:02:00.001-07:00

Foucault: ...Your question is: why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer your question simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject of our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.

So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? Not to be interested in politics, that's what constitutes a problem. So instead of asking me, you should ask someone who is not interested in politics and then your question would be well-founded, and you would have the right to say "Why, damn it, are you not interested?"

–The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature

punctuation

2010-05-31T22:51:00.003-07:00

Pull quotes get on my nerve. I don't understand them at all. I do my best to avoid reading them, because I only end up feeling frustrated when I end up encountering the exact same words later in a newspaper or magazine story, with more context. Does anyone enjoy them or find them useful or beautiful? Convince me.

day tripper

2010-05-31T20:53:00.000-07:00

I think it's fair to say that mine is an excitable nature. Nonetheless, I have difficulty imagining that anyone would have been unmoved by the truly splendid hike I went on last Friday in Marin.

Gorgeous sunshine for the first time in days, and a winding way along some cliffs. Blissfully alone.

Along the way, I rubbed the rough felty pods of lupin not yet in bloom.

In places the trail was wide and obvious, but when it dipped into the forest it was often overgrown. The air was warm in these areas, and damp, and thick. Then I came out into a narrow stretch where California poppies and dandelions were clearly in competition with one another for Most Cheerful and Exuberant Wildflower. (Also, did you know that dandelions sometimes get strangely foamy?)

When I finally got to Wildcat Beach (nearly six miles from the trail head), it was gorgeous (in that cold, scrabbly, Northern California way), and disappointingly, if unsurprisingly, devoid of wildcats.

It did, however, offer the persistent hiker a gorgeous waterfall.

The benefits of hiking alone include but are not limited to: walking as quickly as I like, not getting mocked for laughing at things like funny beetles, and singing as soundly as I want (doubles as a good defense against mountain lions). Also, a great way to get some space back in my head.

I ate good snacks whilst hiking, but the beat-tired exhaustion after twelve miles makes me realize I must give serious consideration to my vague plans to hike a good ten or twelve days or so of the PCT. Not that I won't/shouldn't, just a reminder that hiking uses different muscles than my other extracurricular activities.

grief and grieving

2010-05-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

The complexity of things surprises me sometimes. It's hard for me to explain why I'm upset. I mostly feel so lucky to have such a wonderful mother, and such sorrow that her mother was never as kind and supportive and loving to her as she is and always has been to me.

retreat, retreat!

2010-05-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal of work to be done. Most of my dreams are about excel spreadsheets. And paper. I escape into Susan Cooper, Lagunitas, Milka.

Currently: The Dark is Rising, Wilco Tango Foxtrot, Alpenmilch.

updates from the garden

2010-05-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last showed off my garden, and now it's springtime (more or less) in San Francisco. My kale had lost it's mind:

Basically, it's trying to make babies. I keep cutting it back and it keeps growing back. It is rather persistent, licentious kale.

I have some nice new plants, as well. Baby arugula, baby broccoli raab,

some burgundy beans that seem to be quite happy in the world so far,

a tiny chili plant for whom I have high hopes,

and of course, tarragon and rosemary. Mmm...

As a decidedly inexpert and wildly inexperienced gardener, I grow these plants with water, sun, and a hell of a lot of optimism. We'll see how we do.

do you do you do you do you want to dance

2010-05-08T23:53:00.001-07:00

"...And: 'If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don't want to dance, then you're going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.' "

– "War Dances," Sherman Alexie

Couldn't have said it better myself.

saturday

2010-05-08T23:47:00.004-07:00

No one deserves to be this lucky. Certainly not me. But isn't it nice (sometimes) that we don't just get what we deserve in life? Things would be pretty harsh otherwise, I think.

I woke up this morning with no plans, and stumbled my way into an invitation to brunch with my downstairs neighbors. I offered to provide something, but ultimately only made coffee. And I got to eat the most gorgeous frittata,

and a beautiful tortilla español, fabulous apple wood smoked salmon from the Alemany farmer's market, sweet potatoes, fresh bread with blackberry/lemon jam from Blue Chair, and to sit and talk (and listen! I was doing some listening!) with a bunch of enthnomusicologists and mathematicians about music and USAmerican foreign policy and the Arabic love of puns.

And then I went back upstairs to find everyone making kimchi. Let it be known: Kristin is an amazing pickler of vegetables. I did very little, besides chop some ginger (and of course, all the photo-documentation). In case I had been feasted enough, we feasted! (Yes, that's right, John made biscuits again!) And then we watched The Philadelphia Story. Does no one agree with me that Katharine Hepburn & Jimmy Stewart should end up together? They have so much chemistry! And she and Carry Grant just don't do it for me. Sigh.

a way to attain beauty

2010-05-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the most novelly novel I've read in ages, and it was such a delight. A few glimpses:

"Art is life, playing to other rhythms."

"Personally, I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty..."

and finally,

"The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cot, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed."

banksy never did this

2010-05-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

watch you like a tigerer/watch you like a fox

This recently appeared across the street from my house. My new favorite poem, maybe?

slide ranch part II

2010-04-30T22:51:00.002-07:00

Some late pictures from last weekend at Slide Ranch.

It's almost disgustingly pretty.

All that washed-out California wood.

And I found that there is nothing more strangely touching than a small child, very still, petting a chicken with utmost solemnity.

Also, dead shark!

Dadaism.

And a final cliché (I just couldn't help myself).

just another reason why I love my home

2010-04-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

bless that John. The man sure can make a fluffy biscuit.

Good mushroom gravy, too.

bike/farm/camping

2010-04-27T20:23:00.003-07:00

I am no kind of super cyclist, and have no pretensions to anything but to be the most modest and lackadaisical of pedalers-about-town. My housemate Tim recently proposed that I join him volunteering at Slide Ranch, that it was in Marin, that we'd bike there. I foolishly thought Marin meant Marin Headlands, just over the Golden Gate. No doubt this is because I, having no ambitions as a biker, truffle about under the entirely baseless and plainly stupid assumption that no one else does, either. I didn't even look at the proposed route until 8am Saturday morning as we were about to leave. A long and hilly and windy way along Highway 1. I thought he had to be joking. He wasn't joking. There wasn't another way to get there. If you haven't driven that way lately, allow me to remind you there is no shoulder or bike lane. Allow me to remind you the hills go on for decades.

I'll skip the part about me huffing and puffing for close to four hours and stopping ALL THE TIME. It wasn't very glamorous and I am not a secret genius cyclist. I ride an old mountain bike my Mom gave me. I'm happy it has so many gears. But we did get there eventually. (And Tim is basically the best cheerleader ever, in the best possible way). And it looked like paradise.

I ate everything I could see and then sat in a yurt for three and a half hours and taught children how to card wool and spin it into yarn. I am such a sucker for kids. Top prize goes to a three-year-old named Leo who couldn't card wool but liked to pick it up and show it to me. We would agree that it was nice. We would agree that it was pretty. I asked him if he knew what animal wool came from. He got very excited and said "SEEP!" No sh's for him.

There was a potluck dinner and I ate about 2.5 plates of food, drank two beers, and went to sleep at 7:30. The sun hadn't even finished setting yet, but I curled up in my sleeping bag and fell asleep with the moon in my face, framed by grasses.

The next morning, we woke up early, ate trail mix for breakfast, and biked back. We stopped at Cibo in Saulsalito for a ridiculously tasty brunch. And Blue Bottle Coffee. Oh, yum.

writing & publishing the novel

2010-04-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, I heard novelists a bang-up group of novelists & literary folks discussing the art and practicality of all things novelistic. Pretty great.

Easily my favorite bits from the evening were Roberts saying "...when you're writing your first book, you're not just writing the book, you're writing yourself as a writer," and Alarcón saying "No one knows what the fuck sells or why." It would have been an appropriate moment to snort, were I the kind of person who laughs by snorting. Instead I am the kind who guffaws. So, that happened.

well, are you?

2010-04-19T23:58:00.002-07:00

You totally want/need one. Deep breath. It's okay. They're now available for purchase. Written by Ryan Lewis, designed by Anna Hurley. And the proceeds support 826 chapters across the country. Mmhmm.

from heroism to pathos

2010-04-14T23:33:00.002-07:00

while I'm still excited about scanning things, I thought I'd share this:

(please click on the picture to enlarge. please?)

If you can't read my scrawl, the note at the bottom says: "these notes were on the board when I arrived at my classical Indian singing class this evening. They're from the classical Indian theory class which immediately precedes it."

I would love to take the theory class, too, but I don't reliably leave work early enough for a seven o'clock class. I got my teacher to explain some of it to me anyway, though.

Ian McEwan

2010-04-14T23:25:00.000-07:00

was at least as charming as I'd hoped he'd be, if not more so. I was in the fourth row. City Arts & Lectures flat-rate pricing is kind of a ridiculously good deal.

He kept talking about "awarding" the protagonist of his most recent novel a Nobel prize. As in, "and that was why I decided I had to award him a Nobel prize," which is so quaint, and bizarre, and wonderful. He also referred to English comedic literature as having a proud tradition of "hapless heroes to whom things happen." I was eating it all up with a spoon.

post-irony?

2010-04-08T00:01:00.003-07:00

I almost fell off my bike on my way to work. Too much laughter for reliable pedaling!

Update: They seem incredibly sincere. Oh dear.