happy birthday, Lydia Davis (a day late)

spending hours

staring

out a window, observing

a neighbor’s cows

tossing french verbs

at the ceiling

seeing what sticks

even the smallest thing will be observed

how a word sounds

and

how a word sounds when

there are different words around it

a crisis of language

" 'False statements' were useful but mostly superfluous because a peculiar system of regulation left much of the actual regulation to market participants. Rules about 'disclosure,' which specified that an investor be kept informed of any 'material' information having to do with a company's finances, meant that disclosures in a financial report could be buried in the footnotes and, with some clever wording, made sufficiently dull to ensure that they would rarely be seen as red flags . . . All this would merit the word 'monstrous,' except the adjective implies an element of excitement and drama, whereas this is a system that thrives on abstraction and boredom. According to the conventions of this system, the footnotes are more important than the main body of the text. Sentences are crafted so as not to be read. Language should confound rather than communicate. These conventions operate completely counter to those of narrative as we know it. To fixate on 'human nature,' . . . is a sentimental fallacy; it presumes that the problem is not structural dysfunction, the truly tangled web of politics and money, but individual hubris – villains who threaten an established order, a benign status quo."

– Jennifer Szalai, "The Banality of Avarice: Why the financial industry never had to lie," Harper's, February 2012

how we read and how we are

"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

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."

to jump to fall to fail

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

"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

"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

representing it visually

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.

some thoughts from Nabokov

"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

hello, purple prose! Seriously? Seriously.

repetition is the better part of propaganda

My own editorial process makes me laugh:

save the words!

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.

satisfaction

"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.

puns

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

Agreed! Motion passed. No dissidents.

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

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

moving pictures

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.

punctuation

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.

vocabulary gone awry

It's so sad to see lovely and delicious and delicate words get mangled. My award for purplest prose I've read in a while:

"Joanna Howard's lapidary debut On the Winding Stair is an escalier spiraling with brocaded lyricism, alternately swathed in darkness and bathed in phosphorescence. Metaphysical spaces coexist with vivid corporeality in a place where words aren't so much modified as they are baroquely embellished, cast in irreality..."

need I go on? Because I think I needn't. And quite frankly, I'd prefer not to.

LoCoS

I hope that people never cease to amaze me. Currently, I feel the odds are pretty good.


"The postman brought me a happy letter from my home town this morning."

The Lover's Communication System. It's so dreamy. And, presumably, so silent.

farewell, naughties

In the minor controversy over what to call the past decade, I do believe the Australians have emerged victorious. In British English, a "naught" is a "zero," and so the past (or yes, yes, not truly past until 2011, don't write me, I know) can be referred to not only as the Naughts but as the Naughties. Nothing tops this.

Despite the fact that Wired seems to have reported on this back in, well, the 90s, I hadn't heard of it until the other night. So I'm giving the credit to my downstairs neighbors' homeland.

At any rate, einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!