Sanity Scout

Gratitude is the New Attitude

2012-01-02T23:34:00.000-06:00

Happy 2012! I have to say I may have started the year on a shaky note, resolution-wise, with an act of procrastination. I meant to write this post yesterday, but we'll go ahead and call today the start of the new year. Today I want to share something that has inspired me to improve my general attitude and approach toward life. As you might imagine (and some of you know first-hand), being a parent can be the weirdest simultaneity of absolute exhilarating joy and complete and utter exhaustion. It is the great experience of my life so far - but let me tell you, it is HARD WORK. Add to that working on my doctorate and keeping at bay the chaos lurking outside the door of my household, and you have the perfect recipe for one tired, demoralized mama. Fortunately I have an arsenal of anti-blue weapons at my disposal - the forementioned fountain of all joy, a baby boy that I only have to look at to return a smile to my face; a fantastically supportive husband who dives in to all baby-caring and household tasks as a true partner, consoles patiently through any meltdowns (of baby and mommy), and is ready with a joke to lighten the mood; a family network that has been there for us unconditionally since day one (of William's life and our own), traveling repeatedly to help out these brand-new parents, dote on their grandson, and make it possible for me to chug along on my dissertation; most of all, divine strength to draw from when my well runs dry and the unmatched blessing of faith in the Rock that never breaks.

With all that in mind, I was recently brought to self-reflection by a piece on CBS Sunday Morning called "Making Gratitude an Attitude," regarding a scientific study showing that gratitude is measurably good for our health. The idea is that after the holidays, many of us have a bit of an emotional crash after the Christmas-cheer-induced high of holiday tidings and glee. I have to admit that January can look pretty bland after the tree goes down (yesterday), the holiday tunes recede and the neighborhood lights disappear. As Faith Salie talks about in this feature (video below), gratitude is a powerful antidote to those post-holiday doldrums, and a healthy practice throughout the rest of the year.

Although certainly gratitude is a practice valued and emphasized across secular and religious communities, as a Christian it's something that I've been taught to make second nature all my life. The older we get, though, it seems the harder it is to focus on the thanks when overwhelmed by the needs. Lately when I pray I've been trying to force myself to tell God what I'm thankful for before starting on my list of many requests. It's surprisingly hard to do! I definitely have an easier time thinking of what I need help with sometimes than with listing my blessings. But the truth is that I do have a whole lot to feel grateful for as this new year begins, so every day this month I'm going to write down something that I'm grateful for - I'll probably post it on Facebook, and then I'll post the week's list here on the weekend. I'd love for you to join me on my endeavor if you'd like, and write your own list of things you're thankful for in the comments. Today I'll start with the five things I'm grateful for from 2011:

1. The healthy birth and wonder-filled first year of my beautiful son
2. Getting to know my husband on a whole new level with a year of sharing the rollercoaster of parenthood - now I've even more sure I made the right choice!
3. Passing my prospectus colloquium
4. Having the encouragement of friends to get me writing more regularly again
5. Meeting people through my work who awe me with their artistic genius and honor me with the chance to call them friends

New Music: Laura Marling

2011-12-22T00:04:00.002-06:00

At this very moment I'm sitting enthralled in front of my Amazon cloud player, absolutely loving the sound of a song by emerging British singer Laura Marling. Turns out Amazon.com has a promotion in which you can download "Sophia," one of the songs from her album A Creature I Don't Know, for FREE during the month of December. I did so, am delighted, and will now press the button to purchase the rest of the album. Hurray for new tunes! I first heard about her on CBS Sunday Morning, one of my favorite news magazine shows. I've loved their features for years - it's been a Sunday morning tradition in my parents' household since I was very young. I still get a warm, pleasant feeling of well-being from the associations of hearing Charles Osgood's opening lines, which I used to hear sleepily from my room along with the sounds of the kitchen as my mom prepared delicious Colombian Sunday favorites like arepas, huevos pericos (eggs scrambled with onion and tomato), or caldo de papas (a delicious broth with potato, egg, cilantro and scallions) - comfort food extraordinaire!

Anyway, back to Laura Marling - she has an amazing sultry, deep voice that totally took me by surprise after seeing a photo of her delicate 21-year-old self. This is where people say she's soulful beyond her years, or an old soul, or something like that - but I like to think that people can really be soulful at any age. Her voice, however, does have a bit of the older woman about it. Let's just say they had me at "sounds like a blend of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen" or something along those lines. I highly recommend at least downloading the free song to see if you're into it.

Speaking of Brits, Marlings and CBS Sunday Morning, a few months ago they did a feature on indie actress/filmmaker Brit Marling (no kidding!) and what looks like a great sci-fi film called Another Earth. It won awards at Sundance, I believe, and I'm very anxious to see it. I missed it in theaters for mommy reasons, but I just put it on my Blockbuster Online queue. More on that when it arrives. Yay!

Update: Now listening to full album. Hear banjos and a subtle air of bluegrass in the mix. Still delighted.

Used Bookstore Jackpot

2011-12-17T00:02:00.000-06:00

As pretty incorrigible used bookstore addicts, we have the extreme good fortune (or bad fortune? monetarily speaking...) of living close to several wonderful independent bookstores. Our favorite for the past few years is definitely the aptly named BookBuyers, and I really believe that I can count the times we've made it out of there without buying anything on one hand (fyi, I almost went back and deleted the name selfishly, so that no one else will compete with us for the new treasures that appear. But I think my desire for their business success won out). I always giggle when the person at the counter asks if we've got store credit, since the couple of times we actually sold things to them, we used up the credit before leaving the store. Most of what we get is books, most recently favoring comics and graphic novels that we snatch up for our growing collection. However, they also sell things like games, music, movies and sheet music, among other delightful things - so you can see why we very rarely escape without carrying something out. Once in a while we really luck onto some crazy finds, like when I happened on the complete box sets of Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis Evangelion on two separate occasions. Lately we've had some good holiday vibes and gotten pretty awesome scores, including this haul the other day:

1) Volumes I and III of The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland, a classic comic by Winsor McCay I got turned on to by a Stanford prof. of Film and Media Studies, Scott Bukatman, who just published a new book on it that I'm very excited about called The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and The Animating Spirit, not yet released but available for pre-order.

2) The Castafiore Emerald, from The Adventures of Tintin, to add to the other four volumes from the same set that I found at BB on another visit. Incidentally, another Stanford prof., Jean-Marie Apostolides, from the French department, wrote a book about Tintin called The Metamorphoses of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults. I recently heard some disparaging words about the upcoming Tintin movie release from Spielberg by a cartoonist who will here remain nameless, but whose opinion I value highly (and which confirms my skepticism based solely on the previews). Nevertheless, I will likely be seeing it in theaters, if only because we are doing a session on it in the Graphic Narrative Project workshops next quarter (an academic community for the study of graphic narratives, of which I am co-founder and graduate coordinator). Oh, and by the way, we were very excited to read this article about our group written for the Stanford Human Experience website, then picked up on the Stanford Report: http://humanexperience.stanford.edu/graphicnarrative. As per item #1, I should mention that Scott Bukatman has been instrumental in our development as a workshop and was one of our faculty coordinators last year. Huzzah!

3) Not pictured - UNO! One pack, to supplement another Target-bought pack, in case we need to play with a double. I can't wait to revive the old favorite card game. Woot Woot!

4) A vintagey puzzle of the city of San Francisco. Must still do some digging to find out more about it, but there's a medium-to-high likelihood that I'll give up that idea and just enjoy it sans historical details for its delightful aesthetic qualities and fun-having potential. Speaking of puzzles, stay tuned for some piece-gathering insanity on my next post. Tootles!

A Song for Swooning

2011-12-06T13:34:00.000-06:00

I just uncharacteristically clicked on one of those creepy targeted Facebook ads, vanquished by the inescapable draw of the name "Mark Lanegan." It was a link to this free promotional mp3 of "The Gravedigger's Song" from his new album, Blues Funeral. For those of you not familiar with him, Mark Lanegan used to be in the grunge band Screaming Trees, after which he has done various solo projects and some collaborations. I became a big fan of Mark Lanegan after writing a review of his collaborative album with Isobel Campbell of Belle and Sebastian, Ballad of the Broken Seas, which has to be one of my favorites of all time. I wrote it for a now-sadly-defunct mp3zine called Daily Sonic. I haven't had a chance to work things out so that I could include the audio file of my review here, but if you really want it let me know.Anyhow, I am pretty crazy for Mark Lanegan's voice, for many of the same primal reasons I love Leonard Cohen's later-life raspiness. You can get a taste by listening to the "Blues Funeral" mp3 I embedded below (you don't have to download it or provide your email to listen). Has anyone gotten to listen to the rest of Blues Funeral yet? I'm tempted to buy it, but was hoping someone might have some input first. I've lately been buying music through Amazon mp3, so that I have it on the handy Amazon Cloud Player, but this might be one to get on vinyl, if available. Lately they've been doing these awesome new vinyl releases of albums that come with a code to download the mp3 version online, so that you have it both ways. Genius!

Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2011-12-05T16:35:00.001-06:00

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't put this book down! The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an epistolary novel following the post-WWII encounter of a writer and the residents of one of the Channel Islands, held together by a literary society formed as a means of surviving the German occupation. I am very interested in stories describing the period after the Second World War, and this novel has a beautiful way of bringing out the nuances of the post-war experience with a touching and vibrant combination of humor, romance, loss, and tragedy. Despite the necessarily bleak experiences described in the novel, recounted in the heartbreakingly personal letters, the novel somehow stays lighthearted and often hilarious. The authors do a spectacular job at developing the characters through their writing style and developing a riveting plot across the gaps between the beautiful "snail-mail" correspondence in which most of us no longer engage. I heartily recommend this novel, and thank my friend B.T. for lending it to me!

View all my reviews

Review: Kiss and Tell

2011-12-05T16:22:00.000-06:00

Kiss & Tell by MariNaomi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kiss and Tell is bare-all graphic memoir (or autobiographical comic) about the romantic and sexual history of San Francisco cartoonist Mari Naomi. The memoir reads like a little black book of encounters, going chronologically through each person (some of whom we meet more than once). The step-by-step, grittily honest tales touch on way more than sexual experiences and paramours - candidly revealing the entanglements and growing pains of a girl coming of age and how it shapes her relationships with family and friends. Her minimalist drawing style is as direct as the delivery of her story, both managing to come through as both matter-of-fact and heartfelt. Creating such a level of intimacy with a reader takes great courage and risk on the part of an author, especially as a woman writing on subject matter that, despite many changes over the years, still remains more comfortable as the domain of men. Mari Naomi does it humorously and artfully, and I consider myself duly charmed.

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The Hunger Games

2011-11-22T12:57:00.001-06:00

I am so excited about the Hunger Games movie coming out next year. I read the books by Suzanne Collins in something like three or four days while breastfeeding Baby W. I hadn't swallowed up books that fast in a while - and I found them to be completely riveting and amazing - highly recommended! They are young adult books, though the theme is pretty heavy overall (think "The Lottery" as a survivalist, Huxleyan YA action trilogy). I think the casting looks perfect - and it was a great surprise to see Woody Harrelson in the trailer. Boop boop!

The List of Shame

2011-11-11T00:14:00.001-06:00

As part of my recent reawakening to social networking - in an attempt to climb out of that slippery slope of social isolation that is infant-parenting - I have been updating my Goodreads page. Historically I always find list-making and profile-doctoring to be extremely soothing and delightfully compartmentalizing activities. As I added six more books to my "currently reading" list, however, I realized to my dismay that it has turned from a wonderland of possibilities to a overpowering roll call of shame.

Alas, that is the sadly ironic dilemma of the literary life. We spend our lives reading books, yet must read so many of them that one our most valuable skills is learning to be successful at reading partially when needed. Granted, many of those books I have pretty much completely read - but I am a victim of my inability to click on the "read" button unless I've read every single line. Ah, how I lament your lonely dust-filled covers, my friends in "currently reading." May your day also come, when in a golden light of glory I will turn the last page of your final chapter, having read your careful pages sequentially and fully from one end to the other!

Review: Towers of Midnight

2011-11-07T14:43:00.002-06:00

My most recent Goodreads review:Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson.

When I started reading The Gathering Storm, the first book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series "co-authored" by Brandon Sanderson, I found the style difference between the two authors to be pretty jarring - particularly because I had just finished reading Jordan's last book, Knife of Dreams. However, after settling in to Sanderson's somewhat more casual, more quickly-moving style, I am definitely a convert. I thoroughly enjoyed Towers of Midnight, the second book by Sanderson, and breezed through the 1000+ pages (relatively speaking). I find Sanderson's manner of storytelling to be refreshing after the last couple of Wheel of Time books, which I have to say had been getting pretty unruly and tedious, even frustratingly redundant at times. Sanderson's fresh take on Jordan's work breathed some new life into it, unraveling the knots and propelling the plot forward - making it very exciting and gratifying to read after spending so many hours and hours with the characters over the course of 12 books. One of Sanderson's strengths is definitely the battle scenes. My husband and I have previously lamented a couple of battles in Jordan's previous books that definitely didn't give us the payoff they promised after hundreds of pages (or even several books) of lead-in. They were not fully developed and were over much too quickly, almost as if they were paraphrased. It seemed as if they weren't really Jordan's favorite thing to write, so he didn't linger too long on them. Sanderson, however, really does the battles justice. They are detailed to just the right amount of depth, including some descriptions of strategy, fighting sequences and such, and really highlighting the individual gifts of the heroic characters. I'm not hardcore enough to be a big fan of battle scenes generally, so it says something that I enjoyed them so fully. I'm now anxiously awaiting the next volume!

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NaBloMo - what?

2011-11-07T14:14:00.000-06:00

Well, it turns out that it's National Blogging Month - and although I'm a week late and not even close to having a regularly interesting blog the likes of my good friends at The Sporadic Post and Bread n Jam for Frances, I'm going to try to up the ante here and eek out a few posts this month, either here or on my other blog as my mommy self. I know these posts show up on various forums such as Facebook, Google Reader, etc. (where I usually read other people's blogs), but I would say that going to the sites directly will give you a more pleasurable viewing experience potentially - and you can see the design changes I made recently. Although, really, does anyone actually go to people's actual blog sites anymore, with all of these alternative access routes?

To follow up on my previous post, I did actually get to try WriteMonkey and I completely love it. I've used it several times now, both on the very large monitors of my home computer and on the small screen of my netbook at a coffeeshop, and was impressed both times with the productivity and focus that resulted. Basically WriteMonkey takes over the screen, making a black canvas that display only the words you type. No formatting buttons, no Windows taskbar below, no distractions. It discourages excessive editing - so I can hit Ctl + I and italicize, but the text won't actually show up that way, just _like this_. I tend to obsess about corrections and overedit, thereby routinely stunting my own creativity and smothering my ideas before they even make it onto the page. This solution really seems to be doing the trick, especially since I don't see the little browser buttons below on my taskbar, daring me to check my email again. I've written several pages of my dissertation on it so far - so mission accomplished! Who knew a black page with rows of green letters could be so beautiful and soothing? Well, I guess they did.

Here's a screenshot from PC Magazine - which included WriteMonkey in "The Best Free Software of 2011":

Sometime soon I'll also need to try out organizational software to put together all of the bits and pieces that I'm writing on WriteMonkey and elsewhere, but right now I'm mainly sorting them in files on my computer by chapter and on Google Docs. I can already sense things getting lost in the mix, though - so I'll probably report back soon with word on one of those writing organization programs that work for PCs.

Guten Morgen, Writing Self

2011-08-17T13:40:00.000-05:00

It has been a couple of years since I last blogged semi-regularly, but my virtual self has found new life thanks in part to the other blog I've been writing about my new adventures in rookie motherhood. That one is mainly directed at updating family and friends on how Baby W is coming along in the world since his birth on January 7, 2011.

I've started using my blogging as a way to plunge back into writing creatively on a regular basis, which in turn will hopefully help jump-start my writing self from her current dead-battery status into full-fledged functionality for the massive writerly undertaking that now lies at my feet: THE DISSERTATION.

As most of you now, I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. At the end of May I successfully passed my prospectus colloquium, during which my advisory committee of professors approve what is basically a 10-page description and plan of my dissertation. After a summer of talking theory and philosophy with my main advisors, taking care of Baby W and attempting to recover enough from newborn-land to establish a routine that blends mommy-time and Ph.D.-time, I'm pleased to announce that *bugles blaring* I've written two paragraphs!

Of course, I'm now apparently procrastinating by writing this post, but it does feel good to preen a little bit. I spend quite a lot of my time breastfeeding these days - time which I occasionally use wisely to look things up on our handy new iPad 2. I recently found this awesome links page on a website called Literature & Latte that is dedicated to digital writing tools, focused mainly on Apple systems. They're the people behind Scrivener, which some of you writer types may be familiar with. For those of you who aren't, it's organization software for writing that is made to help organize all the bits and piece of extensive writing projects and increase focus and productivity. I use a PC, so I won't be able to use a lot of the shiny, pretty writing software out there for Macs. Scrivener is on beta testing for Windows, but I'm frightening by the disclaimers about losing your work. Since I'm not willing to entrust my dissertation to a beta test, for now I'm going to try a similar PC program listed in the links called PageFour.

I am also dying to try one of the programs that is geared toward writing minimalistically, without distractions, on a refreshingly clear screen that avoids menus and sidebars and instead goes full-screen with a white page and plain text. I can't decide between WriteMonkey and Q10, so I think I'll start with the former. Here's their description:

Writemonkey is a Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood, it helps you write better. Editing is for another day ...

If anyone has any input on these, let me know! For now we'll see how it goes with WriteMonkey. I'd better go try it before Baby W wakes up from his nap. Oops.. too late.

If "Fallout" Was a French Short Film...

2009-10-07T18:17:00.000-05:00

I just watched this fantastic short by Paul Doucet, which is currently right up my post-apocalyptic alley. The use of ephemera, music and a constant geiger counter in the background reminds me aesthetically of the video game Fallout 3, which I absolutely love. If you want to know a bit more about how it was shot, read the original posting on io9. I especially love the opening establishing shot of the record player and poster, as well as the concluding shot. It's not exactly cheerful stuff, of course, but enjoy!

Bunker - English subtitles
by bebealien

Rousseau, Botany and Armchair Academia

2009-07-01T21:56:00.005-05:00

Ruminations from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Seventh Walk):

Botany is a study for an idle and lazy solitary person: a point and a magnifying glass are all the apparatus he needs to observe plants. He walks about, wanders freely from one object to another, examines each flower with interest and curiosity, and as soon as he begins to grasp the laws of their structure, he enjoys, in observing them, a painless pleasure as intense as if it had cost him much pain. In this idle occupation there is a charm we feel only in the complete calm of the passions, but which then alone suffices to make life happy and sweet. But as soon as we mingle a motive of interest or vanity with it, either in order to obtain distinction or to write books, as soon as we want to learn only in order to instruct, as soon as we look for flowers only in order to become an author or professor, all this sweet charm vanishes. We no longer see in plants anything but the instruments of our passions. We no longer find any true pleasure in their study. We no longer want to know, but to show that we know. And in the woods, we are only on the world's stage, preoccupied with making ourselves admired. Or else, restricting ourselves to armchair and garden botany at the most, instead of observing vegetation in nature, we concern ourselves only with systems and methods--an eternal matter of dispute which does not lead to an additional plant being known and throws no true light on natural history and the vegetable realm. That is the source of the hatreds and the jealousies that rivalry for fame excites among other learned men. Altering the nature of this love study, they transplant it to the middle of cities and academies where it withers no less than exotic plants in the gardens of connoisseurs.

Make: Television on Steampunk

2009-06-28T20:53:00.000-05:00

Maker Profile - Steampunk on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

Drawing Doomsday

2009-06-28T19:49:00.004-05:00

My temporary roommate pointed out this Max Fleischer short from 1928. Magnificent!
What if our cartoons do turn against us in the end? Nooo! Not the doomsday lever!

Tales from the Gorge, Part 1

2009-06-26T12:12:00.004-05:00

It's a lovely day in Ithaca, New York - or as much as I can hear of it from inside my room in one of the large, well-aged houses that perch steadfastly on the hill up to Collegetown. I have to make sure I don't lean back in the computer chair, as the cushioned black back is currently a makeshift drying rack for the damp clothes I wore yesterday, no longer dripping out traces of the sudden afternoon downpour.
The theory-heads pouring out of the lecture hall after yesterday's lecture were, as I was, completely shocked at the very wet turn to a day that had until then been an oven-baked, sun-saturized steambath. In retrospect, though, I should have known that the thick waves of humidity were bubbles in the hot air waiting to erupt into the torrents of rain that threatened us as we looked dismally out at the gray gusts blowing sheets of water across the previously steaming pavement. In the morning the sun beating down gave no indication (I thought) of what was to come, so I foolish decided this was the best day to leave the raincoat in the apartment. In my defense, climbing the hills to the Cornell campus is an ordeal that makes it significantly easier to choose to leave behind anything that could add weight to the trek. The consequences of the morning's choice were staved off by a compassionate colleague who offered to share his umbrella with me down to the library. It turned into an impromptu adventure, as the sudden surges of wind threatened to blow the small umbrella into useless bits of metal. We skirted, unsuccessfully, the ever-growing puddles and streams while holding our bags close, trying to find a way out of the maze of buildings to the quad. We left our dripping footsteps on the plastic-covered wallways of a physics building in construction, finally finding an exit through which we could see the tower that promised the shelter of the library. After making that far, I parted ways with my umbrella-buddy and made the slightly loony decision to walk the rest of the 30-minute way back to the apartment without rain protection. By then my feet were threatening to slip out of the front of my sandals with every step - which is more of a problem when you are heading down a series of semi-steep slopes, as I was. Another serendipitous umbrella-ride took me to the bottom of the first hill, and I continued to the bridge over the gorge. As I expected, the water was rushing madly under the series of grates one must traverse on the pedestrian edges of the bridge. I gleefully took in the series of shivers induced by the combination of sounds provided by the storm - the sustained rush and whoosh of the gorge under my feet, the rolling, shivering rumble of thunder and the splash of the cars on the pavement. It has been years since I have heard thunder and seen flashes of lightning. I have missed the eerie magnificence of Texas storms! I walked past a local pub, hair dripping, and heard the astute observation from a smoker outside: "You're wet!" Yes, I said, and made the turn to the familiar row of houses before trudging up the stairs and hurriedly slinging the less-dripping clothes on the chair, where I now sit.
Turns out it isn't such a nice day in Ithaca, by the standards of sun-lovers. I am pleased, though, to hear small rumbles of thunder and the slight patter and slush that lets me know that the rain is lingering still.

Freedom and the Act of Will

2009-06-23T23:00:00.002-05:00

Interesting thoughts on freedom from Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty:

"We often see the weakness of the will brought forward as an argument against freedom. And indeed, although I can will myself to adopt a course of conduct and act the part of a warrior or a seducer, it is not within my power to be a warrior or a seducer with ease and in a way that 'comes naturally'; really to be one, that is. But neither should we seek freedom in the act of will, which is, in its very meaning, something short of an act. We have recourse to an act of will only in order to go against our true decision, and as it were, for the purpose of proving our powerlessness. If we had really and truly made the conduct of the warrior or the seducer our own, then we should be one or the other. Even what are called obstacles to freedom are in reality deployed by it. An unclimbable rock face, a large or small, vertical or slanting rock, are things which have no meaning for anyone who is not intending to surmount them, for a subject whose projects do not carve out such determinate forms from the uniform mass of the in itself and cause an orientated world to arise--a significance in things. There is, then, ultimately nothing that can set limits to freedom, except those limits that freedom itself has set in the form of its various initiatives, so that the subject has simply the external world that he gives himself."

Robotic Invasion!!!

2008-09-02T23:17:00.005-05:00

A. and I were chatting this evening about how it's interesting when people dismiss a lot of sci-fi, such as that dealing with A.I. stuff, as completely "fantastic" or "far-fetched," or extremely futuristic. A huge amount of sci-fi from previous time periods has since become reality, and a lot of other technology like robotics is very advanced and growing exponentially during our time. Then, of course, is everything that has already been done but not released to the public. Technology has been growing at unbelievable rates in the last century or so...who knows how far it will go even in the next 20-30 years or so. In the spirit of our conversation I went looking at videos of robots on YouTube, just for fun.

First, a scary one. Swarms of tiny robots that can assemble themselves into bigger robots and do things like "self-heal." Famous last words spoken by the scientist-- "There is no risk." NOOO!!! Robots take over the world!!!

Next, Japanese female androids...always a classic.

Some dancing robots...

And finally, just for fun, PUPPY VS. ROBOT SUPERFIGHT!!!!

Culinary Exploits

2008-08-30T00:26:00.007-05:00

My friend B. and I collaborated the other day on a delicious recipe for a salmon salad from a new book she's been trying out. We made some adjustments to fit ingredients we had on hand and came up with a delightful dish that will now unravel right before your eyes! As a warning, I'm fairly sure I left out a few details, so if you try to make it you'll have to fill in the blanks.

Small potatoes sprinkled with olive oil and herbes de provence, then oven-roasted.

Salmon sprinkled with salt and pepper, then covered with seasoning made of shallots, dill, parsley, lemon zest and olive oil, then baked in the oven at what 250 (I originally wrote 425 degrees, but that's wrong) for 25 minutes.

Some soft-boiled eggs--one of my favorite ingredients!

Dijon vinaigrette made with olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, lemon and some fresh basil from my herb garden.

French beans replaced beets in the original recipe as a complement to the potatoes.

The aftermath...

Add some greens, drizzle on the dressing, and tada!

Bon appetit!

Alpacas and Tragicomics

2008-07-17T12:55:00.013-05:00

Please try to suppress your shock at my appearance so soon after my last post. And while you do that, try to appreciate it as a trust token of sorts, a gesture expressing my deepest intentions to follow through on my stated plans--divulged to you, my few but much-valued blog readers.

First, some happenings from the last couple of weeks:

I have started to write poetry again. I'm keeping it top secret for now because I find the prospect a little unnerving. We shall see where it goes.

Also, we are thinking about adopting a rescued middle-aged beagle. News on future developments may be appearing soon. Before we take on responsibility for the welfare of a living thing, I welcome your advice, admonitions, encouragement, etc.

Meanwhile, some enjoyable moments have come from a couple of visits to Stanford during which I got to socialize and have some great conversations at leisure. When I arrive on campus I now have to navigate around quite a construction extravaganza. Stanford appears to be rushing to finish every possible beautification project before school starts in September. I honestly find it hard to believe, flattery aside, how the campus can be aesthetically improved. We shall see! A benefit of the chaos was the tightly-compartmentalized walkways, which made for more frequent encounters with the hundreds of visitors walking around. It was somehow heartwarming, in a really cheesy way, to see all the various groups of high school students doing their thing and overhearing bits of their animated conversations as they walked by. My little game is to "Guess the Major" from a variety of completely stereotypical first impressions. It's fun.

As for conversations, one particularly entertaining interaction happened while I was having lunch at the Treehouse restaurant with my friend H. We were pulled into conversation with a man in a Hawaiian shirt sharing our picnic table. We had gradually been edging closer to him as we tried to avoid a very persistent bee drawn to our Baja Fish Tostada salads. The stranger turned out to be VERY talkative. It was worth the hijacking of our conversation, though. He jumped in when H. and I were talking about Asturias, the Popol Vuh and ancient cultures such as the Mayans. Apparently this guy had spent a lot of time at archeological sites in Central and South America and knew quite a bit about these civilizations. He also went around the coast of those areas on a sailboat with his family, making pit stops at the sites of several sites of ruins. He mentioned he taught at Stanford, so we asked what department. I fully expected archaeology, history, sociology, anthropology or something of that nature, but he said he was affiliated with engineering, and did something with physics. He then proceeded to get us up to date on the happenings on his alpacas, which he keeps on a ranch or something he has in the area. Crazy! An alpaca-raising physicist who in his spare time sails to the sites of ancient civilizations. I love it.

On the subject of my quest to get healthier, I report that since I have so far lost about 4.5 pounds in about 3 1/2 weeks. It's something, so I'm happy about that, but I'm behind the schedule I set myself. It's kind of frustrating to be going so slow, but people keep telling me it's better this way and I'm doing great. I don't know, though. I do feel better physically, and seem to be toning up a tiny bit, but I wish I could see some more definite numerical results. That is probably silly, but it's true. I got some new running shoes in the mail--so I'll be taking on that frightening project sometime soon. Look for continuing status reports.

Now, the promised book update for the month:

Books Bought:

A really cool paperback of O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. The edition was put out by Houghton Mifflin in a "Sentinel" series.
An interesting hardcover of The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. Think it's from a series called "Cameo Classics." circa 1940. The cover is an ominous charcoal black with a cream-colored cameo of Gutenberg in relief in the center. It is illustrated in black and white.
The Book of Lost Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien, from the History of Middle Earth series published posthumously by his son Christopher.
Small 1910 hardcover of Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. Beautiful gray-blue with gold design, with illustrations.

Books Borrowed:

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, translated by Dennis Tedlock
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Books Read:

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

This book was a huge surprise. Not that I don't admire the writing talents of OSC, but this is so very different from stuff like Ender's Game. I think I was just taken aback by the depth of what I thought would be a more or less straightforward fairy-tale-goes-modern routine. Far from it. It was incredibly insightful about some topics that are notoriously difficult to get your head around, much less your pen (or typing fingers). One of those was Judaism in 20th c. Europe. The other was the experience of immigration. I have no personal experience with the former, but do with the latter. I honestly stopped in my reading tracks and went back at several passages to admire a bit that particularly struck me. One of them occurs when the protagonist, who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. with his parents as a child, returns there as a graduate student:

"Only when he was belted into his seat and the plane pulled back from the gate did it occur to him why he felt so free. Coming to America, all the burden of his parents' hopes and dreams had been put onto his shoulders. Now he was heading back to Russia, where he had not had such burdens, or at least had not been aware of them. Russia might have been a place of repression for most people, but for him, as a child, it was a place of freedom, as America had never been.
Before we are citizens, he thought, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. Mostly. And now, like Russia, I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens."

In another section the protagonist reflects on those burdens and their root in the responsibility that comes with knowing that your parents went through some amazing amount of personal hardship and sacrifice to give you a chance to reach higher goals with a comparatively much greater amount of ease. The burden of measuring up and making it valid, to picture them saying to each other, "well, it was all worth it because of this." And the fear of failing in this massive responsibility. OSC did a startlingly good job of expressing this--in my opinion. Like my friend B., who lent me the book, I also shamelessly enjoyed the references to literary academics, such as his dissertation dealing in part with the work on Russian folktales by Viktor Propp. I also loved the explanations of connections between Russian folktale tradition and tales that developed in other cultures. For example, he mentions Baba Yaga and her moving house that walks on chicken legs. I almost shouted with glee (seriously). It's Howl's Moving Castle! I don't think it's a stretch to say that Hayao Miyasaki is very aware of some of these folktale traditions, and seeing the cultural jump is exciting to me. Glee! Highly recommend this book.

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

I love love LOVE Willa Cather. This novel went farther to solidify my affection for her descriptive prose. I could say a lot, but I'll stick to my favorite aspect of Cather's artistry, which is her passionate depiction of landscape. I know other people have most likely said this thousands of times, but it can't hurt once more. It's really like she has a love-affair with it--her words run over its curves, its exultations, its harmonies, its fierceness, its savagery, its surprises with so much intimacy. If there's anything wrong with that it's that everything else to me is dwarfed in comparison. The characters, the plot--I just get completely lost in the images of certain combinations of the natural environment and how she captures them with so much vitality. This is probably due in part to my own passion for the landscape of Texas. It is so hard to describe to people the things I miss, the things I love; to argue for the beauty of places so many find "ugly" or "boring." There are some Texan poets I love to talk about this, who understand the strings that get pulled in my brain when I think about driving across half the state on Scenic Highway 281, when I float slowly through the mossy, glimmering light of the Guadalupe River while the sun bakes into my skin and the water shocks my limbs with cold, when I drive into an endless horizon on I-35 with nothing in sight in any direction but fields, sky, clouds, and a highway that I know goes on for hours and hours, when the sun sets in a hundred shades of orange and the night falls with such darkness that all I see is headlights and the glow around randomly scattered dots of life. I found this quote somewhere online, and I haven't really verified its attribution to John Steinbeck, but I'm going to go out on a limb and include it anyway, because it states what I struggle to describe much more eloquently:

"I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."
-John Steinbeck

Clearly, I highly recommend O Pioneers!

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Another pleasant surprise, lent to me with high recommendations by my friend L., who is also a fan of graphic novels, manga, anime, and such. I'll keep it brief and say that Bechdel gracefully masters what i consider to be an immense task: telling a difficult and painfully personal autobiographical tale without bitterness. In this graphic novel she is delightfully humorous without being tiresome with irony, frank without being abrasively cynical, and emotionally engaged without being resentful or petty. Most of all, I could feel her love toward her parents almost tangibly in the pages, in the care she took to tell this story in just the right way despite the tragedy or difficulty of the situations she describes. That aside, I was really impressed with the versatility of her drawing. She incorporates a lot of different things in her panels, such as diary entries, handwritten notes, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., all done in realistic drawings. Superb! Highly recommended (you can see I have been on a roll).

Hombrez de Maiz by Miguel Angel Asturias

I am going to completely bow out of this one because I am doing a paper on it, so I feel exhausted regarding its descriptions. Suffice it to say that this is an absolutely landmark work in Latin American and Western literature in general, and very innovative for its time. He incorporates mythology, dream sequences and figurative languages almost seamlessly throughout the narrative and uses the structure of the novel itself to help tell a huge story through a microcosm of society. Unfortunately, the sheer mastery of these non-traditional elements makes it somewhat hard to read. It took me ages to finish it, even though I really enjoyed it. That said, it's not often I actually feel triumphant on finishing a book, like I've accomplished something monumental--and that is how I felt when I read the Epilogue. I may have even thrown up my hands in victory. I came, I read, and I conquered!
Highly recommend it, but mainly to tenacious readers who can accept being led without the usual drives and comforts of narratives. Also recommend reading it along with the Popol Vuh, in the translation mentioned above, which I am starting today.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Absolutely fabulous! Morally stunning. Socially earthshaking. How much more hyperbole can I employ to sing the praises of Watchmen? Not enough. It's probably the most acclaimed graphic novel ever--and one of the only ones to win awards usually reserved for strictly narrative novels and other prose. Although I feel there is something somehow wrong about having to justify the merits of a graphic novel by arguing that it can stand up among novels, I will concede for the sake of the uninitiated graphic-narrative-deprived and note the two awards people usually cite: winning the Hugo Award and getting on the list of Time Magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to the Present, or something to that effect. Alan Moore stories are always good for a lively chat about politics or woes of humanity--something I am usually up for. Anyway, this book is pretty astounding. I prefer to leave it there for the sake of not giving it away, as there is a mystery involved. I won't lie, it's violent and fairly disturbing (mature readers--whatever that actually means) as well as morally disarming. But if you can handle it, I don't only recommend it, I command you to read it. MUAHAHA.

That's all I can think of for now. Let out your collective sigh of relief and feel free to continue with whatever you were doing before I so rudely and verbosely interrupted. Until next time!

P.S. I nearly forgot. If you are somewhat curious about/interested in/passionately love graphic narratives, i.e. graphic novels, comics, manga, etc., go to this website and join the fun: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/complit/cgi-bin/?q=node/262
Cheers!

Getting Fit, Being Lazy

2008-07-14T17:15:00.005-05:00

I have been wracking my brains (not really, of course... it being summer break) for something interesting to write about under the pressure of inevitably falling short of the fantastic adventures some of my friends are currently blogging about (see side bar). For now I will be frank with you--my summer is not in any way exciting, and you will have to put up (or not, actually) with my somewhat more tedious adventures and somewhat less tedious plans for more exciting times in the future.

I will try to continue my sporadic bursts of information on what I am currently up to in life and complement it with a new experiment. Before I tell you about it here are my "happenings."

I've decided it's finally time to stop feeling bad about myself and seriously lose the weight I need to to feel more healthy and/or attractive. At least for my clothes to fit again. As well as to give in to my husband's insistence that I have a long and healthy life here on Planet Earth. So, after being spurred on by a Hawaiian friend of ours who has a killer bod after losing weight, I signed up for 3 months of WeightWatchers. Yeah, *sigh* and all that. I caved in. But so far in two weeks I have lost about 3 pounds and have less desire to stuff my face all day, so so far so good. Counting points on an online tracking tool they have fulfills my endless desire for lists and technology, as well as micromanaging, so it's useful for staying on track and not giving up. More concrete, you know? My husband contributed two more important health-aids. The first is the Wii Fit, which has been sold out since it went on the market, but is now sitting primly in our living room. It's an awesome game that revolves around something kind of like those platforms they use in Step Aerobics. It's got sensors in it that measure your weight distribution, movements, etc. The program itself measures your BMI through several criteria, weighs you, and tests your balance and agility, then gives you a chart of your progress and adjusts your "Wii Age," reminiscent of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. The workouts are divided into categories: Yoga, Strength, Aerobic and Balance. There are multiple exercises in each, and you unlock more exercises and intensities as you score higher and do them more frequently. The exercises are clever and incorporate some fun games. Again, so far so good. My favorite is the boxing game--done somewhat realistically with the nunchuk. He also bought himself a Garmin GPS runner training device, which tracks how far you run, your pace, etc, and keeps track of it on your computer. Our tentative goal is to train for a 10k in October (we'll see about that) and to be fit enough to climb Half Dome at Yosemite (which we just visited with my parents over 4th of July weekend) sometime in September. Finally, we started taking multivitamins.

Now for my experiment (bear with me, I know this is a long post--but I've been building up). Some of you may know that I once started up a book review column on WOAI.com. The great part of it was that since I started it, and had a kick-ass web director overseeing it as well (shout-out to CyberBob), I got to write about pretty much anything I wanted. Eventually I even got to interview people on camera. What I miss most, though, as I become increasingly immersed in the world of literary academics, is just sharing my actual non-premeditated, non-scholarly thoughts on books that aren't just something I "should" read or "must" read. When I started writing reviews I was inspired by one of my favorite contemporary writers, Nick Hornby. I LOVE the way he writes book reviews. Hornby writes a column for The Believer, a great mag put out by McSweeny's. Some of these have been collected in a little book called The Polysyllabic Spree.

This column I simultaneously drool over and revere is simply called, to my utter now-doctorally-oriented delight, "Stuff I've Been Reading." Basically what Hornby does is start with a list (YES!!): "Books Bought" followed by "Books Read." As an avid participant in a family of obsessive book buyers, it's not hard to see why I would find this comforting and cathartic. I buy used books like other people buy Starbucks coffee. Our house threatens to become flooded with books from floor to ceiling, piled up in every corner and surface, like in the house of the famous writer in this movie I saw recently called "Winter Passing." The scary thing is, nothing would please me more. Anyway, after the list Hornby writes his article about a couple of the books he's read. Frank, no-holds barred, blissfully straight-forward and unpretentious (for the most part--although I have no evidence to the contrary at the moment).

So, I have decided to shamelessly copy Nick Hornby's method as a source of inspiration for some blogging, with some adjustments. I will list books when I buy them, some information about the book itself (edition, interesting aspects of the cover, year, place acquired, intriguing dedication notes to other people, etc.), my hopes for it, and so forth. Then I will list books I have started reading (you might see the influence of goodreads here). Finally I will list books I have actually read to completion, with a short comment on what I really think about it. Believe it or not, I anticipate this will be challenging/frightening for me, like standing on a precipice and hoping the next step will be hang gliding exhilaration rather than sure and certain death on some depressing non-academic rocky beach below. Okay, now that I've panicked to the point of hyperbole I feel much better about this. Onward!

And now, the "Next on..." moment of delayed gratification. This post has gone on long enough (much too long, actually), so I will post separately with the first attempt at my book experiment. Until next time!

Just in Case...

2008-06-24T00:35:00.002-05:00

...you decide not to click on the very prominent RSS of FreakAngels, the currently-evolving webcomic so generously shared with me by a comic-savvy friend, here is the excerpt of an interlude by the writer of the comic, Warren Ellis, that got me interested. Always interesting to see how others describe the creative process:

How It Works

I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”

Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.

Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 2 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.

And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.

It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.

Faster than the speed of anyone.

That’s how it works.

Now that's ecstatic writing. Cheers!

Maksim Mrvica

2008-05-29T23:31:00.002-05:00

My latest source of inspiration:

Dear Emma, how I loathe thee...

2008-05-04T21:58:00.003-05:00

From Madame Bovary:

"It is better not to touch our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands."

My Joycean Adventure

2008-05-01T22:57:00.002-05:00

I'm really enjoying James Joyce's Ulysses right now... so I'll share some favorite parts as I go along. Here are the first few:

"Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too."

"I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant."

"No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop."

The science of Galactica

2008-04-16T15:47:00.003-05:00

Here's an interesting MSNBC article on the scientific probabilities of some of the sci-fi elements of Battlestar Galactica, such as the odds that our first contact with extraterrestrials would be with "Robot Aliens," robot-human relationships, and other issues:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23955772/

Admiral Adama at Stanford!!

2008-04-16T10:51:00.004-05:00

I was perusing the constant stream of event email in my school email box when I ran across this:

15th Annual Cesar E. Chavez Commemoration
Edward James Olmos, Keynote Speaker

Thursday, April 17
7:00 p.m. | Kresge Auditorium
Join us for the year's flagship event as we welcome our esteemed keynote speaker renowned actor, director, and Hollywood activist Edward James Olmos. Also featured: Winners of the Art and Essay Contest, a Stanford student speaker, and the Stanford Spoken Word Collective.

"From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength" - César Chávez
__________________

In case you were blissfully unaware of the best show on T.V., Edward James Olmos currently plays Admiral Bill Adama on Battlestar Galactica. He is really amazing on the show, one of the character's key features being an exceptional ability to give motivational speeches to the fleet. Anyway, I have to admit the Cesar Chavez event announcement was a bit jarring for me as I completely displaced the show and cast from the planet we call home, therefore, without realizing it, completely displaced the actors from their ethnic backgrounds. Seriously, I've never even thought about it. So my first reaction was... "Oh yeah! EJ Olmos is Mexican! I totally forgot!" I won't go into it too much here, but I think that says a lot for the show as a science fiction story and their success at creating a new society of humans. It's also nice, I must admit, to be allowed to forget (completely) our standard ethno/racial characteristics once in a while--on a show where everyone is just human, trying to survive. Some pseudo-racial issues are addressed on BG, but they are taken into different categories, just as a group of people from a specific planet or city (who are actors of many different ethnicities, incidentally).

Anyway, too late to say long story short, but in case you hadn't noticed I am really stoked about going to see EJ Olmos tomorrow. So say we all!

(Oh geez, I hope I don't yell that at the end of his speech)

Taxes...shudder

2008-04-15T02:18:00.004-05:00

I finished my taxes! Hurrah!

So, I had a bad experience with H&R Block this year as far as their in-office consultation is concerned, and ended up doing the free TurboTax e-file thing. I was overwhelmed, seriously, by how much more info I felt I got and how much more thorough the questions were than the agent I went to previously. Just for reference, H&R Block tried to charge me more for the preparation than the meager amount I'm getting back. And refused to tell me how much it would be until the process was done. Also refused to verbally acknowledge that it didn't make any sense to go through with it. Good thing you're allowed to refuse their filing and not pay. I usually don't feel the need to advertise for businesses, but I was very impressed and relieved by Intuit's TurboTax this year and think they deserve the kudos. It's worth trying there first, before someone tried to charge you some ridiculous amount for something you can easily (and more thoroughly/confidently) do yourself.

Just sayin'.

Ninja Warrior!!!

2008-04-14T01:04:00.003-05:00

Well, after spending the last hour ONCE AGAIN trying to log in to my blog (shows how much I post....), I feel compelled, despite my frustrated exhaustion and resentful feelings toward the internet in general, to post in this secure little blog that was quite alike a moated fortress just minutes ago.

I had some juicy morsels saved up from books I've been reading lately, but instead, in rebellion against academia, I will post a couple of clips from the latest obsession in my household. Seriously, these Japanese shows, Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Bansuke, along with Battlestar Galactica, keep my faith in television entertainment. Maybe that's sad, but man do I love it. Not sure how much these random clips I found on YouTube exemplify it, but one of my favorite things about these shows are the off-the-wall, melodramatic subtitle translations of the commentary.

This first shows a shot at the next-to-last course by one of the most frequent, and most popular competitors on the men's side:

This one shows, I believe, the first woman to make it through the entire series of courses in Women of Ninja Warrior. I saw it in the G4 American version with subtitles... but I'm amused by this British (I think?) commentator.

Here is one of the obstacles on Unbeatable Bansuke, the stilt walk (there's also a handwalk, a crazy bike obstacle course, and many other random obstacle courses that are very nearly impossible to beat). I couldn't find video of this awesome old guy who actually beat the stilt course, but I did find one of this kid doing it:

Yep, this is how I choose to waste time. Among other things.

Staving Off Bilingualism

2008-02-05T00:16:00.000-06:00

...in the sense that:

1. I am putting off writing an essay on why sometimes bilingualism causes more conflict than polyglotism
2. The essay is a composition I am writing for my Catalan language course, in which I continue my quest to speak as many languages as can fit into my brain, which I am starting to feel is filling to the point of utter confusion. I grow more and more astonished at the mental capacity of people who can speak, say, seven or nine languages.

So, I will procrastinate by writing this blog in English. First of all, I will throw you a bone and keep (somewhat) good on my promise to begin each post with a list of random things I did today.

Today in my everyday I:

1. Felt sick and tired (actually) and therefore stayed in in the morning.
2. After the sick-and-tiredness wore off, did some cleaning/ironing stuff. Not because I'm a wife. Just because it needed to be done.
3. Read about poetry.
4. Went to my evening class.
5. Talked to someone about marriage, religious ceremonies and related issues/complications.
6. Walked on a treadmill.
7. Ate chips.
8. Procrastinated on Facebook.
9. Continually checked email.
Bet you were expecting a number 10, weren't you?

Now, in the spirit of bilingualism, and by request, here is one translation of the essay "Borges y Yo" (see previous blog) by Jorge Luis Borges.

"Borges and I"

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.

I do not know which of us has written this page.

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, New York: New Directions, 1964, pp. 246-47.

Borges y Yo

2008-01-29T14:16:00.000-06:00

This is an audio file from one of the best literary "artifacts" I've ever come across -- a CD of Jorge Luis Borges reading/reciting his own works, mostly poetry and short essays, in his own voice. It's called "Borges por si mismo." The first time I listened to it in Buenos Aires was very emotional. There is something so personal about a writer reading his work--a transformation from the "image" or "myth" of the writer to an actual, real person. Being confronted with the reality of a writer whom you have read, loved, studied, dissected, spent hours getting acquainted with, and listening to the proximity of his voice, which traverses the temporal boundaries, is a nearly surreal experience in its reality (if that makes any sense whatsoever). Borges's voice is particularly amazing in its richness and depth.

I'll add more later about this piece in particular, and why it's one of my favorites. Mainly questions of identity.

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The Last Pin-Up

2008-01-26T03:42:00.000-06:00

Pin-ups have traditionally been prominently featured in the chronicles of the lives of boys. However, not everyone who writes about youth pays attention to the fact that girls also feverishly collect pin-ups, clipping pictures of cute boys from teeny magazines and tacking them all over their bedroom walls, ceilings, closets, and mirrors. I didn't quite go all out, preferring instead to reserve my pin-up privileges for what I considered a select few. I particularly had a thing for the brooding artists, especially if they looked like they were brooding in the photograph.

A couple of months ago I went back home to spend the holidays with my parents, and as I rearranged myself back into my old room, I looked around and smiled as I noticed that although my mom has repainted the walls, changed the carpet to a wood floor and arranged the artwork on the walls in a more pleasing way, this particular photograph was still up on the wall. I just found out that it was apparently taken by Kwaku Alston. I remember when I tore it out of a magazine--it was featured in a photo shoot promoting Heath Ledger's new movie, A Knight's Tale. I loved the picture because of the pants. I already thought Heath was cool, but I couldn't get over the awesomeness of a young guy brave enough to wear those embroidered green pants for the world to see. They looked great, of course, because Heath had this particular style that absorbed what he put on and gave it some kind of magical cool aura.

Ever since we first saw him in 10 Things I Hate About You opposite Julia Stiles, my friends and I swooned over his Aussie accent and rebellious-but-sweet attitude. I've seen a lot of his movies since then, and gotten to watch his journey as a serious, talented, risk-taking actor. It was much too late in my life for me to be obsessive about movie-star-fandom, but I always retained a place of preference for the boy who was my last pin-up ever. He never disappointed over the years, always taking interesting and challenging roles. I just read that he had recently been working the role of the Joker in the next Batman movie. Now that he's gone, I have to say that it will be bittersweet. I am overjoyed that an actor I respect and enjoy is going to play such a difficult and well-defined role in one of my favorite superhero stories, and yet not looking forward to what I anticipate will be a feeling much like watching Brandon Lee in The Crow. The eerie capturing of life obliviously in its last moments.

I am so sorry about Heath Ledger. I am so sorry for his family, for his baby girl. I realize that I don't actually know him, that he was a person traveling within a different orbit. But one time, those many years ago, that orbit crossed mine through that photograph. He has made me smile, he has made me ponder, and he has probably made me cry. He was only 28, just around my age. He seemed like one of the good guys...just a decent man making a living doing what he loved and enjoying the company of those he loved. I won't speculate on what happened; I just feel sorry, no matter what, about this very young life, cut off. Here's to my last pin-up.

Heath Ledger, 1979-2008

Rain on the Peninsula

2008-01-25T15:04:00.000-06:00

For the one or two of you who might read this post, I will point out needlessly the changes I have enacted to the end of making this blog more aesthetically agreeable, motivated mainly by the inferiority complex I am developing (yes, another one) while reading other people's fabulous blogs. "Like which?", you ask (btw, I am currently debating with myself on how to accomplish this interrogatory-quotation-to-continuing statement punctuation. Let me know if you know how it's done). Well, if you would merely consult the handy new links list to the left of this bloggerific block of text, you can easily navigate to a few of my pals' ongoing virtual narration experiments. They include a SoCal-ler who plays a human man in real life and a tiny female gnome warlock in World of Warcraft, and is king of all randomness-seekers in the world of crazy videos and outrageous links, as well as a graduate lit student-slash-knitting machine who sports a hip hairdo and posts pictures of delicious food, and a roaming English teacher and marathon runner currently adventuring in Turkey for two years with her cat and husband. I'll let you sort out who's whom. Although, chances are, you are one of those three people.

I know I promised a post on my last apartment as a single person, but I must uphold my tradition of letting down my readers and talk about other things that are nearly completely unrelated.

First, I will state my intent to start each post with a list of everyday meaninglessness, just to make sure that, right off the bat, you get some stereotypical "these are the everyday things I did today that you care nothing about and have no relevance to anything whatsoever" blog action. Once we get that out of the way, I am free to write about anything at all without feeling that I've somehow deprived you of some hidden benefit you may reap from knowing about my mundane activities.

THEREFORE...

Today in my everyday I:

Watched a hyperactive Catalonian TV personality explain the different Catalan words used particularly by gypsies.
Walked in the rain under an umbrella.
Was cold.
Sat in traffic with my husband (heretofore referred to as A). Twice.
Talked about WoW with A.
Nursed a headache
Went to Costco to find a Nintendo Wii. Didn't.
Ate a hot dog to console ourselves.
Read about poetry.
Worked on my blog.

Wow, I am already reaching my blogging limit. And here I had all these grand ideas about what I was going to write today (see labels). Well, maybe I'll get to it later. We'll just have to see, won't we?

To be continued...

Forget comebacks... they're overrated

2008-01-12T02:44:00.000-06:00

WARNING: This blog is beginning under a certain amount of extreme annoyance, brought on by the fact that I've slacked off on writing in it for so long that I forgot ALL of the information needed to sign in. Yes, I spent most of the last hour trying to think of any possible combination of words I could have had in mind in April. But, the important thing is, here I am. Back again. With no fanfare.

I won't lie... I am still scared to death of this blog, and it's ability to repel me endlessly from the writing escapades lying sadly dormant in the inner, dark, cobwebby corners of my non-academic brain matter. A certain friend I will only name as "Emerys" has shoved me back into the blogosphere thanks to his heartless promotion of my non-existent verbage, thus forcing me to writing something here. Anything. All I care about at this point is to register dates on the left side-bar. So don't expect any kind of quality standards--I'm way past that now.

Needless to say (or is it?), large volumes of happenings have, well, happened since I last wrote an entry in the Buenos Aires humidity. Much too much to even attempt to narrate it in any kind of coherent way, but here are some highlights:

Accepted University X's offer of admission, and started a doctorate in Comparative Literature
Moved to the sunshine state, sitting in a new, totally packed Toyota Prius with my now ex-military sweetheart
Got engaged
Started school
Planned a wedding
Met some people
Played some World of Warcraft
Wrote some papers

And that brings us to last Saturday, when I got married. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now officially to be referred to as "Mrs." At least for the next 4 1/2 years or so ;) (because of the degree, not the husband). Although that bulleted list doesn't look like much, it has probably been one of the most eventful years of my entire life. Go 2007!

That's all I can handle for now (I know... pathetic), but I will return with... drumroll... turning in the keys to my last single apartment!

To be continued...

The Weight of Blogging and Lightness of Being

2007-04-21T12:32:00.000-05:00

I am currently struggling with another dilemma of the writer, the solution of which continues to elude me. How should I choose my audience? It would be one thing if I were writing a fictional novel (which still has its personal hazards, as I will explain later, if I remember), but I am writing that beast of modern computer culture known as a blog, a voluntary submission to what used to be one of the most-feared atrocities in my ten-year old life, the breaking of the fragile little lock on my brightly-covered journal, revealing the emotionally-ridden musings of a mind caught up, inextricably, in a tangled forest of growing pains. Worry not, I have since learned my lesson, and have no plans whatsoever of revealing intimate secrets or painfully embarrassing confessions, as many bloggers tend to do. I am a great believer in the maintenance of at least the semblance of privacy.

Thus, I am not laboring over my audience in terms of whom I should reveal my innermost life to, but rather, and somewhat mundanely, whom I should subject to my ramblings on the outer occurrences of my life, in this case, my month-long stay in Argentina. Another reason I am a disappointment to writers everywhere. I can’t even take the most miniscule step of expanding my readership beyond the count of one—my boyfriend, Alex, who in all likelihood is the only one reading this, and already knows most of what it will contain because I’ve already told it to him. Be patient, though, potential audience. As I have said before, I’m still in the warm-up stage of my endeavor to prove myself worthy of the title “writer,” which I now carry with a certain amount of guilt.

The blog is tricky as far as audience, because if I open the floodgates and make it public, everyone and their dog (which is a lot, here in Buenos Aires… see last blog) will be able to read it, and I’ll be proportionately more self-conscious about what I write, which will, inevitably, quickly and tightly shut off the tap until my stream of written consciousness slows to a trickle, and then back to the comforting, albeit guilt-ridden, silent space of nothingness.

On the other hand, choosing my audience implies an actual process of selection, which is what has me in my current dilemma. It means physically sharing the link with those I have chosen, thus handing them the tiny bronze key to the diary, which also implies having to analyze closely the status of my friendship with them, are they blog-worthy and all that, when I myself am not sure I am worthy to be wasting their time with this blog (By the way, isn’t blog a horribly ugly word? If you think of a substitute, please feel absolutely free to suggest it. Until then, forgive me for subjecting you to its use). Or, for example, should I give the link to my parents, who would find it interesting, amusing, maybe even clever (because sons and daughters are often thought very clever by their parents), or should I declare potential self-censorship and deny them access, at quarter-life, with that old teenage terror of parental surveillance. Which all leads later to the anxiety, once I know I have given a few people the link, with which bloggers frantically check for comments, a two-word to four-line affirmation of their efforts, proof absolute that someone out there is reading, when the original dilemma was whether or not I actually wanted anyone to read in the first place.

You see, this is why I do not write. Or maybe why I have volumes of private journals on my shelves, with lines and lines of creativity I refused to share with anyone but myself. And now refuse to share even with myself, evidenced by the last journal entry, which I’m sure must have been dated at least three years ago, referring with guilt to the previous one, probably written two years before that. I should probably also reiterate the nature of my failures as a writer have nothing to do with the actual act of writing words, seeing as how I just turned in to the Dean of the Graduate School a master’s thesis of about 140 pages. Oh, I write. But it doesn’t count, because although it has to do with me in some metaphysical, psychological or cultural way, my thesis has nothing at all to do with me, the daily me (no, let's not get into that whole debate). The creative writer me. That is the precise stage on which I find myself mute, like in that recurring dream I used to have, in which I had finally won a coveted role in a play, only to realize a moment before going out into the spotlights that I could not remember one of my lines, and in fact had never actually learned them at all. I’m a procrastinator, you see, even in my dreams.

Now that I have most likely lost my one potential reader (sorry, Alex) with my complexes, I will launch into it at last. I have exhausted myself with explanations, and now have no energy to plunge into the cold pool (which I HATE doing, ask anyone) and resort to my usual way of first putting in a tentative toe or two. In that spirit, here are some of the things I am up to today in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires:

1. Listening to/watching the rain. Yes, I am here in Buenos Aires, sitting on my bed, as the rain pours steadily down in serene cascades, slicking the sidewalks, which I promise you, at least in this part of town, were made from something like tile, or marble. Walking in the rain around here implies a constant battle with equilibrium and absolute surveillance of the relationship between the soles of your shoes and the surface of the ground.
2. Listening to Beethoven. I am listening to some of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, currently to the Pathétique, on my iPod, while happily I can still hear the pattering and splashing of the rain outside my open window. This work of Beethoven’s never fails to make me emotional, I warn you, and it’s even worse when I’m playing it myself. There is just something about the way the notes and dynamics work together that reaches in and talks to something inside of me I can’t quite place. I just had to choose between the music and this writing exercise, since the current existence in my bedroom of only one outlet, and likewise one converter in my possession, allows me to only plug in either my iPod or my laptop. The iPod, belong to that first generation of models to come out, has a pretty spent battery, and typical only endures about 15-40 minutes of my musical adventures. The laptop doesn’t last long either, mainly because thanks to the electrical discrepancies across international boundaries, it never charges to its full potential in Argentina, and dies at about the same point as the iPod. As you can see, I have chosen the laptop, at least until the iPod battery runs out.
3. As to my choice of Beethoven over say, the collection called Bella Tuscany (since I am in a classical mood) or some Vivaldi, it is simply because my eye was led to it on the thought impulse suggested by repeated references to Beethoven (a different work of Beethoven's, granted, that I do not possess to my knowledge) in the pages of the book I am currently reading, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the pages of which I closed reluctantly in order to write, but also in a vain attempt to impede my usual habit of devouring books in their entirety, leaving me with no material for some pleasant plane-reading on my return to Texas in approximately two weeks. It will be a failure, I know it. I am supposed to be reading Borges, as part of my studies here, and I will probably return to him before much time passes today, but I made the mistake of allowing myself to get ensnared in Kundera’s masterpiece, which on top of it all is in English translation (as I have not yet decided to learn Czech) and I can read with great speed and facility, unlike Spanish, which although I can read quite well, I still labor over and must read more slowly. I may return to Kundera at a later point.
4. Postponing my entrance into the outside world. I am still in my lounging clothes, at 2:19 p.m. It is a luxury I am relishing as part of my “working” vacation, a supposedly no-guilt time to relax, as well as sightsee, after the continuous stress of months of thesis-writing and degree-acquiring. However, as you have no doubt deduced by now, guilt is something I find difficult, at best, to purge from any of my activities, and I still have that nagging feeling that I should go get properly attired and venture out, rain or not, into the city I have been walking faithfully for three weeks.
5. Finally, deciding whether or not to write more verbal photographs. My plan was to offer you at least one or two more like the one yesterday about the pooches, but I fear I have overstayed my welcome for one writing excursion, and fear that I will never be read again if I don’t somehow curb the length of my ramblings, held back so long by the fear of writing.

And so, I leave you for now, and I will go outside, at least into the hallway, then probably into the world outside, with a tentative promise to return to you with some delightful written photographs (and maybe even some visual ones, as a tantalizing treat) in a later entry.
Hasta luego!

P.S. As you see, I actually did forget to expand on the hazards of writing the fictional novel, as I said in the first paragraph, as well as about Kundera, not five paragraphs ago. That, also, will have to wait.

My big introduction, errrr... confession

2007-04-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

I really must be the worst writer in the history of all writers. Why, you ask? One very simple reason: I DON’T WRITE. For some reason, at times best suited for wild outpourings of creativity, I can’t bring myself to write about it. It’s like I feel it will be spoiled if I start writing about it. At those times, priceless moments I should take down on paper, I only want to take it in, let it seep into my system, enjoy everything about it without having to verbalize or record it. Maybe I shouldn’t even call myself a writer. I get great ideas all the time for things I should write, or maybe I should say that “someone” should write, but I rarely, if ever, sit down and do it. This is my big confession. What could be worse than a writer who confesses that she doesn’t write? Yes, I realize I’m writing right now, but it’s out of sheer cathartic impulse, driven by the guilt of my creative failures. I have seen so many amazing things, been told countless stories that will never be repeated, filed away idea after idea, all lost to the black hole in my mind labeled “Well of Creativity.” Oh, trust me, things go in. But they never come out.

Take my current situation, for instance. I am in my third week of five living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I have had a great time of it here, with more experiences worthy of recounting than I can count, especially since I didn’t write them down. Any normal person of my creative credentials would at the very least write in a journal, or make a blog, SOMETHING. But I just sit there (or stand, or walk by) speechless, sometimes thinking “there’s no way I’ll forget about this” or “wow, I should really write a story about this.” Ah, something else to throw in the well. The purpose of this writing exercise is to somehow warm up into recording at least some of my experiences in Bs.As. before they all disappear, sucked mercilessly into the inner reaches of my mind (where nothing reaches, least of all my creative impulse). I’m very good at critiquing other people’s writing, books and such (if I do say so myself) and have gotten compliments on my reviews, literary essays, etc. And boy, do I appreciate good writing. I even think I’m a fairly good “writer” myself—when I write, that is.

Yet I keep procrastinating, even now, in a effort to delay the icy plunge into the cold pool of words, images and memories I must somehow keep myself afloat in, force myself to stay in, until the point of comfort (which is also the point of numbness, no? Ah, an accidental Pink Floyd reference. Which reminds me of something really funny. The son of the family in whose apartment I am renting a room, 18 years old and lover of American rock-and-roll, circa 1970/80ish, has been walking around all day singing my favorite Pink Floyd song, “Wish You Were Here,” but in that way you do it when you have headphones on or the music is really loud, and you don’t know the words, so you just say every fifth one you know and mumble or make the sounds of the rest—but he does it all by himself, in complete silence, as if he were actually singing it! I love it, he’s a very plucky fellow. Right in front of us, too. You should really have been there. But not at the other times, when every time he gets home he turns on Aerosmith full blast for at least an hour. Every time. Seriously. I tried to talk to him about music today, with Pink Floyd as a starting point. But apparently the music that is wildly popular here is the old school music in the U.S. For 18-year old boys anyway. He asked if I went to concerts, to which I proudly replied in complete coolness confidence, “Oh, I’ve been to lots of concerts, I used to go all the time.” He asked me to name some, so I did… got nothing. He asks if I’ve been to see Guns ‘n’ Roses. No, I say. Bon Jovi? Um, I have a record… The Rolling Stones. Give me a break, kid, those tickets are pricey. How come? Because they are rock ‘n’ roll legends, silly. Legends as in they have been around FOR A REALLY LONG TIME. Rage Against the Machine? Ah, that I can relate to. But sadly, I have the unused ticket in a drawer, because some jerk who was supposed to drive us, didn’t. Kid walks away. I walk to my bedroom, no longer confident in my coolness, defeated by a list of random bands from 20+ years ago.

Where was I? Oh, right…). So I figured I just need a warm-up, a running start, and the torrents of words will come pouring, spitting out of my fingertips in torrents, slipping and sliding all over the keyboard (but not actually getting wet, since it’s a borrowed laptop) and splashing joyfully over the blindingly white surface of my Microsoft Word document. By the way, don’t you find the Word interface creatively deadening? I hadn’t noticed it much before (since I don’t write), but it doesn’t quite cut it like the handwritten journaling in a leather-bound book, pen scratching out lines in a maddening scrawl to keep up with my thoughts. Which is why I am using the computer. My pen usually can’t keep up with my thoughts, and since the point of doing this is that I’m losing them, why would… oh, nevermind. I do so love to procrastinate. Ask anyone.

One thing I do like is taking photographs of fun things I see, so I’ll start with that. Written photographs, meeting the minimal requirement of at least recording certain events or occurrences that stand out.

Photograph 1: DOGS IN THE PARK
I am starting to think there are more dogs here than people. Or at least a nearly equal amount. They are everywhere. One of the more popular professions for 20-somethings appears to be dog-walking, which to me, looks terrifying. One solitary person holding tightly to the leashes of at least eight dogs, most of them medium size to extremely large. They are pretty docile, following their walker in a pack, waiting patiently at the stoplights. I don’t understanding this strange phenomenon of canine behavior. I do find amusing that in every group I’ve seen, the smaller dogs stay in the middle of the pack. My guess is that they feel protected when the big dogs are on the outer edge. Sometimes you can’t even see the little dogs, which is probably how they like it. I really started noticing the dog phenomenon on my walk to class one day (I walk almost everywhere here, distances I’d scoff at sitting in my San Antonio apartment). My usual route takes me past a little wooded park, of which there are many in Buenos Aires. The second time I walked by, I stopped in my tracks and stared. There, in a circular area marked off by a railing around its circumference, kind of like the ring in a circus, were dozens of dogs. At least thirty, probably more. It was like a big dog party, like a giant play date for every dog within a five-mile radius (although now I know there are more than likely 200 dogs in a five-mile radius here). The majority were tethered in some way to the railing, walking around, socializing, resting, licking themselves, chatting about the weather, doing their business, you know, dog stuff. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was in a rush, so I quickly kept walking, craning my neck to keep looking at the dogs. A few days later I went that route again with my camera, and there were dogs there again, but not as many. I took a picture anyway. I’ve walked by at other times, and there is no one there. Maybe there is a dog-walkers association and they have a set meeting-time in the morning, at that particular park. Quite a sight, I have to say. I am not quite sure whether I should add the actual photograph. Probably not. That will be an excuse not to verbalize. Must not enable myself.

Alas, weariness overtakes me, due to the overwhelming strain of actually writing words. My words. Tangibly. Enjoy, at least with the knowledge of the rarity of the occasion. Adieu!