Sea swells, Struck bells

Voice for a Steamy Summer Night

2010-06-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Day's long done, but there's still heat in the air. The trees are full of sweetness and fireflies. Summer is at its best when the sun's gone down.

Oil Spots

2010-06-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

Photo of oil in Orange Beach, Alabama from the Guardian UK.

Haiku for a Breezy Evening

2010-06-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

Turning leaves sigh -
So much memory hushed
inside slim volumes.

The Right Use of Books

2010-06-04T15:05:00.001-07:00

I was thinking today that my previous post was a bit glib and perpetuated an inaccurate stereotype of Stoic philosophy - exactly what Epictetus would have frowned upon. Stoicism is not inherently dour, joyless, or immature, as my comparison to a kid might have implied. So, I feel inclined to atone by including a few excerpts from Sharon Lebell's interpretation of Enchiridion. (The merit of an interpreted text is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.)

On the right use of books:
"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." (p.97)

"Try to be as kind to yourself as possible. Do not measure yourself against others or even against your ideal self. Human betterment is a gradual two-steps-forward, one-step-back effort. Forgive others for their misdeeds over and over again. This gesture fosters inner ease. Forgive yourself over and over and over again. Then try to do better next time." (p.99)

"How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer." (p.79)

"Give your best and always be kind." (p.113)

Reading : The Art of Living : The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

2010-06-03T17:13:00.001-07:00

by Epictetus, as interpreted by Sharon Lebell

"First, say to yourself what you would be; then do what you have to do."

Epictetus seems, from this pared down version of his Enchiridion, to have been as eminently rational as you would expect a Stoic to be. Yet, his collected wisdom for living a happy, purposeful existence is surprisingly humane and applicable to contemporary life without the patronizing tone or kitchy language of current self-management manuals. He's not your buddy, he's an ancient philosopher. His has some advice. Now get to work.

I disagree on a few points, of course, because I'm an emotional, artsy type and stoicism, while having many useful concepts, has always seemed like the scratched-up kid avoiding the alcohol swab. "But it will hurt!" Think of all the things being missed for the sake of avoiding pain. For instance, I would rather be unhappy and unbalanced from time to time than live without desire, anticipation, and passion. I think vulgarity is good for the spirit in nice, healthy doses. If that makes me a hedonist and mediocre, so be it. Actually, come to think of it, I dislike being considered mediocre if I don't follow the stoic path. And I have never, will never, appreciate any precept that insists I dispense with friends who aren't pursuing the same "virtuous" path. Just can't swing that one. Sorry.

Having said all that, there is great value in Epictetus' thoughts and in his insistence that a good life entails seeking the best version of yourself and that progress, not perfection, is the goal. It's also a reminder that yes, Greek and Roman authors often said it first, sometimes said it better, and still deserve to be read.

John and Margaret McGarvey

2010-05-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

The history of my family makes me thankful every time. I think that's why I search for it. To remember in gratitude.

My great-great-great grandparents, John and Margaret McGarvey, counted in the 1860 census as residents of Ward 1 in Washington, D.C.

They crossed the Atlantic from Ireland sometime before 1856, maybe, though not certainly, from Clondavaddog Parish on the Fanad Peninsula in County Donegal. They were born into the first major crop failures in Co. Donegal and survived the Great Famine only to leave as the worst of the hunger waned. I've been told they came in at Baltimore, but haven't yet seen the records. Margaret was a widow in 1870, but was still able to care for her rheumatic older sister, Jane, and send all four of her children to school. She lied about her and her sister's age (they are 42 and 52 in 1870 and 40 and 50 in 1880,) but not her childrens'. By 1880, they'd lost or sold the grocery (which my family swears was really a bar) and her daughter, Mary, was a servant. Her teenage sons, John and Patrick, worked at a brewery and drove a cart, respectively. Her youngest, Rosie, was still at home. They lived at 264 K St. NW in D.C. which is now the flattened expanse of an overpass spanning highway 395.

Interview with Arcade Fire

2010-05-27T18:26:00.001-07:00

They never cease to write interesting, compelling music.

Maine

2010-05-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Otter Cliffs, Acadia National Park.

Stream behind the house, Corinth.

Down the road, field with wild rhubarb and maple tap line, Corinth.

Inside the bridge, Guilford.

Low's Bridge, Guilford.

Acadia National Park, edge of Cadillac Mountain to the right.

A Poem: The First in a Long While

2010-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Oi. I'm so rusty I'm practically molting red dust. Please excuse.

-

"Bleaching"

I remember being small.
Long flat feet at the end of spinning limbs
slapping the film of water
at the far reach of the waves.

I would sift, through sharp beach grass and bird bones,
crushed crab shells and hunting ants,
for the perfect interior coil of a whelk,
an arc of lighting in the sand.

It was the shape, not the completeness, that counted.

I would rinse my mouth with sea water,
suck brine from the end of my braid,
so each sip from the bottle was sweet.
A simple experiment with an expected surprise,
transfiguration in a plastic vessel.

I knew it was the sea that did the changing.
The sweetness, no alchemy, but response.

Somewhere
(in the dunes?)
I've forgotten being small.
Left off the hunt
for that twist of shell
beneath bitter grass
and the shining sweet burst
beyond the mouthful of salt.

Curs in the Weeds

2010-04-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

by Horse Feathers

Billy Goat Trail, Maryland

2010-04-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

Reading : In Defense of Food

2010-04-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

by Michael Pollan

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" (p.1)

In Defense of Food is an interesting and thoughtful examination of nutritionism's quest to refine the western diet. It makes the case for unprocessed food, the collective wisdom of traditional diets, and the sensory and social pleasure we should have, but have now lost, in eating. At times only mildly rigorous, the book still makes an excellent case for examining our atrophied relationship with our food. It certainly motivated a change in my own habits.

Pollan's message might best be summed up by a quote from Wendell Berry included in the final chapter:

"Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend." (p. 196)

Night Music

2010-04-17T16:56:00.000-07:00

I love the birds that sing me into the evening. The persistent ones that have more to say, apparently, than the day will allow. They sound stubborn. And grateful.

Reading: The Plague

2010-04-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

by Albert Camus

I could kick myself for preconceived notions. I’ve avoided Camus until now because I’d been told his writing was cold and hopeless and (that dreaded word) existential; a label, it turns out, the author vehemently opposed.

From The Plague:

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.” (p. 231)

There’s light enough in that quote, I think, to beat back the absolute bleakness that’s been stamped on Camus’ works. Much of his world-view or philosophy (or whatever you choose to call it) is bleak; an absurd world doesn’t lend itself to rosy pictures. But popular depiction seems to have missed the tempering phrases like “wonder of a loving heart.” Love in an absurd world. That sounds wonderfully hopeful to me.

A Little D.C. Pride

2010-03-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Washington has a lot of problems; poverty, lack of representation, crime, and corruption are only a few. But lately there have been some headlines that made me proud to be an aspiring Washingtonian.

1. First Gay Marriages in District Performed
2. Woman Named Football Coach
3. D.C. Promotes Female Condom

None of these things would ever happen in Utah. Especially #3. "Hey, honey, look what I got when I went to the salon to have my new Bumpit installed."

Monday just got so much better.

2010-03-12T21:00:00.001-08:00

The KC crew and I are going to see Janelle Monae on Monday night. There will be dancing. There will be spirits. There may or may not be any work accomplished the next day.

I wondered today...

2010-03-05T20:13:00.001-08:00

...if it's possible to have an Absurdist's mind and a Transcendentalist's heart.

And then I realized I wasn't sure if it meant anything, but somehow, it felt like a good question.

"Autumn Story" by Firekites

2010-02-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

Shamelessly borrowed from Fairfield.

Reading : Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan

2010-02-10T19:07:00.000-08:00

by Paul Celan
translated by John Felstiner

"Psalm"

No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one incants our dust.
No one.

Blessed art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.

A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One's-Rose.

With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our corona red
from the purpleword we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

Reading : Holding On to the Air

2010-02-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

by Suzanne Farrell

It’s odd to read the autobiography of someone you work with. I feel disinclined to review or even comment. Autobiography is already difficult for me to critique because the story itself, rather than the way it’s told, holds so much weight, but it becomes nearly impossible when the author knows your name and has regular conversations about the antics of her poodle.

So, all I will say, all I can really bring myself to say, is this: Suzanne Farrell has had an astonishing life. Her autobiography is, self-admittedly, a love letter to her mentor and soul mate, George Balanchine, but it's also a love letter to dance and expression. Artists of all backgrounds will appreciate it as a testament to risk, passion, and the necessity of finding a balance between collaboration and independence.

A young Suzanne Farrell rehearsing with George Balanchine.

DC Snow Storm

2010-02-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

My backyard in Alexandria. Why do I feel more at home in a world that looks (and sounds and smells) like this? Too much Robert Frost, maybe?

Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"

2010-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

For accepting the adventure to come.

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Bourbon Balls : Indulgence with a Kick

2009-12-23T17:03:00.000-08:00

Only for the sake of Christmas would I mix large amounts of sugar with my alcohol. Bourbon balls are, for related stories I will not retell here (you're welcome dear cousin,) one of my favorite holiday traditions.

Makes about 42

-1/3 cup of your preferred bourbon (I use Jim Beam Black Label - it's good, but not so top shelf you'll feel guilty using it in a dessert.)

-2 tablespoons light corn syrup

-2 tablespoons cocoa

-1 1/2 cups 10xxx powdered sugar

-2 1/2 cups finely crushed vanilla wafers (1 12 oz box)

-1 cup finely chopped walnuts

1. Have all ingredients ready. Dough will harden quickly.
2. Combine bourbon and corn syrup and mix well.
3. In large bowl, combine cocoa and 1 c. powdered sugar. Stir in bourbon mixture, then mix in vanilla wafers and nuts. I always add more bourbon a little at a time to keep the dough from crumbling.
4. Roll into walnut-sized balls and dust with remaining sugar.
5. Store in air tight container for 2 weeks to intensify flavor. (I've never actually made it that long. I think my record is two hours.)

An Ode to Utah

2009-12-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you just know a place doesn’t suit you. I’ve been aware, since first arriving, that despite family, good friends, and a staggeringly beautiful landscape, I would need to find my way out of Utah… and fast. A case in point for your amusement: all four male doctors I have spoken to in this state have, without any sort of prompting, mentioned how many children I’ll be having. Including my oral surgeon. In fact, I was arguing with him on the subject as I drifted off into my IV induced stupor.

Surgeon: “You’ll need to get used to IV’s for when you have those ten kids.”
Me: “Ten?! I don’t even know if I want one.”
Surgeon: “Oh, you’ll have at least four.”
Me: “I don’t think so.”
Surgeon: “Sure you will.”
Me: “No. There are far too many people already. The planet is completely overpopulated and there aren’t enough resources to… and…”

~

I’ve always been where I needed to be. Not because I believe in destiny or providence (I certainly do not,) but because I've tried to make the most of everywhere I’ve lived. Like love and wonder, learning from the place you find yourself in sometimes requires acts of will. So, I can’t say Utah hasn’t been good for me because I know more about myself for having lived here. I have, more often than not, truly enjoyed myself, but I’m ready to see if DC is the place that finally suits me.

Sequence 5

2009-11-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

I used the same Whitman recording from the Levi's ad (see last post) on my first sound project two years ago. It uses live recordings of a Moroccan adhan, Whitman's "America," William Faulkner's Nobel address and deconstructed audio from Brian Eno's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts Project and Craig Armstrong's "Sunrise." I've since made much better pieces for productions, but I don't think it was a bad start.

It was made when I was weary of the dehumanization and fear of the political atmosphere. I needed a reminder that joy and compassion, which require a courage of their own, are truly traditions worth fighting for.

Is this blasphemy?

2009-11-28T00:36:00.000-08:00

I'm torn. A beautiful wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman's voice is being used to sell merchandise, but I can't help loving the art direction.

Reading : Wilderness and the American Mind

2009-11-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

by Roderick Nash

I just survived a nearly four hundred-page marathon on the history of wilderness philosophy in America. Published in 1967, Wilderness and the American Mind is no longer exhaustive, but still covers a vast amount of intellectual territory. It includes the contributions of individuals (Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, Marshall,) and intellectual, spiritual, and artistic movements (Romanticism, Deism, Transcendentalism, Darwinism) to the shifts in wilderness’s role from adversary to divine paradise and commodity in American thought.

I found the final chapter’s discussion of the exportation of the wilderness experience in colonial Africa particularly interesting in light of an article I read a few months ago on the impact of western land management practices on East Africa’s Maasai rangelands. [“Top-Down Solutions: Looking Up from East Africa’s Rangelands,” Environment Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009.] Granted, there’s a big difference between the preservation of colonial parks (designed to exclude native hunting) and the active use of rangelands, but in both circumstances the application of western models have had lasting effects on the health of the local environment and culture.

Jew Nose to Jew Nose with Jason Schwartzman and Jonathan Ames

2009-11-20T17:04:00.000-08:00

An friend of mine interviewed Jason Schwartzman and Jonathan Ames for Heeb Magazine. Yay, Lauren!

Reading : The Woman in the Dunes

2009-10-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

by Kobo Abe

In place of a long-winded examination of my conflicted opinion of existentialism, I instead offer this: Kobo Abe hides a grain of warmth in the bleakness of his novel and somehow manages to give lushness to desperation.

From p. 160

"He sat down on the shovel and lit a cigarette. The flame caught at last with the third match. His fatigue spread out into a sluggish circle, like India ink dropped in water - it was a jellyfish, a scent bag, a diagram of an atomic nucleus. Some night bird had found a field mouse and was calling to its mate with a weird cry. An uneasy dog bayed deeply. High in the night sky there was a continuous, discordant sound of wind blowing at a different velocity. And on the ground the wind was a knife continually shaving off thin layers of sand. He wiped away the perspiration, blew his nose with his fingers, and brushed the sand from his head. The ripples of sand at his feet suddenly looked like the motionless crests of waves.

Supposing they were sound waves, what kind of music would they give? he wondered. Maybe even a human being could sing such a song... if tongs were driven into his nose and slimy blood stopped up his ears... if his teeth were broken one by one with hammer blows, and splinters jammed into his urethra... if a vulva were cut away and sewn onto his eyelids. It might resemble cruelty, and then again it might be a little different. Suddenly his eyes soared upward like a bird, and felt as if he were looking down on himself. Certainly he must be the strangest of all... he who was musing on the strangeness of things here."

Bonneville Salt Flats, Great Salt Lake Desert

2009-10-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Reading : Smilla's Sense of Snow

2009-10-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

by Peter Høeg
a
Smilla is a navigator, a scientist, and a reader of snow. She lives in Copenhagen as an outsider, the daughter of a Greenlandic Inuit and a wealthy Danish anesthesiologist. Her life and the coldness with which she regards the world are rooted in Denmark’s colonization of Greenland. Yet, despite her cynicism and self-admitted faithlessness, Smilla believes in science and that “deep inside us is geometry” and the knowledge of perfection. Of the body she says:

“The rib bones are the closed ellipses of the planets, with their focus on the sternum, the breastbone, the white center of the photograph. The lungs are the grey shadows of the Milky Way against the black leaden shield of space. The heart’s dark contour is the cloud of ashes from the burned out sun. The intestines’ hazy hyperboles are the disconnected asteroids, the vagabonds of space, the scattered cosmic dust. […] In the technical reduction of photon photography it’s more apparent than ever that the human being is a universe, a solar system seen from another galaxy.” (p.239)

Smilla's Sense of Snow is as much an ode to science as it is a censure of its darker side. It discusses the parallel between science’s collusion with colonization and its capitalistic corruption in the 90’s . Yet, it would be a terrible reduction to define such a deeply philosophical and beautifully written mystery solely as an indictment. Ultimately, it explores the endlessness of self-knowledge and what happens when a fierce intellect, fighting tooth and nail for understanding, realizes that some things, sometimes the most important things, are unknowable. That there is no answer and “there will be no resolution.”

Float

2009-10-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

Cold, grey, snowless Sundays make me feel so much older than I am.

Trapper's Loop

2009-10-03T16:50:00.000-07:00

Reading : The Alhambra

2009-09-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

By Washington Irving

Wonderfully atmospheric and charming. Historically dubious. Good with hot tea.

On a side note, Mr. Irving was responsible for perpetuating the widely taught myth that Europeans believed the Earth flat before Columbus reached the Americas. Then again, he also wrote "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." I'd call it a draw.

Fitz and the Tantrums

2009-09-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

Every once and a while you just crave fun music. The kind that makes you want to dance around the kitchen waving utensils, making a general fool of yourself. I was lucky enough to see these guys when they opened for Flogging Molly last night in SLC. "Neo-soul" and "retro-pop" aren't labels you'd expect to hear attached to a band opening for FM, but Fitz and the Tantrums had enough energy (way under-represented in the video) to get the whole club dancing from their first song. The video claims to be live and I believe it... they sounded fantastic.

Grand Teton National Park

2009-09-22T09:42:00.001-07:00

That's right, I give myself homework.

2009-09-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of being a graduate is that I can set my own homework assignments. A few friends have suggested said perk should be no homework assignments, but they’ve learned to just pat me on the head fondly and change the subject.

Several of these self-assignments are ongoing and some have failed (I’ll get you yet, Thomas Hobbes!) but by far the most difficult has been trying to push through a pile of books that no longer hold my interest. Looking at my to-read shelf is like reading tree rings. Each book marks a time when my fancy or my taste in literature was different. The logical course of action would be to simply turn them in at the used bookstore and be done with it, but I’ve lugged some of these books for 8+ years and at this point it would feel like giving up.

Nonetheless, I can’t help feeling that I’m sitting down to lunch with a vague acquaintance I haven’t spoken to in ages. It’s awkward and I can’t say I really care beyond the sentiment of the action. Sometimes I’m surprised and we get on quite well (Into Thin Air). In other cases, the meeting is concluded with a quick handshake and I make a beeline for the exit (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).

I admit part of my motivation is my own distaste for unfinished things (I was never really able to juggle books,) but I like to think I’m saving future acquisitions from my fickle attention span. I want to read books when they’re not an assignment, but a pleasure, and when the desire to get through them and onto other things no longer overwhelms whatever insight they have to offer.

So, here’s to getting that to-read pile down to 1.

Birds on the Wires

2009-09-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

It's nice to be reminded that there's music in the universe. We may have a limited understanding of the breadth and tangle of existence, but we can see patterns surfacing from the randomness like a whale breaking water. It's a partnership, a duet, between nature and our perception. The music is both inherent and created. It's there to be looked for.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Antelope Island

2009-08-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

In the Loop

2009-07-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

Profane British political farce? Yes, please. Also, kudos for giving a nod to the classic Dr. Strangelove trailer.

Summer Reading : The Complete Stories

2009-06-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

by Flannery O'Connor

550 pages of Flannery O’Connor can really rip you up.

Her stories have the peculiar ability to make everything seem capable of instantaneous compression and expansion, as if you were reading with a pair of spinning binoculars. Characters are trapped by the violence of belief, fearing decay even as they watch things fall apart. They trample one another. They break themselves. They disintegrate under the weight of inevitable judgment descending from a God as red as Georgia clay or they shrivel from racism, pragmatism, or a lack of wonder. Nearly all of them find epiphany in catastrophe. They are shot, burned, gored, crushed, or made destitute for one astonishing moment of convergence.

For my part, I hope insight arrives more gently. I hope I pleasantly surprise it, when it sidles up to my door, and it only has to tap me on the shoulder.

Day 3 - 5 : Louisville, KY - Ogden, UT

2009-06-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

I actually arrived two weeks ago, but I couldn't leave my catalogue of the trip unfinished. We passed through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. It's a sorry summary, to be sure, but I can't begin to write the spirit of that trip. It's breadth is equal to the distance covered.

I simply needed a bookend.

Day 2 : Louisville, KY

2009-06-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Visit with a very dear friend. Thunderstorms. Thai food. Family. Firefly watching. Wishing backward and forward.

Day 1 : Gulf Breeze, FL - Louisville, KY

2009-06-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

This is our old, familiar hurricane escape route (because when my family goes inland, we really go inland.) Anytime Jim Cantore popped up within a one hundred mile radius of the panhandle, we’d caravan north and squeeze eleven people, five dogs, and four cats into my uncle’s little cottage in the suburbs. Highlights include the Cantonment International Paper Factory, the full scale model of the Saturn 5 Rocket on I-65 in Huntsville, Nashville’s invigorating rush hour traffic, and the Boobie Bungalow at mile marker 7 in Tennessee (just south of the Jack Daniels Distillery and the David Crockett Museum.)

Summer Reading : Living by Fiction

2009-06-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

by Annie Dillard

As always, beautiful exercises for the scientific, artistic, and philosophical territories of my brain. Here is one of many interesting ruminations on the function of art:

"The task, then, of all the arts in each century is to rescue the clichés, not to turn from them, and to dedicate themselves each new decade to more comprehensive forms of beauty and understanding. It is to expand those arts' purviews, to expand the arc of the comprehended world, and not to restrict any vision according to the demands for purity set by theory. Purity of practice guarantees that the artist will not err, and that superficial critics will not find a flaw in the work, and that nothing has been ventured. Within the bare pantry of purity, stocked solely with what the mind knows to be essential, symbol, which is itself material and requires a chaotic wealth of materials, can neither grow nor flourish. Symbols arise from material messes." (p. 170)

Long Day

2009-05-31T12:45:00.000-07:00

Many endings today. All of them difficult. All of them good for me.

5.31 - 6.14

2009-05-30T13:37:00.001-07:00

My Childhood Playground

2009-05-23T23:52:00.001-07:00

Washington Oaks, Flagler Beach

Summer Reading : Kitchen Confidential

2009-05-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

by Anthony Bourdain

I admit my reasons for reading Kitchen Confidential were a little shallow and had nothing to do with an interest in professional chefdom. What can I say? I have a bit of a crush on Anthony Bourdain. He’s a sarcastic, Dead Boys listening, cooking, traveling, badass. That’s all there is to it. It certainly wasn't Marquez, but it was fun, even informative (apparently, you should never eat fish on Mondays or brunch specials... ever) and I was pleasantly surprised to find his book well written and that his sharp, curmudgeonly personality was as evident and uncensored on the page as on his television show. His gritty descriptions of kitchen life were engaging and oddly familiar. I imagine line cooks and theatre technicians, if assembled at an appropriately grungy pub, would be able to commiserate… and have a hell of a good time.

Summer Reading : Love in the Time of Cholera

2009-05-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

by Gabriel García Márquez

I feel, to be honest, as if I’ve been gratefully duped. It’s like the poppy field scene in The Wizard of Oz… an intoxicating dream just on the edge of doom. I'm still not sure how he did it. How he wrote an unlikable, sometimes frightening protagonist against the backdrop of a decaying, disease-ridden, war-torn, country (with meditations on unrequited love, aging, suffering, disappointment, and death) and made it so breathtakingly luminous. And it’s not luminous despite all of that. The light doesn’t shine through the muck. It radiates from it, sour and glowing, like a phosphorescent sea.

Márquez's characters are paradoxically mythic and real; the owners of complicated hearts racked by a fairytale framework. It's only right to be unbalanced by love, but Ariza, with his obsessive passion, is another monster altogether. There is something grotesque about his romance and indeed, there is something grotesque about his world. It smells of camellias and rotting fish. The novel's beauty, like its hot air balloon, is lofted by currents of ugliness and is ultimately astounding.

Road trip? Family? Yes, please.

2009-05-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

I am continually surprised by the unassuming things that converge into perfect, radiant knots of happiness. Those things that, in falling together, make my bones hum with good will toward the world. It’s a sneaky kind of joy. It bursts from a bush behind you and rushes by like a flock of birds.

On Saturday, I woke in the dark for a road trip to see my cousin graduate. I got on an empty highway when the sky was just barely warming pink, the mist still holding in the pastures. Driving too fast with the damp, spicy Florida morning blowing through my window and mixing with McDonald’s coffee fumes. “American Pie” blasting on the radio. All familiar and well-loved. Perfect.

Part of that joy was being on my way to see family. I made it to the ceremony by the skin of my teeth, thanks to Tallahassee traffic. Punctuality in that god-forsaken city always involves running… in a dress… down a hill, except this time I had the foresight to make the dash in flip-flops and carry my heels in hand. Graduation was quick and my cousin was lovely, as always. The clan and my cousin’s friends and their families returned to the apartment for a cookout complete with open doors, beer, Irish music, Derby Day coverage, and a veggie burger or two. This was followed, of course, by a late afternoon siesta and then dinner at a Thai restaurant. My cousin’s branch of the family, despite being Scotch-Irish, celebrates major events with Thai food. Between us, we must have ordered half the menu, but my particular choice was spicy chicken peanut curry and plum wine. Delicious. Maureen and I toasted our graduations and our family with an excellent bottle of champagne and Cuban cigars, courtesy of my mother and her boyfriend.

All in all, one of the best days I’ve had in a very long while.

Of Flu and Family Epics

2009-04-28T10:25:00.001-07:00

There's nothing like the threat of [insert animal] flu to remind me how bad journalism can be. The 24-hour news networks are practically piddling on the floor in excited hysterics. For goodness sake, like they need to create something to be worried about. And then, there are pieces like this one from a Canadian news service that includes the following quote:

"Scott says the virus is the same type as the 1918 strain."

Hold on. What? This same 'expert' goes on to say:

"I'm not a superstition guy, but it's utterly weird." The epidemiology, he says, "for sure matches up with something you really want to worry about."

Really? C'mon guys. The 1918 flu pandemic? I think it's just a bit early for that. Awareness, yes. Alarm, no.

Actually, the 1918 flu prompted one of the my best family stories. My great-grandmother, Emma, a force of nature with a flair for the epic, drove, alone, when cars still looked like this...

...with her two toddlers from Brooklyn to Anniston, Alabama where her husband, a doctor in the navy, was stationed. I can't imagine what people must have thought of the crazy Yankee lady, by all accounts impeccably dressed, puttering down a dirt road in the Alabama boondocks. It was hare-brained, eccentric, and prescient. Meaning it was perfectly in keeping with family tradition. Pack your bags children, we're going for an adventure.

Self-Project

2009-04-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I like least about summer in the South is its tendency to make everything stop working. My car, my air conditioning, occasionally my brain, and now apparently my wifi… all have measured the heat and humidity, registered a solid “I prefer not to,” and promptly wandered off to aestivate. So here I sit in the closest café, which doubles as a Ben & Jerry’s, all for the sake of being connected and because I don’t feel like braving rush hour traffic for the good coffee shop downtown. I’m going to smell like Chunky Monkey for hours.
Apparently my technology didn’t get the memo that I mean this, my last official summer, to be a productive one. I’ll finally be able to undo all the damage done to my body over two semesters worth of rehearsal and stop consuming enough caffeine and sugar to power a small island nation. I’ll be able to *gasp* read for fun. Brush up on two languages and, hopefully, start learning a new one. Pick up the bass that’s been sitting in the corner of my room for months. And, oh yeah, try to figure out what comes next.

The Bachelor and the Bride

2009-04-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

And Expressionism? This reminds me so much of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Extra bonus points for having one of my favorite sets of lyrics:

Hear the corn crakes and the deer hooves
and the sleet rain on the slate roof.

Summer sliding in.

2009-04-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

College is over. For a good while, probably. I'm sitting at my desk, writing notes to a couple of people who are important to me. Feeling thankful, marrow deep. The windows are cracked to a sweet breeze from the woods, I have a nice, heavy glass with a little bourbon, and I'm listening to this man's growl.

Oh, yes. All this is good.

Four-Year-Old Poem / Reminder

2009-04-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

Graduation has made me even more sentimental than normal (yikes!), so I've decided to let my very thoughtful and earnest, but altogether much too serious teenage self tap me on the shoulder. I'm not sure I enjoy meeting past versions of myself. I'm terribly fond of her, but I'm pretty sure she's judging me. And that's just rude.

In much the same way, I appreciate this poem for what it was, but it makes me uncomfortable. I am very glad I am here and no longer there.

Sestina

I used to fold
up all your clothes for you
in piles; sticking and popping with static, smoky
warm and still holding heat in every stitch.
A simple thing to do in the deep
of a weekend morning before it slides away.

It was less a chore and more a way
to fidget, to do, to make a pile of folds.
A habit of consideration, to say, deep
down, I did something, and for me, you
would mow, and clean, and stitch
a pillow all smoky.

And then we'd sit, porch-sit, a smoky
ring around us and a crossword puzzle worn away
from erasing and you'd say I was the hanging stitch.
The "all that's left," the curve at the edge of the fold
to keep you
from crawling, from falling in too deep.

And mine, they ended up thrown deep
in a drawer, slick-shined and smoky
in the grain from smelling so much of you.
But I was set away.
So close, so often, but still away. Folded
far from your fraying, your inward stitching.

There was the heft, the feel of cotton stitching,
lattice piled and pulled, thousands deep
in the fold
to catch the smell of you, before your smoky
self could drift forever away.
It was nearly all I knew of you.

Nearly. But there were other parts of you,
seams we'd stitched.
Little red helicopters launched away,
whirring. Telescopes in the deep
and woods-walking, tromping through smoky
evenings to find our likeness in the folding.

So, then I'll fold your clothes up after you,
each smoky thread, each aching stitch,
and tuck them deep away.

Beth Cavener Stichter

2009-03-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

Empire of Dust

Full exhibit.

Here's to crossing ponds.

2009-03-02T14:05:00.001-08:00