A Long Long Way

Just finished Sebastian Barry's A long Long Way. I'm left wanting on some aspects, but Barry's prose is searingly beautiful.

"Meanwhile, the roadsides burgeoned up and grew almost noisy with memory-laden colours. The arrogant sun had touched them and the casual rain had done the rest, leaving these million marks of respect on the neglected edges of fields and paths and roads. Even in fields, where most likely some calamity had stolen away the tillers, great waves and plethoras of field flowers appeared, army after army of yellow heads, golden heads and blue, red and burning green. It was like a sudden paradise."

Three Christs of Ypsilanti

Too intriguing, too fantastic, and all too human, Three Christs of Ypsilanti is a case study stemming from a 1960s psychology experiment that brought together three schizophrenia patients who believed themselves to be Christ. Although much of the text recounts the incoherent ramblings of madmen, there is at the heart of the book a piercing question of identity asking how and why we construct our own notions of ourselves.


With its keenness for emotional details and Rokeach's surprising literary sensibilities, Three Christs reads less like a scientific case study (which it is) and more like a literary account of insanity (that of the three Christs) and folly (that of Rokeach). Beyond this rather unethical and questionable experiment comes a resounding declaration of humanity in all its rationality and madness.

Voices

"Sympathy is thus a function of memory: to sympathise is to assimilate the experience of the other into one’s own experience and to remember it." - Yukai Li (because)

Appallingly narrow

"She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm."

E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

In response to a circulating Facebook petition regarding Breast Cancer Awareness

I got an invite to a Facebook event today. It was for a campaign to raise awareness for breast cancer. As admirable as its intent was, I felt it was misguided in its slacktivism. I had written a response earlier to similar campaign (see here), but here's another.

The information page read:

We are playing a game. Someone proposed that we GIRLS do something special on Facebook to help with Breast Cancer Awareness. Its easy, and Id like you to join us to help it spread. Last year it was... ...about writing the color of the bra that your were wearing in your Fb status and it left men wondering for days why the girls had random colors as their status. This year it has to do with your relationship status. You will where you are, by posting one of the codes below. Remember DO NOT REPLY,JUST POST IN YOUR STATUS TO CONFUSE THE GUYS. Then invite all your female friends to join this event

Given how devastating breast cancer is for women, I am very uncomfortable of playing a "game" in its namesake, even if it purports to dubiously "raise awareness." It is also distressing to me to see that this "game," as the maker has called it, asks women to identify themselves by the status of their relationship, reinforcing, however inadvertently, the patriarchal notion that the worth of a woman exists not in of herself, but is dependent on a being external to her. While I understand and sincerely appreciate the intent here, I firmly believe that rather than these asinine circumlocutions, it would be a much more effective to simply put in status updates facts about breast cancer and links to organizations with which people can volunteer or donate for the cause. http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/How-To-Help/volunteer.aspx

I've posted this response to the Facebook event's page and have already gotten some flack. My favorite so far, "A little ... feminist, aren't we?"

FUCK YES.

Summary of being

Y: what are you up to?

finished ajax?

me: yeup

i'm suppose to be writing an essay

but not really happening.

Y: what kind of essay?
for ajax?

me: yes

Y: exciting

me: have i ever given you an exciting answer when you asked me what i'm doing?

Y: all the time

me: tell me your favorite seven responses!

Y: reading, napping, cleaning cat vomit, failing to make dinner, just going for a smoke, going to nyc, being depressed about nothing

me: i don't think i could have responded if i was napping

Y: I thought it was strange as well

reading, napping, cleaning cat vomit, failing to make dinner, just going for a smoke, going to nyc, being depressed about nothing

A distressingly succinct summary of my life.

Softer World

Friend introduced me to A Softer World Webcomics today.

The lines, delivered in deadpan (or so imagined by the courier font), are superimposed, not necessarily in context, over found images of the quasi-artistic ilk to deliver some wonderfully wry and delightfully dark humor. Sublime.

Complex Menelaus

The composition of the obverse panel of the sixth century BCE Exekias amphora depicts Menelaus and Ajax as they both stride away from the fallen body of Achilles. Given the limited perspective afforded by the genre of vase painting, it appears as though Ajax, standing in the foreground with his right foot set before Achilles' slain body, is entwined at his feet with Menelaus, who, in the background, is stretching outwards to strike down Amasos. The near mirror image of the two not only creates a dynamic balance in the panel, but also stresses the contract in the actions of the two heroes; while Ajax rescues the body of Achilles who had fallen in battle to ensure that he the hero receives a proper burial, Menelaus kills not a worthy Trojan hero, but naked African youth pathetically armed with only a club and a wicker shield.

Exekias' Menelaus is thus more Sophoclean, rather than Homeric. That is, he is cruel, merciless, and haughty. This, at least from the school of arm chair psychoanalysis, is way more fitting. It's a shame that no one has fully exploited the tragedy which Menelaus is so capable. I mean, inevitable inferiority complex from superior brother, masculinity complex from having lost his wife to a pansy, and a ginger complex to boot?

scaly

As couple of my friends note amused, I become rather uncomfortable when reminded of certain textures. Scaly is probably one of my least favorites.

Maybe it's because it's 4:38 in the morning and I'm not in the clearest state of minds, but I'm rather awed by how the Latin word for scaly, squameus, really captures in sounds the hair-raising vile qualities of the texture.

Music Now

Starfucker's Reptilian album-- kinetic, exuberant, electro-pop fun

But who am I kidding. The album that will on non-stop rotation this weekend is