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

Reading List

Whatever absolution from anxieties I found after receiving my acceptance letter has now been replaced by corrosive feelings of self-doubt. Neurotic as it may be, I'm already feeling pressured.

I think I need to make for myself a comprehensive reading list to tackle before starting graduate school this September.

Would love any input.


(And, as an update, I think it's 98% likely that I'll be at Stanford next year. Both exciting and frightening.)

A request

n: can we please get arrested

at least once

you are the obvious choice for someone to get arrested with

Settlers of Canaan

J* : whats up with you?

me: procrastinating reading Latin poetry by reading Korean poetry

played a game of Settlers of Catan earlier with some friends

J*: hahaha

i've never played that

but i always think its a zionist game

like

Settlers of Canaan

me: I think a part of me just fell in love with you

the expanse

잃어버렸습니다.
무얼 어디다 잃었는지 몰라
두 손의 호주머니를 더듬어
길에 나갑니다.

돌과 돌과 돌이 끝없이 연달아
길은 돌담을 끼고 갑니다.

담은 쇠문을 굳게 담아
길 위에 긴 그림자를 드리우고

길은 아침에서 저녁으로
저녁에서 아침으로 통했습니다.

돌담을 더듬어 눈물짓다
쳐다 보면 하늘은 부끄럽게 푸릅니다.

풀 한 포기 없는 이 길을 걷는 것은
담 저 쪽에 내가 남아 있는 까닭이고

내가 사는 것은 다만
잃은 것을 찾는 까닭입니다.

길 (윤동주)

Man loves tractor

"But it [One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich] tells a story about little people trapped in a merciless political machine in a way that lifts its high above the level of the average Soviet "man-loves-tractor" school of literature." Marvin L. Kalb in the introduction to Ivan Denisovich.

I am beyond intrigued by this Man-Loves-Tractor School of Literature.

My thoughts on Ivan Denisovich: A monotonous book whose intentional achromatism efficiently exhibits the pathetic depths of resignation, exposing perhaps more of the inhumanity of Stalinist Russia than any melodramatic epic could

My mother

me: Mom ... you're not praying that I'm going to get rejected by the rest of my schools, are you?
Mom: How did you know?
me: ...
Mom: Please tell me Chicago rejected you.

Timeline of being 24

January 28, 2011

12:00 EST Turn 24.
12:01 EST Celebrate with absurdly delicious Belgium beer (whose name I can't remember due to good times held) from Vol de Nuit in the West Village
2:01 EST Head over to Little Branch
2:34 EST Drunk-- muddled cider
3:33 EST BCD Soondooboo in Ktown. I think I'm biologically wired to return to 32nd street during nocturnal hours in New York.
5:00 EST Get on a LIRR to Jamaica (ugh)
6:00 EST JFK (ugh)
7:00 EST Virgin Airlines transcontinental flight = snooze
10:30 PST Hello sunshine, hello California.
11:14 PST In-N-Out, how I love you so.
12:08 PST snooze some more.
3:28 PST Macarons and tea at Jin's Patisserie. Kept in company by Carlos Fuentes.
4:17 PST Vintage shopping on Abbot Kinney
4: 24 PST Man at vintage store compliments my sailor dress. Beam in pride.
4:36 PST Shoes!
5: 17 PST Angel City Books-- H.D.'s The Gift, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop
6:42 PST Sunny Blue Omusubi!
7:19 PST Force my captive to watch Jersey Shore.
8:14 PST Snooze
9:34 PST Gjelina Restaurant, superb
9:49PST Littorai Pinot Noir, fantastic
10:14 PST Blood orange gelato, yes!
11:59 PST A perfect birthday?

February 1st, 2011
7:37 EST "I am delighted to inform you that the Department of Classics at Stanford is offering you admission to the Ph.D. program with a full fellowship package."

24, you're too good to me.

on New York

That cannot be done, she told herself, and not only because very likely the place won't be there anymore. Even if it were, though, nothing could ever be the same: people age, things break down, feelings change. You can never go home again, even to the same place and the same people, if by chance both have remained, not the same, but simply there, in their essence. She realized that the English language could only conjugate one kind of being-- to be. Home is a memory. The only true memory: for memory is our home. And thus the only true desire of our hearts: the burning quest for our tiny, insecure paradises, buried deep within our hearts, impervious to poverty or wealth, kindness or cruelty. -- Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo