BOYS
I just don't get them and frankly don't think I am one of them. If I was wouldn't I have a better understanding of their modus operandi. I feel like I've been in two separate situations where I am really interested in hanging out with the dude, but the dude is sort of passive about it (or late to every date) and I feel like a pessimistic patty.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
I haven't posted in a really long time...
...which is probably a good thing because the things I will say here will probably insult some of my friends. I was inspired to bring this blog back from the dead after reading Emily Gould's piece on oversharing in blogs (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html). People hate her, but I went to high school with her and I envy her success. I've always been of the belief that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Anyways, on to the real point of this post:
Do you sometimes feel like you need to take all your friends back to the friend store and exchange them for all new ones? I often find myself struggling to find something to do on a Friday night, mostly because my friends don't seem to have any desire to do anything. Sometimes I wonder whether its me? But I feel like I want to go out and have fun and do things; make things. I just feel like we could be out there starting the parties and being proactive...not waiting for someone else to plan something great.
I made this today and I wish I could make more
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree
I was talking to my mom on the phone this afternoon and she was telling me about a date she went on the other day. We actually are the same person. Its funny that I turned out so much like my mother, but I guess I would be better off had I turned out more like my father.
My mother is a very sensitive, scared individual in a lot of ways. The more I think about how I react to certain events in my life, the more I begin to realize that I too am a sensitive, scared soul. Love right now seems like the cruelest thing on earth and I wish I could rip out whatever part of my mind responsible for the knot in my stomach. My dad moves through the stages of his life like a machine in a very categorized, scientific sort of way. There is a standard which he follows, dictated by norms, everything fits in a little box. I think I take my life on in a more circumstantial way, reacting to events according to past experiences.
I wish I was a machine...I also wish I could study certain people's parents to see which parent they most resemble. Maybe we can predict a person's future by examining what path each parent took and which parent they most resemble. Are you a kind house-wife who loves her kids to death or are you your dad; cause I don't really like your dad?
My mother is a very sensitive, scared individual in a lot of ways. The more I think about how I react to certain events in my life, the more I begin to realize that I too am a sensitive, scared soul. Love right now seems like the cruelest thing on earth and I wish I could rip out whatever part of my mind responsible for the knot in my stomach. My dad moves through the stages of his life like a machine in a very categorized, scientific sort of way. There is a standard which he follows, dictated by norms, everything fits in a little box. I think I take my life on in a more circumstantial way, reacting to events according to past experiences.
I wish I was a machine...I also wish I could study certain people's parents to see which parent they most resemble. Maybe we can predict a person's future by examining what path each parent took and which parent they most resemble. Are you a kind house-wife who loves her kids to death or are you your dad; cause I don't really like your dad?
Thursday, February 1, 2007
On winter and nostalgia
There is something to be said of winter. I am a winter hater. I hate everything about it; I hate the cold, the rain, the wind, the lack of sunlight, the snow, waking up in the morning to cold.....in short I think February is the most miserable time of the year. There is only one thing that I can appreciate about winter. Sometimes, if you're lucky enough to run into one of these moments, which, at least in my experience, have been far and few between, you can enter into a surreal world where time itself seems to be frozen.
It usually happens during dusk, perhaps also early in the morning too (I wouldn't know as I am rarely awake during the wee hours of the morning). For the most part I have walked into these timely tundras during my walk home from work. Also, you need a park. Think of these moments which I am about to describe as black holes that can only create themselves if conditions are just right; a perfect storm of sorts. The ground can be covered with snow or the air might have an extra bite to it. Usually, you also require a lot of wind; mostly you need the wind in order to recognize the moment as it happens.
The last time I entered this place that seems so out of the loop of time and consciousness was in New York City. I was in Central Park, sitting on a snow covered bench, trying to shield my neck from the burning of the wind. I closed my eyes, burrowing my neck as deep into my shoulders as possible. The wind suddenly fell out of the sky and the world felt completely still. I opened my eyes and saw that the wind was no longer tormenting everything around me. The world was literally frozen. No people walking about, no noise from the street; in short, no movement from the air or on the ground. The world around me seemed complacent, still, calm, as if the trees, the ground, the air had all suddenly become self-reflective and, like myself, had begun to turn inward.
Its then, when nothing stimulates, when nothing begs for your attention that nostalgia turns most violent. It is confusing this nostalgic feeling that reins over my wintry black holes. I usually think of nostalgia as something that pains the heart, pumping mistakes and missed opportunities through one's system, propelling the body to pump adrenaline and the soul to barter with God. And yet, nostalgia in this world, this frozen moment, is both comrade and conspirator. The pain of the heart is still there, but in the absence of movement and stimulus comes the inspiring sense of endless possibilities. When time seems to stand still you begin to feel the entitlement of power. The capacity to mold and change seems to fall into your lap. And yet, I find myself resisting this new found power. My desire to change things disappears and is replaced by the blissful complacency of surrender. The beauty of this moment makes one feel as though there is nothing to change. In the immobility of the freeze there also seems to be this sense that things can only, and will only, happen one way; and in the way that these natural forces have given in to the power of this bitter nostalgia, so too does it demand that we surrender to the fates and find freedom in the absence of power.
These frozen moments are ethereal and short-lived. And for someone who is sensitive to matters of the heart, enough to pretend to bear a heart fertile enough to grow a tree, these moments are the only escape from the tug of the tragedy we make of life. And as fertile as I may think my heart to be, it is only in these frozen moments that spring out of my most hated season that I can find solace in the fact that no matter how much things may hurt or as confusing as they can be, one day I will find myself once again in this nostalgic vortex gazing at it and beyond it, towards the shining dream of what will always be, and be, at least for the moment, at peace.
Its supposed to snow tonight and I am thinking I will strap on my boots, wrap myself in everything I have and trek out into the district in search of the winter that I love. There is a park near me that has called out many a time with the promise of this vaccum.
It usually happens during dusk, perhaps also early in the morning too (I wouldn't know as I am rarely awake during the wee hours of the morning). For the most part I have walked into these timely tundras during my walk home from work. Also, you need a park. Think of these moments which I am about to describe as black holes that can only create themselves if conditions are just right; a perfect storm of sorts. The ground can be covered with snow or the air might have an extra bite to it. Usually, you also require a lot of wind; mostly you need the wind in order to recognize the moment as it happens.
The last time I entered this place that seems so out of the loop of time and consciousness was in New York City. I was in Central Park, sitting on a snow covered bench, trying to shield my neck from the burning of the wind. I closed my eyes, burrowing my neck as deep into my shoulders as possible. The wind suddenly fell out of the sky and the world felt completely still. I opened my eyes and saw that the wind was no longer tormenting everything around me. The world was literally frozen. No people walking about, no noise from the street; in short, no movement from the air or on the ground. The world around me seemed complacent, still, calm, as if the trees, the ground, the air had all suddenly become self-reflective and, like myself, had begun to turn inward.
Its then, when nothing stimulates, when nothing begs for your attention that nostalgia turns most violent. It is confusing this nostalgic feeling that reins over my wintry black holes. I usually think of nostalgia as something that pains the heart, pumping mistakes and missed opportunities through one's system, propelling the body to pump adrenaline and the soul to barter with God. And yet, nostalgia in this world, this frozen moment, is both comrade and conspirator. The pain of the heart is still there, but in the absence of movement and stimulus comes the inspiring sense of endless possibilities. When time seems to stand still you begin to feel the entitlement of power. The capacity to mold and change seems to fall into your lap. And yet, I find myself resisting this new found power. My desire to change things disappears and is replaced by the blissful complacency of surrender. The beauty of this moment makes one feel as though there is nothing to change. In the immobility of the freeze there also seems to be this sense that things can only, and will only, happen one way; and in the way that these natural forces have given in to the power of this bitter nostalgia, so too does it demand that we surrender to the fates and find freedom in the absence of power.
These frozen moments are ethereal and short-lived. And for someone who is sensitive to matters of the heart, enough to pretend to bear a heart fertile enough to grow a tree, these moments are the only escape from the tug of the tragedy we make of life. And as fertile as I may think my heart to be, it is only in these frozen moments that spring out of my most hated season that I can find solace in the fact that no matter how much things may hurt or as confusing as they can be, one day I will find myself once again in this nostalgic vortex gazing at it and beyond it, towards the shining dream of what will always be, and be, at least for the moment, at peace.
Its supposed to snow tonight and I am thinking I will strap on my boots, wrap myself in everything I have and trek out into the district in search of the winter that I love. There is a park near me that has called out many a time with the promise of this vaccum.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Waiting for the Irony
So, as the title of this post suggests, I am going to delve into the realm of irony and how it is a very dangerous tool to use when writing. Very much like the song by Alanis, Coetzee takes irony to such a superficial level in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians. The story revolves around a civil magistrate (he is never referred to by name), who's post is in a small frontier town of the elusive and ethereal Empire. As the title suggests, the town is plagued by the phantom of a "barbarian" threat looming somewhere on the horizon line. As you have also probably already guessed it turns out the huge metaphor of the book is that it is the so-called "civilized" guard of the Empire that is actually barbaric, sub-human, and violent. Coetzee makes this metaphor painfully aware in the climactic scene of the novel:
"The Colonel steps forward. Stooping over each prisoner in turn he rubs a handful of dust into his naked back and writes a word with a stick of charcoal. I read the words upside down: 'ENEMY...ENEMY...ENEMY....ENEMY.' He steps back and folds his hands. At a distance of no more than twenty paces he and I contemplate each other. Then the beating begins [...] The game, I see, is to beat them till their backs are washed clean" (105).
The book here takes an unexpected turn, in which Coetzee abandons the subtle and layered complexity of the novel he had been writing, opting instead to beat us over the head with the an overworked metaphor that could have been predicted just by reading the book's title.
I mean don't get me wrong. I am a HUGE fan of Coetzee. His other novels, particularly Elizabeth Costello, were challenging in that they didn't just hand the reader the message of the novel. Ambiguity was something he seemed keen of, forcing anyone who read it to discern and interpret the meaning for themselves. In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee begins ambiguously presenting the magistrate as hero and villain, abusing the love of a "barbarian" woman while at the same time suffering her abuse:
"There are other times when I suffer fits of resentment against my bondage to the ritual of the oiling and rubbing, the drowsiness, the slump into oblivion. I cease to comprehend what pleasure I can ever have found in her obstinate, phlegmatic body, and even discover in myself stirrings of outrage. I become withdrawn, irritable; the girl turns her back and goes to sleep" (41).
My advice, as juvenile as it might be, is for Coetzee to stop trying to make a statement that has been made more times than I can even fathom and stick to what he does best: showing us the barbarity of being a human; an animal barbarity that continues to haunt us despite civilizations best efforts to sublimate it.
"The Colonel steps forward. Stooping over each prisoner in turn he rubs a handful of dust into his naked back and writes a word with a stick of charcoal. I read the words upside down: 'ENEMY...ENEMY...ENEMY....ENEMY.' He steps back and folds his hands. At a distance of no more than twenty paces he and I contemplate each other. Then the beating begins [...] The game, I see, is to beat them till their backs are washed clean" (105).
The book here takes an unexpected turn, in which Coetzee abandons the subtle and layered complexity of the novel he had been writing, opting instead to beat us over the head with the an overworked metaphor that could have been predicted just by reading the book's title.
I mean don't get me wrong. I am a HUGE fan of Coetzee. His other novels, particularly Elizabeth Costello, were challenging in that they didn't just hand the reader the message of the novel. Ambiguity was something he seemed keen of, forcing anyone who read it to discern and interpret the meaning for themselves. In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee begins ambiguously presenting the magistrate as hero and villain, abusing the love of a "barbarian" woman while at the same time suffering her abuse:
"There are other times when I suffer fits of resentment against my bondage to the ritual of the oiling and rubbing, the drowsiness, the slump into oblivion. I cease to comprehend what pleasure I can ever have found in her obstinate, phlegmatic body, and even discover in myself stirrings of outrage. I become withdrawn, irritable; the girl turns her back and goes to sleep" (41).
My advice, as juvenile as it might be, is for Coetzee to stop trying to make a statement that has been made more times than I can even fathom and stick to what he does best: showing us the barbarity of being a human; an animal barbarity that continues to haunt us despite civilizations best efforts to sublimate it.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Incest
So I recently started G. G. Marquez's autobiography, or at least the first
installment (I believe it comes in two parts), and I cannot help but be a little
disturbed by some of the connections I have been making between his life and his
writing. I was pleased to discover that Marquez based the story in my favorite
novel, Love in The Time of Cholera, was based on the story of his parents and their struggles to be together. Clearly his mother is embodied in Fermina Daza, and clearly his father takes the form of Florentino Ariza; who, however, did Marquez use as a mold when writing Dr. Juvenal Urbino? This had been a mystery to me until I started reading the stories within his autobiography. Consider this anecdote from his youth:
"My grandfather's world was quite different. Even in his final years he seemed
very agile when he walked around with his toolbox making repairs to the house.
Or when he made water for the bath come up by spending hours at the manual pump in the backyard, or when he climbed tall ladders to see how much water was in the water barrels [...] It was a miracle he did not die one morning when he tried to catch the shortsighted parrot, who had climbed as high as the water barrels" (79).
This just also happens to be the manner in which Dr. Urbino perishes one hot summer afternoon. Trying to recapture a parrot that has escaped its cage and climbed onto a tree, Dr. Urbino takes a fatal fall, living only long enough to tell Fermina how much he loved her.
Now consider this next quote, in which a young Marquez is forced to visit the scene of a suicide by his grandfather:
"The first thing that shook me when I came in was the smell in the bedroom. I
learned only much later that it was the almond smell of the cyanide that the
Belgian had inhaled in order to die. But not that or any other impression would
be more intense and long-lasting than the sight of the corpse when the mayor
moved the blanket aside to show him to my grandfather" (92).
The opening line of Love in the Time of Cholera introducing Dr. Juvenal Urbino:
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate
of unrequited love."
You may, as I have, start to suspect that Dr. Juvenal Urbino is based largely on Marquez's grandfather. Now the question is: why? Is it a coincidence, not really intended, merely got at because Marquez always thought his grandfather would make an interesting character? Or maybe its allegorical of some freudian Oedipus-like complex? Or maybe there is something more there; perhaps a secret love affair between his mother and his grandfather, some sort of innapropriate connection between a father and a daughter?
installment (I believe it comes in two parts), and I cannot help but be a little
disturbed by some of the connections I have been making between his life and his
writing. I was pleased to discover that Marquez based the story in my favorite
novel, Love in The Time of Cholera, was based on the story of his parents and their struggles to be together. Clearly his mother is embodied in Fermina Daza, and clearly his father takes the form of Florentino Ariza; who, however, did Marquez use as a mold when writing Dr. Juvenal Urbino? This had been a mystery to me until I started reading the stories within his autobiography. Consider this anecdote from his youth:
"My grandfather's world was quite different. Even in his final years he seemed
very agile when he walked around with his toolbox making repairs to the house.
Or when he made water for the bath come up by spending hours at the manual pump in the backyard, or when he climbed tall ladders to see how much water was in the water barrels [...] It was a miracle he did not die one morning when he tried to catch the shortsighted parrot, who had climbed as high as the water barrels" (79).
This just also happens to be the manner in which Dr. Urbino perishes one hot summer afternoon. Trying to recapture a parrot that has escaped its cage and climbed onto a tree, Dr. Urbino takes a fatal fall, living only long enough to tell Fermina how much he loved her.
Now consider this next quote, in which a young Marquez is forced to visit the scene of a suicide by his grandfather:
"The first thing that shook me when I came in was the smell in the bedroom. I
learned only much later that it was the almond smell of the cyanide that the
Belgian had inhaled in order to die. But not that or any other impression would
be more intense and long-lasting than the sight of the corpse when the mayor
moved the blanket aside to show him to my grandfather" (92).
The opening line of Love in the Time of Cholera introducing Dr. Juvenal Urbino:
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate
of unrequited love."
You may, as I have, start to suspect that Dr. Juvenal Urbino is based largely on Marquez's grandfather. Now the question is: why? Is it a coincidence, not really intended, merely got at because Marquez always thought his grandfather would make an interesting character? Or maybe its allegorical of some freudian Oedipus-like complex? Or maybe there is something more there; perhaps a secret love affair between his mother and his grandfather, some sort of innapropriate connection between a father and a daughter?
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