winter closet + dieppa restrepo lavender cali + boy by band of outsiders seersucker shirt
the shirt
perfect blue
seersucker material ≠ ironing
3/4 sleeves ≠ habitual sleeve rolling
cooling ≠ sweaty run to school everyday
comfortable, boxy slouch
when i left his apartment that day, i walked down three sets of dusty click-lit steps. then through a shaded hallway with dripping floors and down a stone staircase. he must have been behind me but i couldn't hear him through the roars of my luggage wheels. i waved to the gateman, who for once was not slumbering, and stepped outside the gates to greet a busy morning street.
so, so different from that one quiet summer dawn, when i woke up at 5 am to walk with him to the town's edge and the haze had faded everything to cold neutral and i couldn't believe how small his town was to be surrounded by such endless cloud-wreathed mountains. and we had both kept silent in comfortable companionship in what seemed like a suspended place and time.
but that day, as i was leaving for the final time, everything was as i came: people, buses, cars in never-ending traffic cacophony, like a million jeweled bugs gone crazy in the sun and humidity. i closed my eyes and time folded, how could two months stand between two identical settings, and then it quickened to spite me: he stepping to my side and yelling down a cab. and i putting the suitcase in the trunk and shut. there was just a moment before i closed the door and waved goodbye.
on some hot summer days, on some street corners, if i'm lucky, if the heat and gasoline smells and car honks mix just right, i would recapture that moment of splitting between his world and mine. i wanted to hug him, an altogether foreign and modern gesture (so i didn't). i wanted to tell him, tactlessly, 爷爷，我永远爱你 (but i just nodded and smiled weakly). time waits for no one, a lesson i need relearning and can only remember in desperation. remember: my body dragging my heart into the car; in the back window, seeing his small figure disappearing into the crowd.
so, so different from that one quiet summer dawn, when i woke up at 5 am to walk with him to the town's edge and the haze had faded everything to cold neutral and i couldn't believe how small his town was to be surrounded by such endless cloud-wreathed mountains. and we had both kept silent in comfortable companionship in what seemed like a suspended place and time.
but that day, as i was leaving for the final time, everything was as i came: people, buses, cars in never-ending traffic cacophony, like a million jeweled bugs gone crazy in the sun and humidity. i closed my eyes and time folded, how could two months stand between two identical settings, and then it quickened to spite me: he stepping to my side and yelling down a cab. and i putting the suitcase in the trunk and shut. there was just a moment before i closed the door and waved goodbye.
on some hot summer days, on some street corners, if i'm lucky, if the heat and gasoline smells and car honks mix just right, i would recapture that moment of splitting between his world and mine. i wanted to hug him, an altogether foreign and modern gesture (so i didn't). i wanted to tell him, tactlessly, 爷爷，我永远爱你 (but i just nodded and smiled weakly). time waits for no one, a lesson i need relearning and can only remember in desperation. remember: my body dragging my heart into the car; in the back window, seeing his small figure disappearing into the crowd.
three, korean cinema
The Classic (2003)
The movie itself is a bit melodramatic and the ending is too neat for my taste, but i do love the music.
Deli Spice - 고백 (The Confession)
Attack the Gas Station (1999)
Shell - 작은 사랑 (A Little Love)
Le Transperceneige (2012)
 |
"In a post-apocalyptic world, or what's remaining of it after a world war and glaciation, the few survivors find themselves in Earth's last remaining train, named Transperceneige. The train continues to move following a circle in a desert of snow and ice. And, while the poorest live in pathetic conditions, suffering the cold and hunger, those living in the 'premium class' lust, party and live like Kings. The Transperceneige continues to travel in this vicious circle, but one day one of the 'miserables', Proloff, decides to change status quo, discovering all the secrets behind Earth's last train." (Source) |
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*in other news, the japanese are making a rurouni kenshin live-action. yuu aoi as megumi? but she's too cute...and awkward. cannot wait to see soujirou though i know it will disappoint.
Little Dragon 10/29
Twice I turn my back on you
I fell flat on my face but didn't lose
Tell me where would I go
Tell me what led you on
I'd love to know
Was it the blue night
Gone fragile
Was it both men
In wonder
Steady gone under
Was it the light ways
So frightening
Was it two wills
One mirror holding us dearer now
Thought I had an answer once
But your random ways swept me along
Colossal signs so I got lost
With so many lovers singing soft
Was it the blue night
Gone fragile
Was it both men
In wonder
Steady gone under
Was it the light ways
So frightening
Was it two wills
One mirror holding us dearer now
I fell flat on my face but didn't lose
Tell me where would I go
Tell me what led you on
I'd love to know
Was it the blue night
Gone fragile
Was it both men
In wonder
Steady gone under
Was it the light ways
So frightening
Was it two wills
One mirror holding us dearer now
Thought I had an answer once
But your random ways swept me along
Colossal signs so I got lost
With so many lovers singing soft
Was it the blue night
Gone fragile
Was it both men
In wonder
Steady gone under
Was it the light ways
So frightening
Was it two wills
One mirror holding us dearer now
she's hearing voices
Recently I have been listening to more music with female vocals, part of my growing appreciation for our most basic instrument. A bit has to do with my taste trending towards electronic for the past two years, where the voice is usually fractured and abstracted into pure sound. A bit has to do with ingesting kpop on a regular basis, where I cannot even begin to understand (thank goodness!) the lyrics besides the standard english word throw-in. This education has over time changed my experience and appreciation of "regular" english songs. Certain voices just do it for me: modest, sweet, clear. And then there are certain songs made on that one second where her voice hits exactly the right note or where the change is exactly what you wanted, and it is absolutely delicious.
black and blue
over summer i decided to wear more black, starting with a pair of black jeans hemmed and tapered to perfection (slim not skinny), which i perused almost every day. black, i realized, was the best color for lazy people cutting down on sloppiness.
but then i received the perfect jacket: a chambray blue with a hoodie (perfect for dc's unpredictable showers) and a form which swung gently from my body. best of all was the clever inner right pocket taken from menswear. so i started thinking about blue. the most humble of colors, always easy on the eyes. a color that gently sways between emotions.
then, my best friend, who surely has esp, showed up for our day adventure in the most perfect blue outfit--loose navy grandfather sweater, white and aqua sailor striped shorts, multi-colored blue sperrys. she fit perfectly.
i like how clothing and location harmonize. i remember seeing photos from the devastation in africa (here). they are tragic to be sure and mainly meant to be informational, but i was also dazzled by the colors in their clothing, the array of colors and patterns which looked beautiful framed in rust sunsets and barren deserts. wsj did a recent article on the sapeurs of the congo (here): "kin sapeurs, they tell me, adore yohji because his style is violent and brutal, in line with the spirit of their city."
similarly, i cast cities in different colors and feel myself gradually shifting my preferences. baltimore, a city of experimentation, of neons, prints, and mix-matching. washington, shimmering white and glass-blue accented in black like the sec building i pass by on my way to school. but while i find myself dressing more formal, with less colors and less strange shapes, bits of baltimore still peeps in. recently: a beautiful mediterranean-colored scarf swimming with fishes.
solanin
today i listened to adele's "someone like you" a few times. had a bit of a moment to be honest. i think i would much prefer to sing another farewell song,"solanin," from the same titled film. while the film disappointed me (i loved the original manga) this song was on continuous play for quite a while over summer.
later i found out the song was created by asian kung-fu generation. which was such an engrained part of my high school life (partly due to falling asleep daily with the music on) that i had to revisit other old favorites. i find myself having complete musical nostalgia every other month, remembering and reconfirming the best parts of my past. i am so glad to find them as sweet as ever.
Goodbye, that's enough
You can cope anywhere
Goodbye, I'll manage somehow too
Goodbye, that's what I'll do
later i found out the song was created by asian kung-fu generation. which was such an engrained part of my high school life (partly due to falling asleep daily with the music on) that i had to revisit other old favorites. i find myself having complete musical nostalgia every other month, remembering and reconfirming the best parts of my past. i am so glad to find them as sweet as ever.
The Pillows - Bran-new Lovesong
Asian Kung Fu Generation - Mugen Glider
Plastic Tree - Sink
Deadman - Sakura to Ame
MUCC - Waru, Arubeki Basho
study break
attempt to start a movie club at school was semi-successful. i reserved a study room on the fifth floor (like D-level in terms of function) of the library, but the projector was clearly made out for presentations not movie screening. so we huddled around my pitiful 15", glancing anxiously every now and then towards the door. our excuse had to do with criminal law...homicides.
thinking back on it, "fallen angels" was probably not the best thing to pick for a first movie gathering. unfortunately i couldn't find "in the mood for love" in time. i have watched this movie three times, once by myself. once with a few close friends who like art films. and this time with a group of new friends who are not well introduced to the genre.
being neurotic i was clearly most nerve-wracked with the final viewing. somehow i started finding the film too cool, too stylized, too empty of deeper meaning. i relaxed somewhat when takeshi kaneshiro did his comical routine as a night-time worker; it garnered a lot of laughs. but then the story went back to the hitman. silence and pretzel crunches. oh, why was everyone so crazy? did they always have to do slow motion and play "because i'm cool" for the pre-blood bath walk? is it necessary that she* looked completely unaffected in every scene?
by the end, i was half-twisting myself around trying to figure out why i liked the film in the first place. i dreaded the end of movie when i would have to face them under the light, see their stunned or worse bored faces, explain to them why i had to put them through this one hour and forty-minutes of torture.
after i launched into some preemptory apologies, gladly they said they enjoyed the film. it was different. it was good that they were introduced to this style of movie. they were never bored at any part. and then some light teasing regarding my personality...
and so, all in all completely not worth the anxiety...but i'm still getting inception for next time.
*i realized she looks like arimura ryuutaro's cousin. that nose!
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somewhat perfect place to put these photos from the most recent vogue china. tao okamoto by lachlan bailey. (full set here)
“here you are the nothing / that is the place, / and all the places are you, / none of them yours to keep.”
—W.S. di Piero, "Starting Over"
radio life
I have given up music momentarily in order to finish as much of "This American Life" archives (here) as I can before school. I don't remember it being this good when I was 14 or 15 in the back of my parents' car on the way to Chinese school though admittedly more of my attention was focused on making a semblance of effort on my homework without the parents noticing; usually this meant sitting behind the driver's seat. And so I can only recall episodes of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" because it required little concentration, "Car Talk" and "The Diana Rehm Show" because the hosts had very particular voices, and if we went shopping after school and came home late at night "A Praire Home Companion" because I could not find it funny no matter how hard I tried.
"This American Life" however is funny when it wants to be. And quite moving. A few small things that I like: Ira Glass' boyish voice, great editing for maximum impact and clarity on par with cable shows, and a liberal slant that does not get in the way of presenting a balanced report. During an interview with a group of netizens akin to Anonymous who scammed a Nigerian scam artist by sending him to the edge of Darfur and then laughed on air while reading his letters of desperation, Ira was great in controlling the situation (whereas I maybe would have started throwing things) while getting at the important point that they were as morally reprehensible as the original scammer.
The only downside are reporters whose voices I will refuse to listen to no matter how good the story content, especially this one British fellow who talks with a slow drone which turns positively obscene when he tries to be dramatic. Another perhaps superficial disadvantage is that a lot of its stories are rooted in current events making them rather obsolete or stale--ones on the financial crisis or america's extreme measures against terrorism--but I feel that these factors are only settings and the real focus is on the story, to tease out at the roots a rich interweaving of human interactions almost shakespearean in quality and depth. Interestingly this program has made me feel ashamed about how naive I was and still am in regards to the level of injustice and human suffering in America and yet also a little bit more love for what progress we have made as a nation.
Additionally, they use "In the Mood for Love"s Angkor Wat Theme Song (here) as transitions for various stories. Bias made.
I've listed a few favorites from the past five years:
Arms Trader 2009 (here)
The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping an Indian man named Hemant Lakhani, whom they suspected of being an illegal arms dealer.
note: 58 minutes and one second of brilliant reporting.
Contents Unknown (here)
Stories of filling in the blank. A man finds himself in a train station in India, with no idea how he got there or who he is. His memory gone, he has no choice but to let other people—police, doctors, friends, family—create an identity for him.
note: all three of these stories are great.
Simulated Worlds (here)
Simulated worlds, Civil war reenactments, wax museums, simulated coal mines, fake ethnic restaurants, an ersatz Medieval castle and other re-created worlds that thrive all across America.
note: somehow i feel japan could give america a run for its money, but the theories are interesting. the bit in this about a medieval scholar from uchicago visiting medieval times is the best.
What I Learned From TV (here)
Stories recorded during our 2007 live tour. Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Dan Savage, and other favorite contributors went on the road with us to New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles; and performed brand-new stories in front of sold-out audiences.
Who Do You Think You Are? (here)
This week we bring you stories of privilege and the lengths some will go to to maintain it.
note: i really love the second act's interviews with people about their experiences during the depression. the last act is very humorous; "it's all about choices" should be a lawyer's hippocratic oath.
Very Tough Love (here)
A drug court program that we believe is run differently from every other drug court in the country, doing some things that are contrary to the very philosophy of drug court. The result? People with offenses that would get minimal or no sentences elsewhere sometimes end up in the system five to ten years.
The Psychopath Test (here)
Recently we heard about this test that could determine if someone was a psychopath. So, naturally, our staff decided to take it. This week we hear the results. Plus Jon Ronson asks the question: is this man a psychopath?
note: i like the second report on whether corporate leaders are psychopaths.
Right to Remain Silent (here)
Stories about people who have the right to remain silent... but choose not to exercise that right—including police officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests.
note: the second act is fascinating and kafka-esque, especially when the police strikes back.
Inside Job (here)
For seven months a team of investigative journalists from ProPublica looked into a story for us, the inside story of one company that made hundreds of millions of dollars for itself while worsening the financial crisis for the rest of us.
Recently we heard about this test that could determine if someone was a psychopath. So, naturally, our staff decided to take it. This week we hear the results. Plus Jon Ronson asks the question: is this man a psychopath?
note: i like the second report on whether corporate leaders are psychopaths.
Right to Remain Silent (here)
Stories about people who have the right to remain silent... but choose not to exercise that right—including police officer Adrian Schoolcraft, who secretly recorded his supervisors telling officers to manipulate crime statistics and make illegal arrests.
note: the second act is fascinating and kafka-esque, especially when the police strikes back.
Inside Job (here)
For seven months a team of investigative journalists from ProPublica looked into a story for us, the inside story of one company that made hundreds of millions of dollars for itself while worsening the financial crisis for the rest of us.
Habeas Schamabeas (here)
The right of habeas corpus has been a part of our country's legal tradition longer than we've actually been a country. It means that our government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the War on Terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that prisoners should not be covered by habeas—or even by the Geneva Conventions—because they're the most fearsome enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?
The right of habeas corpus has been a part of our country's legal tradition longer than we've actually been a country. It means that our government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the War on Terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that prisoners should not be covered by habeas—or even by the Geneva Conventions—because they're the most fearsome enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?
note: this report won the Peabody Award. i really enjoyed the interviews with former prisoners.
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From "This I Used to Believe" (here)
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From "This I Used to Believe" (here)
Jay Allison
So, I'm wondering you work in radio, and I work in radio. How come we haven't heard from you on what you believe? How come you haven't done an essay for "This I Believe"?
Ira Glass
Well, actually I mean it's funny. I think that I don't-- I say this and it's going to sound a little more dramatic than I mean it. But I'm not sure I believe anything, in that way, that would make for an essay.
Jay Allison
But did you ever, did you ever sit down-- or do you just sort of ask yourself rhetorically from time to time?
Ira Glass
I ask myself whenever I hear the series. I hear you on the radio and I think, how come I'm not on Jay's series? Like, how come I'm not doing This I Believe?
Jay Allison
Are you sure you're not just giving up too easily though?
Ira Glass
I don't know. I think I'm one of those people where like, I had a lot of really strong beliefs about stuff when I was a kid, and I like had a religious phase, and then I had a very strong, like, atheist phase and then I had a very political phase. And I was like politically correct for years. I mean the kind of politically correct where like, when I was in my 20s I went to Nicaragua and I called it Nikh-a-RAH-hua. And you know what I mean? Like, I was horrible. And--
Jay Allison
Did you call it Nikh-a-Rah-hua on the radio, too?
Ira Glass
Ah no. I knew better than that. At least I knew better than that. But you know I mean? Like, and then, just like, I got older and I saw that things seemed more complicated than the way that I'd believed them. And when I poll myself, I'm like, what do I believe in? Well I believe that listening to the radio in the car is the best place to listen to the radio. I've got that. But that doesn't seem like it's worthy of your series. I think it's true. I can defend it, but--.
Jay Allison
How about if something bad happened? Is there something you'd cling to?
Ira Glass
You mean in terms of a belief?
Jay Allison
Mm-hmm.
Ira Glass
I mean, I take comfort in the thought that when things seem really sad it's a comfort to me that well, everybody's going to go through this. Everybody's gone through this. And the problem is that, like, it's too much of a set of truisms to actually be good enough for your series.
Jay Allison
But your show is always looking for a conflict, and something to happen, and for something to change. I mean, maybe even this show is going to be about how something changes. So, possibly you're not interested in things that are static and enduring.
Ira Glass
No, I think that's true. It's funny like I think that's why I like This I Used to Believe. I'm much more attracted to that than to This I Believe because it just has the feeling of like, people are changing. And for me, drama is more interesting than ideas in a way. It's funny, I didn't even know I thought that until now I'm saying, that but I think it's true.
Jay Allison
Maybe you believe in that.
Ira Glass
And there's my essay. You are the master.
Jay Allison
I'm just an editor, man.
life and death
Then life looked back and around thoughtfully and said softly: "O Zarathustra, you are not faithful enough to me. You do not love me nearly as much as you say; I know you are thinking of leaving me soon. There is an old heavy, heavy growl-bell that growls at night all the way up to your cave; when you hear this bell strike the hour at midnight, then you think between one and twelve--you think, O Zarathustra, I know it, of how you want to leave me soon."
"Yes," I answered hesitantly, "but you also know--" and I whispered something in her ear, right through her tangled yellow foolish tresses.
You know that, O Zarathustra? Nobody knows that."
And we looked at each other and gazed on the green meadow over which the cool evening was running just then, and we wept together. But then life was dearer to me than all my wisdom ever was.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
----Fredrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
----Phillip Larkin, Aubade
the glossys
fairly successful day that started with donating books to goodwill, checking out local bike shops, and buying a stack of magazines at borders for 40% off. still waiting a few weeks for the discount to reach the pristine philosophy section. the two short stories collection were a steal at $3 each. i am a bit skeptical about egger's "the best american nonrequired reading 2008", having viewed the series as a product of cultural a.d.d. from the pick i am most excited by the magazines all of which i have never read due to their rather high prices and my dislike of cafe reading.
here are the ones i picked:
Lapham's Quarterly Volume IV, Number 3: Food
Paris Review 197: William Gibson & Samuel R. Delany Interviews
Clash 60: The Film IssueLula 12: Girl of My Dreams
Monocle Issues 45 Volume 5: What does it take to make a city both liveable and lively?
currently, the only two publications i read regularly are foreign policy and the new yorker. i'm thinking of adding one or two quarterly publications. i'm decided against clash and lula and wavering on paris review since i already have the new yorker. interestingly, the last three added to three other publication (the gentlewoman, fantastic man, and boat studio ) make six rather superficially inviting zines from great britain; what's in their water? i am mostly likely to subscribe to boat, which relocates to and writes regarding a different city every issue. and a bit because it has the least embarrassing name.
Boat Studio [site link] [review]
Clash [site link]
Fantastic Man [site link] [review]
The Gentlewoman [site link] [review]
Lapham's Quarterly [site link]
Lula [site link]
Monocle [site link]
Paris Review [site link]
Lapham's Quarterly Review
"Published four times a year, each issue of Lapham’s Quarterly adopts and explores a single theme...A typical issue features an introductory Preamble from Editor Lewis H. Lapham; approximately 100 “Voices in Time” — that is, appropriately themed selections drawn from the annals and archives of the past — and newly commissioned commentary and criticism from today’s preeminent scholars and writers. Myriad photographs, paintings, charts, graphs, and maps round out each issue’s 224 pages."
I have two primary complaints about the content. The preamble promised a good mix of history, culture, and politics relating to food. Based on the open article's somewhat serious concluding slant on neo-Malthusianism, the obesity crisis, and current food production I was expecting more attempt to trace the origins of our growing food crisis both at home and abroad which were only partially satiated at the end by an article on America's pastoral nostalgia (which is why agricultural reform is so vexing--see the insidious and delusional ad campaign in DC's tunnels). Yet this section only warranted a passing few pages in a ~250 page ad-less magazine. There is a pretension to create a more informed public, and not putting aside the fun of reading about ancients feast rituals and Bourdain's meal of an endangered species (=__=), but shouldn't people also learn a little bit about themselves? For example that the cows we eat are feed on an unnatural diet of corn which would kill them if not for the abundance of antibiotics pumped into them, which means that our meat is unhealthier than ever, fattier and full of medicine that passes onto us and not to our benefit. I think there is a clear necessity on the topic of food to be vocal about these long-term problems: the battle over GMOs, the crisis in farm subsidies, the issue of obesity vs. malnutrition and its class dimensions or even on a more literary basis how we are what we eat and now in worse ways than ever.
At the same time I understand these are weighty issues which have been most effectively addressed in books (though "An Omnivore's Dilemma" managed to be literary, political, and interesting) and academic papers. but Lapham neatly side-stepped hard work in order to focus rather exclusively on a disconnected literary past. The two hundred or so pages in between are filled with short passages culled from myriad sources spanning the breadth of human history, from literature to court records to manner books to autobiography...there is an interest in establishing a long dialogue across cultures, but most of the time it reads as a western tale with a smatter of eastern flavor to appear comprehensive. I like the choices, especially since i've read half of them in high school or college--"To Praise a Mockingbird", "Things Fall Apart", "Oliver Twist", "Walden", "The Jungle", "A Modest Proposal", "Lives of Artists"...--so I get bored. Lapham clearly writes for a Western moneyed audience (who else can afford the cover price?) but it fails to become more than a rehash of the narrow narrative we have already ingested as kids. Perhaps I should not judge from a single issue since it was a 2011 finalist for the National Magazine Award. It is doubtlessly better than most magazines. I also admit that the pictures are gorgeous (rubber cover!), the format is comfortable, and I enjoy its lack of ads. But I am bothered by its relatively few new material and its extreme collage nature. Throughout my life I have had to continuously work against an inability to focus and I suppose I dislike my reading materials mirroring my lack.
Monocle Review
"Monocle is a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design."
I especially love the photos, favorites being the series on Monacle's own base called the Midori House (above). I'm also amused by its Japanese slant: a good half of "50 things to improve your life" has to do with Japanese living: Kentaro recipes, salarymen cotton crepe trousers, Maruni furnitures, Hakusan crockery. The first bit is personally interesting; roommates and god knows that I need to figure out other food to eat besides dumplings, tofu, and dried ramen.
05/50: A Clutch of Kentaro Recipes You Know by Heart
"For those dismayed by the fact that Japanese food is fare easier to consume than it is to create. Kentaro Kobayashi is a godsend. The chef has penned a raft of Japanese cookery books, which make the taste of rustling up a buttered yellowtail rice bowl or miso pork noodles seem effortless. His home cooking books also dispel the lingering myth that Japanese cuisine consists only of raw fish, rice, and conveyer belts, with each focusing on a range of everyday food types. With many released under the umbrella title "Easy Japanese Cooking", favorites including Bento Love, Donburi Mania, Noodle Comfort and Veggie Heaven."
aid
i. i finished infinite jest.
ii. i watched dfw's interview again.
iii. i am keeping tabs on the crisis unfolding in congress and in the horn of africa.
somehow i feel a heavy link between i/ii and iii. during early college i very much contemplating joining peace corp or americorp. i think it was for a selfish purpose or rather because i had lost a sense of purpose. i couldn't see my future because i had so many things i wanted to do yet a real job seemed so drab and routine. everything was so accessible that i lost grasp of a one real thing. this is hard to explain. i am not saying that i should have only one interest or passion, but that even with multiple interests i should be in pursuit of a common ideal. perhaps kundera alludes to this when he explained the two kinds of men who pursue a multitude of women: "some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all woman. others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world." i think the former tribe is happier.
but i lost grasp of that ideal, partially due to the freedom that living ansilver-spoon american life has given me and partially due to lack of self-discipline. and so while i was fine and happy most of the time, there was also a layer of dissatisfaction that would momentarily surface whenever i was not doing anything exciting. so i do deeply identify with marathe's side of the debate in infinite jest and with dfw's cultural criticisms. i have felt the beginning of that slope which endless gratification gives us. it is not some big momentous event, but the small effects are palpable in unity. a recent performance by michael landy had him categorize and destroy every bit of his possession in a ford assembly line-like setting. i am reminded of how easy it is to obtain things, physically and mentally, yet how hard it is to unload them. and how constantly regretful i was and still am with all the things i want cluttering out what i need.
so i contemplated escape, to go to africa and find need and purpose again on the edge. unfortunately it didn't work out, though i am still searching for ways to reach the same effect. but looking at the current drought situation in africa and calls for changes in humanitarian aid, i am reminded of sophomore year again, which tells me some things about the nature of giving and why i am irked with people who show off their humanitarian effort or indiscriminately dump money on aid. one, because aid, in the form of money most often, is pretty much worthless these days without proper investigation what with all the rampant corruption among large non-profits. and two, because what gets pushed aside when considering volunteer work is that one often gains so much more in terms of becoming a fuller person than what one gives. it should be a humbling moment.
-------
a few select quotes from a tv interview with david foster wallace, 2003
dfw: "i know there's a paradox in the u.s. that the people who get powerful jobs tend to go to really good schools and often in school you study the liberal arts which is philosophy and classical stuff and languages which is all about the nobility of the spirit and broadening the mind and from this you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people and how to write copy that will make people buy a certain suv...and yeah its....i dn't know what to think about it then i'm not sure really that its ever been all that different. because very few of us get to use pretty much what we were taught. i know that in America there is an entire class, now i'm talking about a very specific class of upper and upper middle-class kids whose parents can afford to send them to very good schools where they get very good education, who often end up in jobs that are financially rewarding but do not have anything to do with what they were taught, persuasively taught, was important and worthwhile in school."
---
dfw: "when i was growing up one of the mythological periods is the great depression where the story goes that everyone pulled together...it seems to me now that the country's reaction to feeling frightened and insecure is to buy suvs that are large and massive and tank-like and make individual people feel safer but also gets 4 miles to the galleon in a country where the gasoline is probably one-fifth as expensive as it ought to be...there is a sanity in Europe about gasoline prices and fuel consumption that is not here yet...and yet we're voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to kill a few enemies. none of which are important but the fact that no one here is talking about the connections between how we live and what we drive and the things that are happening...the speed with which it becomes those bad people those bad fanatics, what they hate is our freedom and our way of life...which is hard to swallow. who hates freedom? people hate people not freedom.
i...now don't know what's going to happen. i as an american am scared...this is totally personally but i am more scared of us and that is a bleak place to be. i don't think this is an evil country or that americans are evil but we've had it very easy materially for a long time and we've gotten very little help in understanding things that are important besides being comfortable and i'm not sure anyone knows how we'll react if it gets bad here..."
interviewer: "are there any forms of rebellion?"
dfw: "sure. well there are people doing it all over the place. i don't know about people repelling down buildings and getting tear-gased and stuff. the people i know that are rebelling meaningfully don't buy a lot of stuff and don't get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend 4 or 5 hours researching an election than rather going by commercials. the thing about it is that in america we think of rebelling as this very sexy thing that involves action and force and looking good. my guess is that the forms of rebellion that will end up changing things here will be very quiet and individual and probably not all that interesting to look out from the outside...thinking in a chair and thinking about what this means and why the fact what i drive might have something to do with how in other parts of the world feel about me is not interesting."
ii. i watched dfw's interview again.
iii. i am keeping tabs on the crisis unfolding in congress and in the horn of africa.
somehow i feel a heavy link between i/ii and iii. during early college i very much contemplating joining peace corp or americorp. i think it was for a selfish purpose or rather because i had lost a sense of purpose. i couldn't see my future because i had so many things i wanted to do yet a real job seemed so drab and routine. everything was so accessible that i lost grasp of a one real thing. this is hard to explain. i am not saying that i should have only one interest or passion, but that even with multiple interests i should be in pursuit of a common ideal. perhaps kundera alludes to this when he explained the two kinds of men who pursue a multitude of women: "some seek their own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman in all woman. others are prompted by a desire to possess the endless variety of the objective female world." i think the former tribe is happier.
but i lost grasp of that ideal, partially due to the freedom that living an
so i contemplated escape, to go to africa and find need and purpose again on the edge. unfortunately it didn't work out, though i am still searching for ways to reach the same effect. but looking at the current drought situation in africa and calls for changes in humanitarian aid, i am reminded of sophomore year again, which tells me some things about the nature of giving and why i am irked with people who show off their humanitarian effort or indiscriminately dump money on aid. one, because aid, in the form of money most often, is pretty much worthless these days without proper investigation what with all the rampant corruption among large non-profits. and two, because what gets pushed aside when considering volunteer work is that one often gains so much more in terms of becoming a fuller person than what one gives. it should be a humbling moment.
-------
a few select quotes from a tv interview with david foster wallace, 2003
dfw: "i know there's a paradox in the u.s. that the people who get powerful jobs tend to go to really good schools and often in school you study the liberal arts which is philosophy and classical stuff and languages which is all about the nobility of the spirit and broadening the mind and from this you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people and how to write copy that will make people buy a certain suv...and yeah its....i dn't know what to think about it then i'm not sure really that its ever been all that different. because very few of us get to use pretty much what we were taught. i know that in America there is an entire class, now i'm talking about a very specific class of upper and upper middle-class kids whose parents can afford to send them to very good schools where they get very good education, who often end up in jobs that are financially rewarding but do not have anything to do with what they were taught, persuasively taught, was important and worthwhile in school."
---
dfw: "when i was growing up one of the mythological periods is the great depression where the story goes that everyone pulled together...it seems to me now that the country's reaction to feeling frightened and insecure is to buy suvs that are large and massive and tank-like and make individual people feel safer but also gets 4 miles to the galleon in a country where the gasoline is probably one-fifth as expensive as it ought to be...there is a sanity in Europe about gasoline prices and fuel consumption that is not here yet...and yet we're voting for people who are deciding to go over and very possibly kill hundreds of thousands of civilians to kill a few enemies. none of which are important but the fact that no one here is talking about the connections between how we live and what we drive and the things that are happening...the speed with which it becomes those bad people those bad fanatics, what they hate is our freedom and our way of life...which is hard to swallow. who hates freedom? people hate people not freedom.
i...now don't know what's going to happen. i as an american am scared...this is totally personally but i am more scared of us and that is a bleak place to be. i don't think this is an evil country or that americans are evil but we've had it very easy materially for a long time and we've gotten very little help in understanding things that are important besides being comfortable and i'm not sure anyone knows how we'll react if it gets bad here..."
interviewer: "are there any forms of rebellion?"
dfw: "sure. well there are people doing it all over the place. i don't know about people repelling down buildings and getting tear-gased and stuff. the people i know that are rebelling meaningfully don't buy a lot of stuff and don't get their view of the world from television and are willing to spend 4 or 5 hours researching an election than rather going by commercials. the thing about it is that in america we think of rebelling as this very sexy thing that involves action and force and looking good. my guess is that the forms of rebellion that will end up changing things here will be very quiet and individual and probably not all that interesting to look out from the outside...thinking in a chair and thinking about what this means and why the fact what i drive might have something to do with how in other parts of the world feel about me is not interesting."
remains
______________________________________________
reading and crying on a subway, learning how to buy roses, trying peruvian chicken, hugging edit, losing my phone and having friends argue how to best word a bribe/threat text, finding phone, waiting in agony until 3am amtrak, finally seeing the river tunnel behind school, eating the best two meal of my summer, washing and wearing a wet shirt at a cafe, sneaking sweet potato tots during "the tree of life", wandering columbia heights at night, desperately searching for housing late into the night, reading and crying on a subway home
*inspiration for the cuff was Dries van Noten's S/S 09
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
When you tell grownups that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
If you were to say to the grown-ups: "I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house that is!"
That's the way they are. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.
If you were to say to the grown-ups: "I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house that is!"
That's the way they are. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.
a favorite passage from infinite jest
aka some self-advice for law school
"TENNIS AND THE FERAL PRODIGY"
NARRATED BY HAL INCANDENZA, AN 11.5-MINUTE DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT CARTRIDGE DIRECTED, RECORDED, EDITED, AND -- ACCORDING TO THE ENTRY FORM -- WRITTEN BY MARIO INCANDENZA, IN RECEIPT OF NEW-NEW-ENGLAND REGIONAL HONORABLE MENTION IN INTERLACE TELENTERTAINMENT'S ANNUAL "NEW EYES, NEW VOICES" YOUNG FILMMAKERS' CONTEST, APRIL IN THE YEAR OF THE YUSHITYU 2007 MIMETIC-RESOLUTION-CARTRIDGE-VIEW-MOTHERBOARD-EASY-TO- INSTALL UPGRADE FOR INFERNATRON / INTERLACE TP SYSTEMS FOR HOME, OFFICE OR MOBILE (SIC), ALMOST EXACTLY THREE YEARS AFTER DR. JAMES O. INCANDENZA PASSED FROM THIS LIFE
Here is how to put on a big red tent of a shirt that has E.T.A. across the chest in gray.
Please ease carefully into your supporter and adjust the elastic straps so the straps do not bite into your butt and make bulged ridges in your butt that everyone can see once you've sweated through your shorts.
Here is how to wrap your torn ankle so tightly in its flesh-tone Ace bandages your left leg feels like a log.
Here is how to win, later.
This is a yellow iron-mesh Ball-Hopper full of dirty green dead old balls. Take them to the East Courts while the dawn is still chalky and no one's around except the mourning doves that infest the pines at sunrise, and the air is so sopped you can see your summer breath. Hit serves to no one. Make a mess of balls along the base of the opposite fence as the sun hauls itself up over the Harbor and a thin sweat breaks and the serves start to boom. Stop thinking and let it flow and go boom, boom. The shiver of the ball against the opposite fence. Hit about a thousand serves to no one while Himself sits and advises with his flask. Older men's legs are white and hairless from decades in pants. Here is the set of keys a stride's length before you in the court as you serve dead balls to no one. After each serve you must almost fall forward into the court and in one smoothmotion bend and scoop up the keys with your left hand. This is how to train yourself to follow through into the court after the serve. You still, years after the man's death, cannot keep your keys anywhere but on the floor.
This is how to hold the stick.
Learn to call the racquet a stick. Everyone does, here. It's a tradition : The Stick. Something so much an extension of you deserves a sobriquet.
Please look. You'll be shown exactly once how to hold it. This is how to hold it. Just like this. Forget all the near-Eastern-slice-backhand-grip bafflegab. Just say Hello is all. Just shake hands with the calfskin grip of the stick. This is how to hold it. The stick is your friend. You will become very close.
Grasp your friend firmly at all times. A firm grasp is essential for both control and power. Here is how to carry a tennis ball around in your stick-hand, squeezing it over and over for long stretches of time -- in class, on the phone, in lab, in front of the TP, a wet ball for the shower, ideally squeezing it at all times except during meals. See the Academy dining hall, where tennis balls sit beside every plate. Squeeze the tennis ball rhythmically month after year until you feel it no more than your heart squeezing blood and your right forearm is three times the size of your left and your arm looks from across a court like a gorilla's arm or a stevedore's arm pasted on the body of a child.
Here is how to do extra individual drills before the Academy's A.M. drills, before breakfast, so that after the thousandth ball hit just out of reach by Himself, with his mammoth wingspan and ghastly calves, urging you with nothing but smiles on to great and greater demonstrations of effort, so that after you've gotten your third and final wind and must vomit, there is little inside to vomit and the spasms pass quickly and an east breeze blows cooler past you and you feel clean and can breathe.
Here is how to don red and gray E.T.A. sweats and squad-jog a weekly 40 km. up and down urban Commonwealth Avenue even though you would rather set your hair on fire than jog in a pack. Jogging is painful and pointless, but you are not in charge. Your brother gets to ride shotgun while a senile German blows BBs at your legs both of them laughing and screaming Schnell. Enfield is due east of the Marathon's Hills of Heartbreak, which are just up Commonwealth past the Reservoir in Newton. Urban jogging in a sweaty pack is tedious. Have Himself hunch down to put a long pale arm around your shoulders and tell you that his own father had told him that talent is a sort of a dark gift, that talent is its own expectation : it is there from the start and either lived up to or lost.
Have a father whose own father lost what was there. Have a father who lived up to his own promise and then found thing after thing to meet and surpass the expectations of his promise in, and didn't seem just a whole hell of a lot happier or tighter wrapped than his own failed father, leaving you yourself in a kind of feral and flux-ridden state with respect to talent.
Here is how to avoid thinking about any of this by practising and playing until everything runs on autopilot and talent's unconscious exercise becomes a way to escape yourself, a long waking dream of pure play. The irony is that this makes you very good, and you start to become regarded as having a prodigious talent to live up to.
Here is how to handle being a feral prodigy. Here is how to handle being seeded at tournaments, signifying that seeding committees composed of old big-armed men publicly expect you to reach a certain round. Reaching at least the round you're supposed to is known at tournaments as "justifying your seed". By repeating this term over and over, perhaps in the same rhythm at which you squeeze a ball, you can reduce it to an empty series of phonemes, just formants and fricatives, trochaically stressed, signifying zip.
Here is how to beat unseeded, wide-eyed opponents from Iowa or Rhode Island in the early rounds of tournaments without expending much energy but also without seeming contemptuous.
This is how to play with personal integrity in a tournament's early rounds, when there is no umpire. Any ball that lands on your side and is too close to call : call it fair. Here is how to be invulnerable to gamesmanship. To keep your attention's aperture tight. Here is how to teach yourself, when an opponent maybe cheats on the line-calls, to remind yourself that what goes around comes around. That a poor sport's punishment is always self-inflicted.
Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.
Here is how to spray yourself down exactly once with Lemon Pledge, the ultimate sunscreen, then discover that when you go out and sweat into it it smells like close-order skunk.
Here is how to take nonnarcotic muscle relaxants for the back spasms that come from thousands of serves to no one.
Here is how to weep in bed trying to remember when your torn blue ankle didn't hurt every minute.
This is the whirlpool, a friend.
Here is how to set up the electric ball machine at dawn on the days Himself is away living up to what will be his final talent.
Here is how to tie a bow tie. Here is how to sit through small openings of your father's first art films, surrounded by surly foreign cigarette smoke and conversations so pretentious you literally cannot believe them, you're sure you have misheard them. Pretend you're engaged by the jagged angles and multiple exposures without pretending you have the slightest idea what's going on. Assume your brother's expression.
Here is how to sweat.
Here is how to hand a trophy to Lateral Alice Moore to put in the E.T.A. lobby's glass case under its system of spotlights and small signs.
What is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher.
Here is how to pack carbohydrates into your tissues for a four-singles two-doubles match day in a Florida June. Please learn to sleep with perpetual sunburn.
Expect some rough dreams. They come with the territory. Try to accept them. Let them teach you.
Keep a flashlight by your bed. It helps with the dreams.
Please make no extramural friends. Discourage advances from outside the circuit. Turn down dates.
If you do exactly the rehabilitative exercises They assign you, no matter how silly and tedious, the ankle will mend more quickly.
This type of stretch helps prevent the groin-pull.
Treat your knees and elbow with all reasonable care : you will have them with you for a long time.
Here is how to turn down an extramural date so you won't be asked again. Say something like "I'm terribly sorry I can't come out to see '8 1/2' revived on a wall-size Cambridge Celluloid Festival viewer on Friday, Kimberly, or Daphne, but you see if I jump rope for two hours then jog backwards through Newton till I puke They'll let me watch match-cartridges and then my mother will read aloud to me from the 'O.E.D.' until 2200 lights-out," and c. ; so you can be sure that henceforth Daphne / Kimberly / Jennifer will take her adolescent-mating-dance-type-ritual- socialization business somewhere else. Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive. Be constantly focused and on alert : feral talent is its own set of expectations and can abandon you at any one of the detours of so-called normal American life at any time, so be on guard.
Here is how to schnell.
Here is how to go through your normal adolescent growth spurt and have every limb in your body ache like a migraine because selected groups of muscles have been worked until thick and intensile and they resist as the sudden growth of bone tries to stretch them, and they ache all the time. There is medication for this condition.
If you are an adolescent, here is the trick to being neither quite a nerd nor quite a jock : be no one.
It is easier than you think.
Here is how to read the monthly E.T.A. and U.S.T.A. and O.N.A.N.T.A. rankings the way Himself read scholars' reviews of his multiple-exposure melodramas. Learn to care and not to care. They mean the rankings to help you determine where you are, not who you are. Memorize your monthly rankings, and forget them. Here is how : never tell anyone where you are.
This is also how not to fear sleep or dreams. Never tell anyone where you are. Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear : sometimes words that seem to express really invoke.
This can be tricky.
Here is how to get free sticks and strings and clothes and gear from Dunlop, Inc. as long as you let them spraypaint the distinctive Dunlop logo on your sticks' strings and sew logos on your shoulder and the left pocket of your shorts and use a Dunlop gear-bag, and you become a walking lunging sweating advertisement for Dunlop, Inc. ; this is all as long as you keep justifying your seed and preserving your rank ; the Dunlop, Inc. New New England Regional Athletic Rep will address you as "Our gray swan" ; he wears designer slacks and choking cologne and about twice a year wants to help you dress and has to be slapped like a gnat.
Be a Student of the Game. Like most clichés of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. Peers who fizzle or blow up or fall down, run away, disappear from the monthly rankings, drop off the circuit. E.T.A. peers waiting for deLint to knock quietly at their door and ask to chat. Opponents. It's all educational. How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This is why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary.
See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.
This is your body. They want you to know. You will have it with you always.
On this issue there is no counsel : you must make your best guess. For myself, I do not expect ever really to know.
But in the interval, if it is an interval : here is Motrin for your joints, Noxzema for your burn, Lemon Pledge if you prefer nausea to burn, Contracol for your back, benzoin for your hands, Epsom salts and anti-inflammatories for your ankle, and extracurriculars for your folks, who just wanted to make sure you didn't miss anything they got.