Savannas of the Mind

2011-08-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights sleep, worked too long and too hard in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.
-Steinbeck

2011-02-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

"I just want to live and be happy. I was happy to be able to pay my rent, to have my independence. This was like the best thing in the world for me. I had no real ambitions at this point... Just make friends, enjoy myself, and be responsible... Basically, I didn't get into any trouble. My independence was very important to me."
DMancuso

2011-02-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

You don't wanna trip and mess your face up

-slakah the beatchild, b-boy beef

2011-01-17T19:46:00.001-05:00

You’ll miss the close friendships you made and being a five-minute walk from all of your best friends. When you graduate, some of them might move back to their hometown and/or get real jobs, and you’ll suddenly realize you no longer have the luxury to lie in bed with them while nursing a hangover on a Wednesday afternoon. Your world has gotten too big for that. You no longer live in a vacuum. Duh.

2010-12-21T13:48:00.000-05:00

Consider the cultural capital of a menial office job (if you can find one). In large part thanks to The Office, Mad Men, and the hipster tendency to celebrate the irony of those antiquated, uncanny phenomena that persevere into our modern age despite their outdated nature, menial office jobs such as file clerk and front desk manager at Enterprise Car Rental are poised to become the next highly desired jobs captured only by the most elite in attitude, fashion and diet (via irony).

2010-11-23T23:16:00.001-05:00

i love this girl.

2010-11-21T12:53:00.005-05:00

We were smoking cigarettes on the roof-top parking deck talking about his very German mother and his opinion of her when MZ leaned in to kiss me. I recoiled and gave some excuse about not knowing who I was, some crap about not wanting to involve anyone else in my confusion.

What bat shit... or was it? I've told so many lies and spun countless more half-truths that it's all starting to sound the same. What's worse is that I am not even sure if I care either way. I hesitate to admit it, but it appears I am a full-fledged sociopath now, a pathological liar of the worst kind.

2010-11-03T23:42:00.001-04:00

Maybe what’s happening in America today will seem funny to some other culture in some future time—how it happened that in the depths of America’s decline, Liberals, the great opposition to everything mean and ruthless in this culture, couldn’t muster up a get-together for anything better than a mock-in. Led by a clown.

2010-10-24T23:51:00.002-04:00

HOUELLEBECQ

I think that there is a sharp contrast for most people between life at university, where they meet lots of people, and the moment when they enter the workforce, when they basically no longer meet anyone. Life becomes dull. So as a result people get married to have a personal life. I could elaborate but I think everyone understands.

INTERVIEWER

So marriage is just a reaction to...

HOUELLEBECQ

To a largely solitary life.

and on and on

2010-09-14T19:00:00.002-04:00

The sart in atlanta!

The wait is killing me

pninian

2010-09-12T00:57:00.005-04:00

"As a foreign-born American (an alien as alien as they come) whose actual name is Zbigniew Guzlowski... I lived in the US for 18 years before I realized that the reason I had no friends, no job, no future was that I had a name no one could pronounce. Zbigniew!

What was that but a mouthful of odd consonants in unnatural association! Imagine. A “Z” butting up against an “N,” a “G” leaning into another “N,” and all of this abomination ending in a “W.” Was there any such American name? One ending in “W”? Absolutely not. Since changing my name to “John,” I can’t say that all of God’s grace bathes my head and lightens my load, but I can say that things are a bit easier. People no longer frown when I say my first name. That only starts when I get to the second.

Now all I have to do is make some changes to Guzlowski."

via; by the guy who also wrote this.

2010-08-26T19:39:00.002-04:00

"Recently she has been very into names & fate. She believes that if your life is not going well, you will have to change your name. She asked a Master to change hers. Everyday she would stand in front of a mirror to call up her new name as many times as possible. She thinks that her life is now moving towards a brighter path."

-what time is it there, director's notes

2010-08-26T00:22:00.004-04:00

dear clorox,

you are missing the point. do you even watch the show? how am i supposed to trust you with my whites if you can't understand a simple tv drama?

good god.

tempo perdido

2010-08-22T18:34:00.005-04:00

"The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life."

2010-07-26T22:56:00.002-04:00

"...in finding others who are willing, sometimes against their best interests, to venture that kind of generosity, (Baumbach) turns what might have been a case study of neurosis into an exploration of loneliness, friendship and the sense of emotional deprivation that can fester in a landscape of comfort and privilege."

2010-07-06T21:20:00.003-04:00

It is difficult, often impossible, to live up to the standards that we set for ourselves now that our standards can soar. Freed slightly from the fear of disappointing others, we now carry the fear of disappointing ourselves, not living up to our own varied potentials...

2010-07-05T22:37:00.012-04:00

I don't think I would ever say that my four years in DC were the best of my life but I do miss them. I miss the girls, even though I know they probably don't see it that way. I miss our naps, our adventures, just our everyday living. I miss U street, M street, G street. I even miss J street. Sometimes I want to jump on a plane and surprise everyone. Just show up, say hello, grab a drink at Lucky bar, a lunch cocktail at Leopold, meet for brunch at Levante's or at the french place in Georgetown. Free a grasshopper from what's his face's townhouse. Watch the boys play at Rock & Roll. I want to sit around in Brody & Zach's front yard w/ some 40s, pretend to do homework at Busboys & Poets. Do people still do these things? I try not to think of it but sometimes I can't help myself.

memories (via)

2010-06-30T20:47:00.021-04:00

Football

Active Child

Mint

Happy America weekend.

Update: I took a nap after watching the tragic S.American massacre and had to skip the Mint show in order to make it to Active Child. Pat Grossi & Co ended up playing later than L & I had expected, for which we wanted to kick ourselves but... c'est la vie.

In any case, the show was fairly entertaining: in person, Grossi is charming & quite beautiful and in spite of all the traveling he has had to do (he was at my beloved Black Cat just days ago, sob) he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber, to borrow a phrase. I have long given up any pretense of coolness so I did not hesitate to have him sign my copy of Curtis Lane.

The venue, arguably more popular as a gallery (and a reputable one at that), had poor acoustics that did his music no justice. Grossi's frustration was apparent, as was the audience's, but L & I enjoyed the experience nonetheless.

Speaking of which, a quick sweep of said audience assured me that my ilk was pitiably outnumbered - this is not a how-many-people-of color-can-I-spot kind of observation (4, incidentally, including myself, but who's counting?) but one focused more at the illusory mid20-early30 sthing crowd that Atlanta is supposedly famous for. But that's a different story for a different time.

consuming the romantic utopia

2010-06-05T02:54:00.003-04:00

"someday, someone will love me as much as i love cupcakes."

via

marvelous

redemption, and a tall ice coffee

2010-05-15T01:03:00.001-04:00

via

I've always believed I had the worst knees on earth, I think my father once said it flippantly not realizing it would traumatize me all my life. Seeing this girl makes me want to wear the shortest dress I can find.

2010-05-07T21:11:00.006-04:00

Is it sad that the only thing I have to look forward to is a concert that doesn't take place for another 2 months?

Pearl Habor - Luv Goon

Update: I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.

2010-05-04T00:58:00.017-04:00

I had only intended to make a quick grocery run that day, grab some yogurt, cilantro, and a few other things I needed for dinner from Al-Nour. But I'd gotten distracted and found myself heading south on 400, into the city. The drive is a long one and covers an unending stretch of serpentine tarmac lanes contained between brutal concrete barriers, beyond which the unchanging scenery of kudzu-covered forest lay. In some places the Marta tracks run alongside the road and then fly overhead only to disappear into the weald. I imagine there are squirrels and other woodland creatures in there too, but the trees' branches grow thick and any movement is easily veiled.

I am constantly surprised by the sheer abundance of the natural resources here. It is embarrassing to keep having such an unsophisticated and romantic reaction to something as banal as trees but it's really something to see. My impression of forests growing up was that they were quickly being depleted, to a paltry 3% in my native Kenya at that time. Once, driving across the Kenyan-Ugandan border, I was stricken at the difference in the landscapes - Uganda's luscious greenery and well-fed livestock offering a stark contrast to Kenya's arid semi-desert and it's prehistoric looking Zebu cattle.

Juxtaposed to this memory of a less bountiful land, is the thought of the people who were at one time forced to turn this dense boscage into farmable fields. I think it was James Baldwin that had recorded having felt that this fertile red Georgia earth had gotten its color from the blood dripping down from these trees.

And here I am, an embodiment of contradictions and complicated convergences, empowered and frightened by this history that predates me and excited to see what my contribution to this narrative will be.

2010-05-02T14:38:00.007-04:00

I happen to agree with Ebert's claim that 3D has (so far) been a waste of a perfectly good dimension. But for some funny reason, reading his Newsweek article makes me want to change my mind. According to Ebert, 3D is not in the least bit utilitarian but mostly decorative. It is impractical in many ways - its technology in some cases even consists of deconstructing conventional film techniques. 3D features abound with distractions, and elicit discomforting emotions, breaking the fictional spell of film - an intrusion of the real. Ebert accuses 3D filmmakers of displaying a lack of originality, of resorting to a method that has been tried and proven as a failure in the past, but this for me adds to the charm of this modern reinterpretation, lending it a sense of nostalgia.

The way he describes it, 3D sounds like the most natural mutation of film media, a mutation that makes it, dare I say it, delightfully post-modern.

2010-04-26T00:56:00.002-04:00

One day, I don't know which, I found myself in this world, having lived unfeelingly from the time I was evidently born until then. When I asked where I was, everyone misled me, and they contradicted each other. When I asked them to tell me what I should do they all spoke falsely, and each one said something different. When in bewilderment I stopped on the road, everyone was shocked that I didn't keep going to no one knew where, or else turn back - I, who's woken up at the crossroads and didn't know the part that everyone else recited straight off, also without knowing it. I saw that I was dressed as a page, but they didn't give me the queen, and blamed me for not having her. I saw that I had a message in my hand to deliver, and when I told them that the sheet of paper was blank, they laughed at me. And still I don't know if they laughed because all sheets are blank, or because all messages are to be guessed.

-The Book of Disquiet

2010-04-21T22:52:00.001-04:00

self-sabotage is never limited to just one part of your life.

2010-04-12T00:07:00.006-04:00

"Sometimes I do this thing where I bring up a subject to stop thinking about it entirely..."

Elsewhere.

2010-04-09T12:45:00.002-04:00

Le Fooding.. makes me think of the Top Flr/Soundtable/Dinner Party guys.

Editor's note: Awesome.

2010-03-20T03:10:00.002-04:00

via

2010-03-08T13:24:00.008-05:00

HP makes me want to say stupid things.

Frantic, desperate things like, "I really like you," and "have a nice day." I heard myself say these things at breakfast and felt my stomach lurch. Not just because he did not say them back - I don't even think it would have been any better if he had - but because they were untrue. Hollow and contrived.

He has a way with words - a way to make them come out of your ridiculous mouth while he just sits there. His face open, generous, inviting.

albatross, p.1

2010-02-25T21:28:00.012-05:00

In the entryway to his office, my lawyer had hung a picture of himself from his football days. His glory days. The caption read Donald "Dixie" Lambert, c/o '75... I do not remember the name of the college, but I remember it being insignificant. And I remember silently reprimanding myself for making such a condescending judgement - I was the one, after all, who needed this guy's help.

To be fair, I had not exactly applied myself in finding an attorney - his was the last letter I had received in the mail advertising legal services for people who found themselves in my situation. In fact, I think I chose him for his incompetence, so it would be hypocritical to hold this endearing factor against him. I had been amused at the time that anyone was still sending me these letters, the incident having occurred over a month before. What's more, the tone of the letter had been very relaxed, even casual, and the address had been hastily scribbled on the envelop almost as if it had been completed just as the mailman had knocked at the door.

Of course I realized that I was taking a chance, waging my entire future on the skill of this already unpromising attorney. And maybe that says something about the state of mind I was in. I don't know. I was a little broke, but not as broke as some of the other people I had seen, and I had given up a little hope, but was not yet completely hopeless. So I hired a so-so lawyer, because it was certainly better than not having one at all. Plus, I figured if I was going to spend any more money on this debacle than I had to, it would be after I knew for sure what my fate would be - because winning one of these cases could not be thought of as a real victory, when you consider all the fines and fees one ends up paying.

And that was more or less how the rest of my experience with the justice system went. I was lucky because, for one, I was (and still am!) a girl, and an educated one at that, and you will be surprised by the kinds of free passes you get for simply having gone to college. How less threatening you are for not having been born a man. Maybe I am imagining these things. Maybe I am being primitive and not post- enough or whatever. But this is something that I felt.

I skipped my arraignment - one of the perks of having hired a legal representative, a fact I reminded myself of every time I cut a payment check and thought of all the things I could have been buying. I am pretty sure that this is one of the intended punishments. In fact, I remember one of the policemen at the detention center gleefully informing me that my offense would cost me up to $6,000.

I did, however, go to my pre-trial conference - here, I will admit to having been sincerely concerned, so much so that I had been unable to succumb to anything more than fitful little spells of sleep for about a week before that day. My presence turned out to be completely unnecessary since all the negotiations took place in a back room somewhere, and I spent most of my time watching other people's deliberations. Other people being those who could not afford (or simply did not think it vital) to hire someone to do their dirty work. I was determined to note their every feature, every movement, so I could write about it all at a later time. If this experience was worth anything, it was so I would have something to write about. Stories of my war days. My glory days.

2010-02-24T00:09:00.006-05:00

Have I really become so cynical and faithless that displays of anything different genuinely stun me?

At lunch, when J talks about religion and being in the army and being married, and says things like, "my life is a promise to God," I almost choke on my straw because I think he is joking. But I can see that he really means it.

I realize that my disbelief at his, well, belief, can come off as condescending. But it is not.

Super Eagles - Love is a Real Thing

[via stg]

2010-02-22T14:03:00.002-05:00

I know it's the New Yorker, but this is a story that starts out really well and then just falls apart somewhere down the line.

2010-02-17T00:27:00.002-05:00

There are so many reasons why I should just take the job and move to Florida, the most important one being that I don't think I have it in me to live through another winter.

I guess this means I should start getting ready to say another round of good-byes.

2010-02-16T23:00:00.001-05:00

One of the constants in my life is that I've never been bored, ever. Depressed, yes. I've been very depressed. I think it's a natural condition. I think we want life to be more than it is, somehow. But I don't know how you can be bored. Sometimes, you will be with someone who you feel is boring and I, as an actor, would say, 'What is the quality that makes that person boring to me?' And that's interesting, to deconstruct it.

- Dustin Hoffman

2010-02-03T06:51:00.001-05:00

In Bolaño’s ten novels and three story collections—all completed in his torrential final decade, before he succumbed to a chronic liver ailment that he suspected would seal his fate—characters go through life in a state of agitated migration. They sever friendships, quit jobs, abandon apartments without giving notice, skip the return flight home, assume new identities, flee combustive love affairs, cut off ties to everyone they have ever known, head off into the desert, simply disappear. Relationships, in Bolaño’s world, tend to be febrile but fleeting, yielding memories suffused by the afterglow of emotion...

2010-01-25T12:48:00.043-05:00

Sebastian tells me he will be playing at Smith's next weekend. I imagine that he would like for me to go see him. I'd always suspected that he'd be in a horrible metal band for some reason, and I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised when he said he would be doing a Sinatra cover. But now that I think about it, Sinatra makes a lot of sense.

Naturally, the invitation was implied. He did not exactly come out and ask me but he's talked about it enough that I should have gotten the hint by now. The last time he mentioned the show was at the Porter this past Friday. We never plan to see eachother, I don't even have his #, but somehow these things always work out. He had on a brown leather jacket and a watch he said his father had left him. He talks a lot about that too, how his father died, and I suppose it's because he is still sad about it. My father is alive and I don't even have a watch for my troubles I want to say, but I worry this might be misconstrued as insensitive.

Sebastian is twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, and bakes bread for the local bars and restaurants when he isn't doing Sinatra covers. He makes the croutons for the Porter and gets to drink all the beer and bourbon he wants in return.

In May, he says, he will move to Maine and learn how to be a proper chef. These are his words, not mine. I am not even sure what the difference is between a proper chef and an improper one.

I've been thinking about Lisbon, I tell him. What was that line I read the other day? If I had the world in my hand, I am quite sure I would trade it for a ticket to Rua dos Douradores...

Or maybe Cape Verde. Something in the Lusosphere within my frequent flyer miles limit.

Once, Sebastian and I were sitting across each other at the bar having some beers, when his roommate showed up, rather unexpectedly, and joined us for another couple of drinks. It was the first time I had had rabbit terrine, and I remember squirming just a little in my seat as I dragged the gelatinous spread over my breadstick.

Samson, the roommate, well, ex-roommate by now, as he has since moved to New York, is also a chef with musical inclinations. He had at one time fronted a rap group, which in its hey day could have been compared to the likes of ATCQ. This is all according to Sam. I would have to believe him as they never made it past negotiations with their record company and were forced to disband before they released anything. There is a certain earnestness to Sam that makes it impossible to not believe him, and this story is not at all outside the realms of possibility, so I really have no reason to be skeptical.

We stayed at the bar very late that night and I spent the rest of the time drinking coke after coke until I was sober enough to drive but when Sam and Sebastian asked me if I needed to crash on their couch, I only paused for a second before I accepted the invitation. I was mostly just bored, and interested to see what their house looked like. You see, one of my flaws is that I am a romantic - in the literal sense, where I expect that we wear our interiors on our sleeves, which is to say that I often make inferences about people's innermost selves by obsessively overanalyzing visible ciphers. All it takes is the mere sight of a coffee mug or a padded footstool to set me off on one of my delusions. I was eager to see what treasures I would uncover.

In any case, we were soon back at their house and I wish there was more I could say about the experience but my other flaw is to lose myself in abstract cogitation and that's what must have happened that night because I neither took notice of my surroundings nor of the way in which the boys lived in them. Not even a floorboard managed to impress itself upon my memory and it's almost as if I was never there.

in response to your short email

2010-01-21T18:31:00.003-05:00

yes, i am alive.

right now i am having dinner but in general, i am a financial analyst for a midsize company in atl.

i know, i can't believe it either. they actually call me the #s whiz.

your outfit? i'm sure i love it. i could probably borrow the top you wore to the office today for a night out.

miss you more.

2010-01-17T14:00:00.004-05:00

agh.

saint sebastian

2010-01-03T23:22:00.007-05:00

He looked about thirty, thin, rather above average height, exaggeratedly bent over when seated but less so when he stood up, dressed with a certain negligence, which was not entirely negligence. On his pale uninteresting face an air of suffering did not stir interest, although it was difficult to define what kind of suffering that air suggested - it seemed to suggest several kinds: privation, anguish and a suffering born from the indifference of having suffered a great deal.

- The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

I could quote passages from this book all week. I've long thought about a character I want to write about, Sebastian, and this book gives me ideas...

Happy new year.

and happy bday v.

context

2009-12-27T11:58:00.004-05:00

What I want to tell you about is the kitchen, with women’s bright eyes flashing as they roll out the dough, and the herb garden religiously tended, and the delicate meal eaten in the shade of a fig tree. But alas, we are in Gaza, and I can’t talk about the kitchen without talking about everything else.

Also, this gave me the chills.

2009-12-17T22:00:00.003-05:00

Diane Keaton was living in a stark white apartment, in an Art Deco building on East Sixty-eighth Street. It boasted a white-on-white living room, which contained a white-on-white painting. The kitchen was also white: not only its walls and floors and Braun and Osterizer appliances, its crisp white telephone and white watering can, but even the Keri lotion was in a white container perched on a white shelf. “White is very cleansing for me,” she explained. Except for her two cats, Buster and Whitey, she lived alone.

- The Unruly Life of Woody Allen, Marion Meade

via hungry hearted

2009-12-12T01:06:00.000-05:00

i want these

2009-12-12T00:09:00.000-05:00

You don't need to be so precise with mythic time.

2009-12-11T00:44:00.000-05:00

I have gotten out of bed so many mornings, thrown on so many different versions of myself since January. It's hard to know who was walking out of my front door back then. I know that she wasn't writing. I remember that, and I remember that he was telling me to write and that I was growing tired of listening. Writing, to him, to us, back then, meant nothing if not a name on a page in a dying breed of distraction.

2009-12-10T23:52:00.004-05:00

Boys, a word of advice for this new year. Take it slow.

2009-12-05T22:01:00.000-05:00

No amount of self-awareness made her vices easier to cope with.

2009-12-05T21:56:00.001-05:00

2009-12-03T00:51:00.008-05:00

My writing feels tedious and inauthentic.

Not that I've ever been really great at it, but I have had a lot of encouragement from a few people I really admire and I'd just always hoped that I could produce whatever it is they saw in me - the goods, as Hache called it.

This idea of one's natural voice keeps coming up and I have heard that it could take up to ten years (a dozen full-length plays, forty four short stories and five novels even!) before anything really feels right.

I just don't know.

I think my greatest problem stems from an inability to finish anything. My archenemy, Mr. Odida, cruel Mr. Odida, explained it best: much gusto, but no stamina.

I hated him, his beady eyes, and his white white lab coat but he was right.

2009-11-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

With herbivore boys and carnivore girls, it seems the land of samurai, sumo wrestlers and geisha girls is remaking its gender landscape anew.

2009-11-28T09:04:00.000-05:00

You must have seen them: these small towns and tiny villages of my homeland. They have learned one day by heart and they scream it out into the sunlight over and over again like great gray parrots. Near night though they grow preternaturally pensive. You can see it in the town squares, where they struggle to solve the dark question that hangs in the air. It is touching, and a little ludicrous, to the foreigner, because he knows without a second thought that if there is an answer—any answer at all—it certainly won’t come from the small towns and tiny villages of my homeland, try as sincerely as they might, poor things.

2009-11-18T22:04:00.002-05:00

"And there were, of course, some whose sense of dislocation didn't even involve the rest of the world: the rift had been so deeply absorbed that they were rendered foreigners in their own country, reading Jane Austen to feel cosy."

"...I began the process of considering that one's place in the world might be merely incidental, just a matter of perspective. Perhaps the centre was not firm at all... Even the past – home of sorts to all of us – wasn't fixed. History is only someone's story."

Kiran Desai

2009-11-16T19:49:00.033-05:00

I've been going through the worst streak of bad luck over the past couple of months.

First, the summer ended and all the frolicking and merriment came to a screeching halt.

Literally.

I totaled my car and got into a ton of legal beef that I am still trying to figure out.

God.

Worst possible scenario. I can't even talk about it. It's making me call my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) into question. I feel like I'd unwittingly upset the moral balance of life and now have to pay for it.

THEN, I took this fake "promotion" at the office which ended up being twice as much work and not nearly as much pay.

Plus they're doing some serious lay-offs (even my prez got the axe. yikes.) so I am constantly nervous about losing my miserable job. Which prompted me to clear my already bare cubicle down to the basic necessities - I'm talking coffee mug and a pack of gum - so if that day comes, I can just pack up and leave in less than five minutes. Avoid a long awkward exit like the one ole' president had.

Life is hard.

And now I don't have my Jon Hamm shrine in the top drawer to get me through it.

I've also bummed out really bad in the romance dept. Complete catastrophe.

For whatever reason (I am thinking my qi probably just got out of whack with everything else that's been going on), things got incredibly uncomfortable with The Summer Boy and that had to end. Which sucks cause he had the BEST shampoo.

There was a little glimmer of hope with a couple of prospective Winter Snugglers but that was soon extinguished when one turned out to be a father (no judgement, but there's just something too real about hanging out with a man that has actually impregnated a woman. I was constantly terrified that his ambitious gametes were out to get me. And I already had too much to be paranoid about. I mean, really) and the other a 34-yr old man which was a deal breaker for me cause I'm trying so hard to cling to my fading youth and couldn't bear the thought that I might actually be old enough to date someone that far removed from it.

And of course there are the regular day-to-day agonies of living in Atlanta that I just can't go into for the sake of my sanity.

To stave off the depression, I've been eating out a lot... which has its good & bad sides. I've gained about 5000 pounds thanks to Top Flr - the DJ/owner is cute enough to warrant the spelling. Seriously cute. Go now and see for yourself.

Where was I... right, their fat-drenched (but so worth it) duck confit gnocchi.

This and all the other indulgences at my favorite Atlanta eateries gave me reason to start working out again. Or at least consider it.

My mother keeps reminding me of her sister -- skinny through most of her early twenties and then just suddenly blew up when she hit 26. So I know it's in my genes. Voy a explotar. It's just too much.

But I guess it's not all been too bad... I've had more time to catch up on my reading / film watching. So that's something to be glad about.

I read something (it may have been in O magazine... desperate times) about winter hardships reaping greater benefits in the long run. I think they were talking about horticulture but I'm taking whatever I can get.

Pillow Talk

2009-08-25T18:22:00.006-04:00

I once knew a boy who bought me tons of beer and took me to hip-hop concerts. He had a freudian obsession with Freud & kept a copy of Crime and Punishment under his mattress. I met him in my Shakespeare class where we talked mostly about bowls & dub. He showed me his Jarmusch films & I made him tacos for dinner. Sometimes, I'd let him tell me about his plans for getting us a loft in Philly.

What Does it Take? [via GvsB]

Past Lives

2009-08-17T23:10:00.002-04:00

Q belonged to Q.&A.,

to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions,

it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets-

2009-08-12T21:25:00.009-04:00

HP is 27 and lives in a high-rise condo he bought about three years ago in midtown Atlanta. It is sparse and perched on the 19th floor, right near the very top of the building. He has a midsize kitchen, in which he most likely uses just the fridge, the dishwasher and the microwave. Yet he insists that he makes "a mean curry." He's told me this time and time again, and even though I don't quite think it's an invitation to dinner, I can tell it's meant to impress me.

The living area is sort of small, with one end of the L-shaped room designated as a dining area that seats four. The table's glass top rests on slender steel legs, as do the chairs, mere vinyl straps tautly stretched over the shiny tubes. A huge floor-to-ceiling window takes up one wall and through it I can see a neon-lit skyline with jutting spires here, conspicuous gaps there - a growing city, Atlanta still has some time to go before it's all filled out. Below, a maze of shadowed streets cross over each other in oblique angles.

I recognize the BOA Plaza from an article I had read on pomo architecture. Something about it being a pastiche of the art-deco greats, the Chrysler building, the Empire State. HP sees my eyes rest on the skyscraper and walks towards the window to point at it. "My friends and I call that the blunt building," he says, his finger rolling up and down the tower's length. "See how it's smoldering at the top," he explains and I am a little surprised, computer engineers aren't supposed to say things like that.

Behind us there is a wall covered in mirrors which is a little comical and I catch a glimpse of myself holding back a laugh in it. It would've been an uncomfortable space were it not for the luxurious persian rug beneath us. From the right angle, it looks almost as if the spindly furniture is floating atop this carpet, high up in the sky, tetherless.

The other end of the room is his tv lounge. Even more surprises here. The leather couch and wide screen TV are ordinary, even expected, but then there is a turn table, hooked up to what looks like an extensive sound system, and next to it, three or four carts of records. I drop to my knees to look through the labels, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, The Coasters, and so many other soul/funk records I don't recognize. HP gets giddy and flops down next to me to show off his favorites, some of which are as pristine as they were on their debut dates decades ago, gelled and permed coifs tucked away in protective nylon sleeves. He tells me how they came into his possesion, the hours he spent poring through collections at nondesript record stores in Valdosta where he grew up. I think of his parents, Indian immigrants whose tastes are probably more inclined towards Asha Bhonsle than Aretha Franklin. And I think of my parents, my dad's rock records, my mother's funk collection.

So he has some Sly on and we are on his red leather couch, our feet stretched out before us on an ottoman, and I feel like I am 12 again. His toes brush against mine and he winces, "you're cold," he says. I shrug and before I say anything, explain that I have bad circulation, he rubs each one between his hands. I am a little embarrassed by this gesture, and I try to change the subject.

"Does your plant need a lot of attention?" I ask, and he falls back in his seat, understanding my question as a cue to stop.

"No, I water it every few days and I have to clean the leaves but that's it really," he explains and I nod, but something in me wants to be argumentative so I press on.

"It must be a hassle when you go out of town," I say, not sure where I am going with this. It is a rather large plant, lush and green and almost out of place in this modern apartment.

He flinches and then almost immediately smiles, "I have my brother come by and make sure everything is ok but I don't think he minds." It obviously takes a lot more effort to get under his skin.

"But it's a chore, a responsibility," I say. He sighs and moves closer, he has his own ways of changing the subject.

I've seen HP a few times since then. Most memorably on June 25, when Michael Jackson's death was announced - I remember because HP is a big fan and kept his records playing through out the night. And then again just last night.

I suppose we should be comfortable with our arrangement at this point. And I suppose we are to a certain extent: not only did he snore for most of the night, but he also did not waste any time on the polite exchanges we usually participate in to distract ourselves from the fact that our relationship is turning out to be a purely carnal one.

Both of these things were something of a turn off for me but then there is also the good side to this easiness we seem to have adopted: on his trip to the grocery store earlier in the day, without any prompting from me, he had picked up some contact solution since I had complained about having to keep my contacts on all night. And later in the night, when I went to get a glass of water, I saw a bottle of my favorite wine in his fridge - a dry Spanish white I had introduced him to a few weeks ago.

Yet there is still nothing concrete between us. I read somewhere that once you sleep with a person, you ought to make plans for your next meeting right then & there. This is not the case with HP & I. Meetings are usually scheduled just hours or even minutes before they actually happen and this is done mostly via text messaging. When I left his place this morning, it was in such a rush and I had barely said a couple of words to him before I was out the door. And when I think about it, I know I don't want anything serious/long-term - just the other day I cut a date short with some kid when he started talking about meeting his mother for lunch.

I mentioned this to my bartender at lunch today (No judgement. First off, I am on vacation, so frequenting a watering hole at all hours of the day/night is perfectly acceptable. Also, since I stopped going to therapy, my bartender is all I've got. That or developing some self-injurious habit which would not be good). He seems to think that this instability comes from my being 23. I took some comfort in this opinion, it offers the possibility of outgrowing this insanity/inanity. Or at least it did until said bartender told me about his wife and five year old son - keep in mind that he is only 3 years older than I am.

"Don't worry about it," he said when he saw my face fall. "I still don't watch the 10 o'clock news."

2009-07-08T16:57:00.001-04:00

Simon was adept at not answering questions, but actually he rarely needed to, because I never asked them. The extent to which I never asked him questions is astonishing in retrospect - I blame Albert Camus. My normal instinct was to bombard people with questions, to ask about every detail of their lives. But just around the time I met Simon I became an existentialist, and one of the rules of existentialism as practised by me and my disciples at Lady Eleanor Holles School was that you never asked questions. Asking questions showed that you were naïve and bourgeois; not asking questions showed that you were sophisticated and French. I badly wanted to be sophisticated. And, as it happened, this suited Simon fine. My role in the relationship was to be the schoolgirl ice maiden, implacable, ungrateful, unresponsive to everything he said or did. To ask questions would have shown that I was interested in him, even that I cared, and neither of us really wanted that.

2009-07-07T00:22:00.009-04:00

So sometimes I like to make up stories and pass them off as real life experiences. I first started doing this because my real life was kinda crazy and hard to explain to other people and the never-ending questions got annoying and/or embarrassing and sometimes (sob) sad, so it was just easier to make fun little fibs that tied everything up in neat little packages. Then as time went on, I started to enjoy these stories I was making up and it even came naturally to me. The best part is that they were never really extraordinary tales, never anything insanely over the top, but very rational narratives, so I never had to feel guilty for over-embellishing my life to the wonderful people who cared to listen.

In any case, this weekend on the 4th, I spent the day with a couple I have recently become friendly with - the Qs. They are the most adorable people I have met in Atlanta and they own a little house in one of those Midtown "transition" neighborhoods, where I was a guest of theirs for the festivities - bbq, some fireworks. The gathering was doubly significant as they had recently adopted a new pup and were celebrating his arrival. All in all, it was a very American occasion indeed.

Mrs. Q is an Ivy-leaguer turned retail manager and Mr. Q is a chef at a local university. They met while traveling across the world on separate trips and were so enamored by each other that they quickly changed their itineraries once their paths crossed and ended up completing the rest of their travels together.

"Get out there," Mrs. Q often tells me.

"See the world," she advises, "you never know what you will find."

Their near-fairy-tale romance is so enviable that I almost forget that what I want is the very opposite. I've seen enough of the world, thank you very much, I want to say to her but then the little fibber in me pops out and I make something up about always having wanted to join the Peace Corps.

Symbols & Signs

2009-06-09T16:48:00.007-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about what I should be doing with my life and as if the world is in some sort of conspiracy to make this harder, I got a promotion at the job that I am not so crazy about. Given the current economic reality, I suppose the last thing I should be doing is pursuing abstract and all too untenable dreams, but I applied to a writing program a few months ago and just got my acceptance email... off the waitlist, and not with the scholarship I had hoped for, but it is a spot that many aspiring writers can only wish for.

So what do I do?

I am not too certain that I can afford to go to this conference without the financial aid, and really, if they only accepted me off the waitlist, is my writing ready for this kind of exposure? But do I have the luxury to be this picky? What's to say that I will even get in next time I apply.

To make things even more complicated, because the promotion is for a newly created position in my company, with responsibilites that need my attention right away, I don't think I would be able to take a vacation at the time the conference runs, which means I would have to forfeit one for the other.

With these questions on my mind, it's almost too much that the New Yorker should have something to say about it all. And no, I don't think the magazine's editors tailor their material specifically to my life, but I'm jes seyin...

FOB

2009-05-11T13:08:00.005-04:00

lennon.

Also, somewhat related... I recently signed up for a Netflix membership which was possibly the best thing I've done in a while. Where else would I find Sembene/Godard/Fellini/Bunuel imports for less than $10 a month? It really is incredible.

Finally, I have made several excursions into the city and have much to report. That, along with equally intriguing findings on the suburbs.

O and before I forget, it seems like the apocalypse is on everyone's mind.

The Mexican Suitcase

2009-05-01T14:25:00.004-04:00

"In a Warholian way that seems only to increase his contemporary allure, he also more or less invented himself. Born Endre Friedmann in Hungary, he and Taro, whom he met in Paris, cooked up the persona of Robert Capa — they billed him as “a famous American photographer” — to help them get assignments. He then proceeded to embody the fiction and make it true."

Upside Down

2009-04-16T15:49:00.005-04:00

"Nablus, a trading center which is no longer allowed to trade because—problem for a trading center—nobody's allowed to go there. Here we are, passing through gray stone arches into the countless alleys of the old covered market. This could be Marrakech: row upon row of raw meat, and fresh fruit, and flies and umbrellas and clothes and perfumes and spices, and dogs wandering, and children, and bubbling pans of kanafeh, of which the locals are famously proud: layers of Nabulsi cheese boiled with sugar, dyed dayglo-orange and scattered with crushed pistachios. Too rich for my blood. Even the smell sticks my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Up to 80 percent of the citizens of this town are unemployed. So there are few customers, and the prices are half what they are in Jerusalem. In the corner, a biblical hammam, up a short alley, nothing but steam and stones."

And then of course, there's the pirates.

Running

2009-04-01T13:29:00.004-04:00

"I'm in my whatever bumpin NWA, a hundred miles..."

I've been thinking about celebrity & nihilism (a thought prompted by my recent discovery that pulitzer-winning Junot Diaz is working on an apocalyptic novel) and maybe this is relevant.

2009-03-29T00:30:00.003-04:00

McCulture vs The Cult of Authenticity

Yugoslavia, 1991

2009-03-27T23:37:00.004-04:00

"The more we knew, the less we wanted to know. Convinced we were merely trying to live our lives normally, we embarked on a passionate pursuit of hedonistic oblivion. We danced a lot. We dropped enormous amounts of money into slot machines, which were rigged so as to preclude even a statistical possibility of our winning. One of my favorite methods of denial was to get stoned and watch Vincente Minnelli's "Gigi," often bellowing along ("Gigi, am I a fool without a mind or have I really been too blind"). Pedja and I got drunk and crooned along with Dean Martin, one of the great practitioners of international hedonism. We spent one splendid Saturday in our garden, devouring spit-roasted lamb and smoking superb hashish, until we were so high we would have floated away like balloons had we not been ballasted with the meat."

Disappearing Acts

2009-03-25T12:28:00.001-04:00

"His clothes were piled in a chair. I scooped them into my arms. I was
tired of the games I’d been playing with him, of the games I’d been playing with
everyone. I wanted to make sure he understood me. I told him it was fine if he
wanted to be stubborn, that he could just spend the night in my office, then
left. On my way home, I dumped his clothes into a trashcan. When I looked down,
his jeans and boxers had disappeared underneath silver shopping bags from the
Atrium Mall, but his black T-shirt was still visible, splayed across a red
gasoline can. It would be a mistake, I knew, to keep looking at his shirt. To
touch it. To smell it. I reached down and pinched the sleeve. For the first
time, I noticed the collar was faded and pocked with tiny holes. I smelled
gasoline, felt grease on my fingertips. I was tempted to take his shirt with me,
a keepsake from the summer when I took my life apart, piece by piece, like
someone unsolving a puzzle. But instead I just kept walking."

2009-03-22T23:32:00.003-04:00

I often wonder how nice it would be to live in nyc.

2009-03-20T01:15:00.004-04:00

"The last time he had tried to do it, his method had been, in the doctor's words, a masterpiece of inventiveness; he would have succeeded, had not an envious fellow patient thought he was learning to fly - and stopped him. What he really wanted to do was tear a hole in his world and escape."

2009-03-17T09:37:00.007-04:00

Just when I had given up all hope on Atlanta, I found out that the French Kicks are throwing a show at the Earl, for $10 only. And so are the Junior Boys just days later for a meager $12. And to top it off, I have an interview later this week with an art organization (whose identity I will keep under wraps for now) based in Little Five Points, for a position involved in publishing their online journal. Maybe, just maybe, I will get the job and thus end a short-lived (yet much regretted) stint in corporate America.

2009-03-12T22:46:00.004-04:00

Captioning a picture in a series that features the "preferred method of transport" for undocumented migration to the Canary Islands, the BBC writes: "It is too early to say whether the daily arrival of the migrant boats will damage the islands' tourist industry."

They meant for this to be ironic, right?

There will be Blood

2009-03-10T14:15:00.002-04:00

China's way forward.

2009-02-18T13:53:00.017-05:00

A billion articles have been written on Facebook and I really don't think I need to add to the already enormous crowd but I am reading (finally) Klosterman's Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs* and think that his evaluation of The Sims could just as well be applied to Facebook - and maybe one of the aforementioned articles has already done this, but I don't read these things so I have no way of knowing.

In short: our Facebook profiles - having taken the place of their simulated counterparts in the video game - essentially indulge on the same narcisistic tendencies** The Sims so ingeniously tapped into, very much like the way reality shows did with our affections for scripted TV.

*a coworker saw me reading this and asked if I had read Eat, Pray, Love. I am not sure why I thought to point that out, but I think it's oddly appropriate that she did. In any case, it should at least give you an idea of the kind of people I work with. There was a time (maybe 5 mins ago) I was tempted to make the sweeping generalization that my office is no different from the rest of America, a microcosm if you like, but I don't quite think I have given up on "the Americans" just yet.

**Everytime I walk by another one of my coworker's desk, she is almost always fixed to the screen examining (what else?) her own Myspace profile. I am not innocent myself, I think I probably represent over half the traffic to my own blog. Actually, I'm pretty certain that I do but that still doesn't stop me from having one. Hmm.. my brain is straining to reach some conclusion about solipsistic existence but I don't feel like going all the way.

Rolando

2009-02-16T22:38:00.003-05:00

I need a carton of wine to keep me warm when I am working. Red or white, I don't care. I don't use it for painting.

I'd forgotten how wonderful Colors is.

Dancing with Myself

2009-02-12T13:36:00.008-05:00

I finally watched Waltz with Bashir. In my typical style, I have a lot to say but I just wanted to jot down a couple of things first then maybe come back to it.

First off, the film was far more complicated than I thought it would be. Part of me thought it would be a run of the mill war sucks blah blah but it wasn't. One of the parts I thought was really effective was when the protagonist, Ari, visits a friend in Holland (I think) and finds that the guy is living in the proverbial lap of luxury (materially at least), having acquired some 10 acres of land by merely selling falafel from a street kiosk. In this and many other ways, the film comments on the popular exoticization of Middle- Eastern culture, without taking the predictable self-pitying perspective (see Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears - I liked the book, but I'm just saying).

The work does a lot of things. I've heard it be compared to Apocalypse Now, and I think this is a fair comparison. A natural heir to all the films about the traumatic experience of war - I would throw in Battle of Algiers in there too - Folman's piece is not only a timeless meditation on human nature, but a timely one as well, what with the turmoil the Middle East is currently undergoing.

It was a surprise then, and a disappointing one at that, that the film is only enjoying patronage at the nation's indie film theaters and even then, is presumably being seen by small audiences - when I saw it at the Midtown Landmark Theatre, the only place showing the movie in all of Atlanta, I was one of only two people in attendance.

And how much did Marley & Me make again?

2009-02-10T22:33:00.006-05:00

"There is no escape, is there?" Marie asked. Did she end with a cry or a laugh?

-Who is the Morning?

Both the NYer & n+1 (above) feature stories of impending doom, maybe. These are not the stories we have learned to expect with clear Armageddon trajectories complete with explosions or raining brimstone. Instead, they are curiously tepid stories told in the language of crisis. Do they express a self-doubting anxiety or mock the prevalent paranoia of these times? I am not quite sure what to make of it.

Reset

2009-02-08T15:28:00.015-05:00

Hard as it may be to believe, I do realize that there are many things in this world that are far more impt. than my ego. Yes, that's directed to you, dear friends. I got the message, and I assure you, you will be the first people I call once I "pull my head out of my ass"... seriously. In the meantime, I thought I should share some of the things that have been occupying my mind over the past couple of weeks...

Well, there's the major muck that is Gaza. Much has been said on the subject, and if this teaches me anything, it is to regard human beings with significant contempt. We really are a pathetic bunch of fucks for letting this go on for so long.

That brings me to the Coen brothers... which is to say that I can't blame them for doing the same in just about all their movies. I'd watched Fargo & The Big Lebowski before, and maybe it's cause I was happier/younger/naive back then, but I didn't really pick up on their disdain for their audience/characters as much as I did when I recently watched No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading.

The pitfalls in Burn are easy to find - Linda Litzke's portrayal could be read as a misogynistic one, as could those of any of the other women; and really in a film about complete idiots, the only character who manages to evoke any sympathy, and by extension some semblance of humanity, is an ex-analyst for the CIA - Osbourne Cox. Presumably named for laughs, Cox also happens to be a graduate of Princeton (class of '73 to be precise - a fact that the movie reiterates several times) and lives in a million$ brownstone in swanky Georgetown, until he is unceremoniously usurped from this throne and forced to seek exile in a smaller but none too indecorous sailboat. Poor guy. Meanwhile, his "cold stuck-up bitch" of a wife - incidentally, the same description is used for another female xter, clearly the Coens are not engaged in any imaginative tongue in cheek criticism - empties his accounts and changes the locks. Finally, Cox returns to his house to take his revenge, carelessly clad in boxers and a loosely tied robe (both designer, I bet) which is a far cry from the pristine three-piece he started off in (per special features commentary). Long story short, he ends up in a comma soon after, having nearly died in a battle against "one of the morons (he had) spent (his) whole life fighting." Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Of course, the film is only this potent in its attack if you take it seriously. Here, the Coens shift their contemptuous focus onto their audience, those idiots who will laugh at anything. As a viewer, you have two options: you could laugh at the sophomoric attempts at humor, the half drawn characters, and the flimsy-at-best script; or, you could sit there for a full 95 minutes and be insulted by the Coens' narrow world view. Enjoy the show.

No Country on the other hand, has a clearer outlook. I suppose I can't give the brothers full credit here, seeing as that it is based on a literary predecessor by the same name, but as an article I recently read points out, "it seems no coincidence that this filmic reproduction... erupts in a xenophobic political era obsessed with national boundaries."

It's Sunday and I have already violated the sabbath enough with this revival, so I will end this here. Look for a future post wherein I share my predictably unfavorable views on the insufferable Slumdog Millionaire.

NB: I know it seems like I invariably end up on the opposite side of public opinion, but it's not always so, I am actually very pleased at this year's NBCC's recognition of Orpheus in the Bronx among other gems. And I do like K'Naan.

NB2: Turns out that the NYer's Denby already did a good enough job of explaining everything that is wrong with Slumdog.

Walk with Me

2009-01-12T14:01:00.000-05:00

I am slowly trying to ditch this box of crayons for something lighter. Let's see how that goes...

Diaz, Adiga & the Minstrelized Other

2009-01-12T13:32:00.007-05:00

Just writing the title of this post makes me realize how overly ambitious it is, yikes. In any case, I will try to put down a few words that will hopefully convey my ideas on these celebrated authors and how I feel about their works.

Of the two, it was Junot Diaz's The Brief & Wondrous life of Oscar Wao that I first read last spring for a class on contemporary African/Diaspora writing – the reason being that Diaz is partly of African descent (mediated through a more dominant Latino heritage & his experiences as an American) and his writing is said to be influenced by this background, both linguistically and thematically. However, to strictly classify it as such would be limiting (be it a self-imposed classification or otherwise), yet it is a characteristic that is continually attached to the work. Why, I wonder, does this tendency persist? And how does it affect our perception of the "Other?"

It is generally agreed upon that this book, and maybe even more so Drown (for the multiplicity of its voices), is an attempt by Diaz to capture the voice of the subaltern. The attempt, if you were to judge by the innumerable awards/glowing reviews dedicated to Diaz's works, was a success. Even scary Kakutani was transformed into a gushing admirer, and in a review that can only be read in cooing tones proclaimed that Diaz "writes in a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale: lots of flash words and razzle-dazzle talk, lots of body language on the sentences, lots of David Foster Wallace-esque footnotes and asides. And he conjures with seemingly effortless aplomb the two worlds his characters inhabit: the Dominican Republic, the ghost-haunted motherland that shapes their nightmares and their dreams; and America (a k a New Jersey), the land of freedom and hope and not-so-shiny possibilities that they’ve fled to as part of the great Dominican diaspora."

This is where I start to have problems with this type of writing. Diaz is praised not only for his stories, but also for this narrative "voice" that seems to have distinguished him from his peers/predecessors. I want to include Avarind Adiga's Booker-winning White Tiger in this genre, as it is thematically akin to Diaz's work, as are any number of Invisible Man-wannabe books.

The problem with these works, and such readings as Kakutani's, is that they clearly minstrelize the diverse and complex lives and cultures they are involved in. Minstrelsy is characterized by exaggerated movement and expression. It lacks the subtlety of real human experiences, and makes a spectacle of the Other. Words are not spoken, they are flung. Limbs do not simply move, they are thrusted. Other peculiar choices in vocabulary, to name a few, include jostling, etc, some of which immediately stand out in Kakutani's review - conjure, razzle-dazzle. Homelands/Motherlands are always just that, some place that holds great nostalgic significance to these characters and at the same time inspire horrific nightmares - and who can blame these puppets (is it too much to expect agential characters in these books?), "haunted" as they are by memories of gangster-like politicians or crimes committed by the criminal castes - all stemming from a neocolonial imagination of those no-good natives who would run down the country once the noble & kind administrators* had granted them independence.

A language of imitation and performance, and not real experience, minstrelsy seeks to feign authenticity by being larger than life, louder than life, fuller than life, ignoring the relative anonymity of the inconspicuous lives it is trying to describe. Anxious about the bourgeois' inability to hear (it was said that the question is not whether the subaltern can speak but if the bourgeois can listen), these spokesmen for the underground man have resolved to shouting their message from the roof-tops.

Having said all that, I want to make it clear that I am not calling for a silencing of these voices. I do not want Diaz/Adiga to stop writing - I just think it's odd that it is only these kinds of books that receive so much attention. There has been much uproar at a recently released list (the Best American Fiction 1968 - 1998, google it if you must) over its lack of diversity, and while I cannot (dis)qualify these accusations, I suggest that it may be a result of an inundation of this kind of writing - unabashed attempts at vocalizing… Unheard Tales (yes, Tales, not stories, for the Other never speaks of the stuff of everyday life, but is constantly engaged in some epic drama - think gun battles outside the local bodega, knife-wielding.. better yet, broken bottle swinging chauffeurs - expressed in the language of magical realism, always magical realism!).

Updike, that great master of subtle observation, once said in an interview that he "distrust(s) books involving spectacular people, or spectacular events. Let People and The National Enquirer pander to our taste for the extraordinary; let literature concern itself, as the Gospels do, with the inner lives of hidden men." This is a standard that we have come to expect of any sort of writing. Why then, I wonder, is the same not applied to writers like Diaz & Adiga?

*sort of unrelated, I am continuously fascinated by America's infatuation with Winston Churchill. In all my primary education there was no greater villain than Churchill, but here he is a veritable hero, a saint of sorts and with a sense of humor to boot! It astounds me, even though it shouldn't, all things considered. However, I recently read somewhere that Pres. Obama returned a Churchill bust that was previously gifted to Bush by England's former PM, Tony Blair. I can't say that I know the whole story, and maybe it means nothing, but I can't even begin to express how entertained I am by this.

Informed Consent

2009-01-06T14:51:00.008-05:00

Not that it's something new, but I can't get over how many pharmaceutical ads there are on TV. Growing up in Kenya I never once saw anything like that (this may have changed since then) and I am startled by how normal it is here in the States. I get that with the liberalization of every facet of our lives (a change I am appreciative of), healthcare too must follow suit but I am concerned about what the end result would look like.

I think of my days in a boarding school where all our medical grievances were treated with Paracetamol, regardless of the widely varying complaints. And when my doctor, with encouragement from my penny-pinching dad, prescribed Vick's rubbing salve for my broken arm, all the while ignoring my insistence that what I had was far more serious than a mere bruise. My grandmother's Alzheimer's was brushed off as mild senility, old lady just likes the attention.

All these things make the benefits of an empowered patient more apparent. But still I wonder where to draw the line between informed consent and profit-driven coercion. Pharmaceutical companies have access to inextinguishable resources, and with the manipulative power of advertising, what's to say that these companies are not trying to pull a fast one on an uneducated individual who does not necessarily have as firm a grasp on medical particularities as a trained professional? Before we know it, we are going to have a bunch of Will Smiths running about donating extraneous lungs and performing bathtub organ transplants.

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

2009-01-06T10:03:00.011-05:00

I just finished reading The Dying Animal and was thinking about it when it occured to me that it was startlingly similar to Marquez's Memories of my Melancholy Whores. I will try to expound my argument but really my college essay days are long gone and such an exercise will probably lose steam all too soon. So to make the long story short, they are both slight books (by the authors' standards at least) primarily about distinguished old men's nubile obsessions (obviously with more profound connotations about mortality, desire, aesthetics - all those incredibly broad and elusive topics that amateur writers rightly shy away from).

I have often wondered what on earth would possess these men to write these books at this time. Context has always been a key factor in literature for me and I was frankly puzzled as to why a 21st century writer would feel that another book about paternilistic desires would be relevant. Aren't the days of this kind of writing gone, eradicated by the decades of women's movements, protests from writers of color, etc? Though Marquez is a Latino, he is firmly esconced in the literary firmament (a position he fully deserves) and few could now argue that his is the voice of the subaltern. Yet these books present themselves as an appeal, launching a protest of some sort. In one instance, Roth's titular character, Kepesh, bemoans the decline of brotherhood. Seriously.

And what of the women? They are presented as mere extensions of the septuagenarians' desires - non-agential and mostly speechless. It turns out that despite their youth - the single weapon in their pitiable defense against their more competent counterparts - these womens' lives are even more precarious, they are fragile little things, subjected to the notorious male gaze and existing only within refracted memory and fantasy. All art is propaganda is a slogan I have often heard, and if this is so, aren't the politics of these books archaic, anachronistic?

Yet it was just when I was completely repulsed & overtaken by emotion that these books dealt their hardest punch. I read Memories a long while ago so the details are not as clear as they are with Roth's work and the exact moment of epiphany is easier to pinpoint in the latter book. While Kepesh is presented as the main protagonist, offering the reader innumerable theories, I thought the book focuses it's strongest arguments not through the Gutter Girls as I had read in a review, but in Kepesh's friend - George, is it? - who offers a stern criticism against merging emotion with aesthetic appreciation (which is idealized in its purest form - unaffected by emotional entanglement or morality) only to die pages later in what has to be the most gruesome scene in the book. After having lived his life as an embodiment of this aesthetic ideal he dies a slow and painful death, withering away on his bed, surrounded by the family he had neglected in his pursuit of pleasure. In a scene that would ordinarily imply a warm and peaceful farewell, one can't help but sense the irony - if George, a bonified casanova, had lived his life so fully, look how pathetic he is now, humiliated in front of the very people he had shunned. The irony is not lost on his estranged wife, whom after having let George grope at her breasts in what seems like post-partem twitches, mutters absently to Kepesh - I wonder who he thought I was.

And yet Kepesh lives. In fact, he outlives. The only truly hegemonic character in the novel, never holding too tightly onto anything - pure aestheticism, his on-again-off-again love/obsession with Consuela - Kepesh manages to escape with his dear life from the trappings of dogmatic beliefs. We see all the other characters attached to their shrines - be it to that of the sexual revolution, pure aestheticism, hedonism, filial loyalty (a god's a god) - stifled by the weight; and above it all is Kepesh, betraying them one time and embracing them the other.

Seven Pounds

2008-12-30T16:43:00.003-05:00

I just watched Will Smith's new movie, Seven Pounds and I really did not like it (I would have walked out halfway through if not for the promise of having something to hate on for the rest of the year). I am not surprised because I honestly cannot remember the last movie he did that I actually enjoyed. But that's not the point. I am still trying to put it all together in my mind, because I think the movie does a lot of things, or at least tries to. I am not quite sure where I will end up, but I will be starting somewhere around the significance of Smith's body in the film. I want to read some reviews first...

Confirmed Atheist: "Africa Needs God."

2008-12-30T16:04:00.005-05:00

"In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall."

I guess the author, Mathew Parris, is comparing the Christians to those spineless non-believers, lost without their good shepherd. And again...

"Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open."

Perhaps instead of Christianity, Africans should consider converting to Parrisianity, and maybe they too would be endowed with the metaphysical gift of gazing into another's soul through the eyes.

As a non-Christian African, I was not too offended, because it seems that Parris' skepticism is not reserved only for us heathens, but for the Christians as well, seeing as that "...their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was (not) unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught."

Oh and there's more. According to Parris, "rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition." Hmm... because nowhere in the Christian/Western world (if we are to abide by this binary Parris seems to set up between African traditions and the rest of the world) have people arbitrarily chosen to follow such leaders?

What a treat.

Update: it seems that God is all the rage these days.

Also, Rombo offers a far more even handed meditation on the same.

Debt

2008-12-26T13:00:00.000-05:00

“She was working at the makeup counter in the drugstore. Every time I walked in, she was talking to another lady, or doing her face. This girl, she could sell you anything. She could sell you last year’s snow. You’d be listening to her and wondering how you could have ever lived without last year’s snow. But I can tell you, she was not one who ate her own bullshit,” Meho says. “She just liked selling, that’s all. I asked her, how much are they paying you here?”
“It was eight dollars an hour,” Sonya cuts in.
“I took her out one night. I said, let’s go get Chinese food in Sharpsburg—this town that was two hours away. She says, ‘Okay!’ Imagine, you give a woman a proposition like that, let’s drive two hours for Chinese food. And she says yes! You know she’s not the kind of woman you’re going to need to read poetry to all night.”
Dina glances at Lev uncomfortably.
“We were driving back from Sharpsburg, and I said, ‘Come and work for me for ten dollars an hour.’”
“But the joke’s on him,” Sonya finishes. “Because now I take half!”
So this is their love story, Lev thinks. A sad one, the story of people who’ve fallen into each other’s arms out of some shared knowledge that nobody else gave a damn about them.

A Public Space

Past Loves

2008-12-22T16:46:00.002-05:00

Apart from my well documented obsession with Zadie Smith, I also harbor fantasies about her husband and "fellow idiot savant," Nick Laird. So you can only imagine how happy I was to find a piece in the Times about his Salad Days.

Mad Men

2008-12-15T15:42:00.002-05:00

"Mad Men is an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better. We
watch and know better about male chauvinism, homophobia, anti-semitism,
workplace harassment, housewives’ depression, nutrition and smoking. We wait for
the show’s advertising men or their secretaries and wives to make another gaffe
for us to snigger over. ‘Have we ever hired any Jews?’ – ‘Not on my watch.’ ‘Try
not to be overwhelmed by all this technology; it looks complicated, but the men
who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use.’ It’s only a short
further wait until a pregnant mother inhales a tumbler of whisky and lights up a
Chesterfield; or a heart attack victim complains that he can’t understand what
happened: ‘All these years I thought it would be the ulcer. Did everything they
told me. Drank the cream, ate the butter. And I get hit by a coronary.’ We’re
meant to save a little snort, too, for the ad agency’s closeted gay art director
as he dismisses psychological research: ‘We’re supposed to believe that people
are living one way, and secretly thinking the exact opposite? . . .
Ridiculous!’ – a line delivered with a limp-wristed wave. Mad Men is currently
said to be the best and ‘smartest’ show on American TV. We’re doomed."

I couldn't agree more.

La Jetee

2008-12-14T15:34:00.005-05:00

Split into parts one, two and three. I don't know what it is that made me think of this film, but I was ecstatic to find it online, especially since the flu has rendered my more regular pass-time of reading dull and toilsome. It's a shame I couldn't find it as I had originally seen it, in French with English subtitles, because I think the French narration brings a certain something that's missing here.
I also rented Pan's Labrynth (yes, I know, finally), and, AND, received my very own copy of Vertigo as a birthday present. Ooh the glee! Looks like The Dying Animal will just have to remain on my to-be-read shelf a little longer.

The Complaint

2008-12-03T16:42:00.002-05:00

Once in a while, I come across some really great article that is unaffected by idiotic American propaganda (don't even pretend like you don't know). My latest find is especially appreciated after having just read some nonsense in Newsweek about why Somalia is the worst place on earth. I can't think of a better lead up to the article than the one used at HDT, and my only alternative is to simply put up the link.

Irony v. Obama

2008-11-26T12:37:00.003-05:00

"The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of principle or value are just empty phrases which count for nothing?’ What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom which ignores the power of illusions."

This by Zizek, surprisingly, because I always thought of him as the biggest cynic. I have been thinking a lot about what this election is doing to our sense of irony, and as always, Zizek has provided a critical touchstone in the matter. There is Didion's opinion as well, which is just as provocative, and maybe I will have figured my way around it all once I have some time.

Lostronaut - Epistolary Literature

2008-11-20T13:28:00.002-05:00

I came across Jonathan Lethem's Lostronaut in the NYer today during my lunch break and wanted to have it down here. I have recently become very interested in epistolary literature (I just read The Coquette) and I haven't really read this one, but I was just glad to see something contemporary in this style.

Election Choons

2008-11-04T17:47:00.006-05:00

Q-Tip feat. Barack Obama - Shaka

Nas - Election Night

It looks like everyone's voting, even the cool kids.

Into The Fire

2008-10-22T23:41:00.007-04:00

[Following is a post in which I flat out deify Anthony Bourdain. It really is disgusting.]

I am crazy tired, and totally overwhelmed with life but I just wanted to say a few words about Anthony Bourdain's latest episode from his critically acclaimed show, No Reservations. This week's show - Into the fire - has been described by MSN simply as the one in which "Tony accepts the challenge to return to Les Halles for work during his old Tuesday double shift." TV.com offers a slightly more substantial synopsis and includes something about Bourdain's "skills in the kitchen, his love of New York and his life as a chef" and while both these descriptions are correct, they merely skim the surface of what I thought was the GREATEST meditation on American society that we are yet to see on cable television. It was... immaculate. I mean, there it all was in that cramped NYC restaurant kitchen - race, class, immigration, wealth, labor, alienation, identity, community, the (ubiquitous yet mostly unattainable) "American Dream," the even more American anxiety/fantasy of youth - all of which I want to delve further into at a later time. But really, if anyone has ever doubted Bourdain's place as an all-around-authority on everything and anything about the human experience and how it is tied to and expressed through food, this is definitely the episode to watch.

And what did I expect really, the guy has examined everything from his family's roots/routes to something as seemingly banal as 'obsession' with such brazen cynicism and outright belligerence that can sometimes distract the less reflective watcher. This, I guess, is the trick to good writing (if you can consider TV shows to be the modern novels - an argument that has been made for the Sopranos and I think should be extended to include such gems as Bourdain's show). Surely, that Bourdain can bring so much to the table without making it look like a mouthful (pardon the pun), makes him an incredibly skillful story-teller.

In an interview she gave a while back about David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, my own obsession, offered the following:

"There's a kind of superficial layer of him, which if you can't be bothered to think any deeper, it just seems, 'Here is some wise guy, with his wiseass stories.' And that's not true. But the problem with readers, the idea we've been given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principal is, 'I should sit here and be entertained.' And the more classical model is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has the piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and the artist gives you. That's an incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true."

Of course an adherence to this structure of reading bestows a lot of credit to the reader (or viewer in this case) - which can (and should, to some extent) be taken as an indication of my own vanity. But I think Smith hits the nail on the head by calling on us readers/viewers (re-viewers?) to be more invested in what we consume. And I would have to assume that Tony expects his reviewers to be just as critical of his experiences as he is - which is why, at the beginning of this episode, he tells us that this endeavor was inspired mostly by the negative feedback he had gotten from doing the show. That Bourdain reacted to the harsh criticism of a reviewer so radically can only be taken as encouragement to follow this "unfashionable" model of engagement.

This is not to say that he blindly heeds what popular expectations would dictate - if anything, the instinct to indulge his reviewers is time and again tempered by his atypical perspective (see Egypt without the pyramids) that tends to avoid the cliched trips that are often favored by the Travel Channel. Plus, what Smith has said here of Foster Wallace* can certainly be said of Bourdain - while he is known for his biting comments and wry humor, there is a lot about the man that we don't really comprehend. I can only hope that as he continues to expose us to these rarely seen sides of his personality (his self-beratement is legendary, and admirable especially when you compare it to the blatant self-absorption of other celebrity chefs), we will be open to the same deconstruction he so valiantly puts himself through.

*EDIT: I realize that likening the very alive Bourdain to the recently deceased author borders on morbidity, but I think the two share enough in terms of style and status within popular culture to make this a worthwhile comparison. Plus, I couldn't resist pulling Zadie Smith into the conversation.

Referential Mania

2008-10-21T00:59:00.008-04:00

"We live in a noisy world. Basic listening is difficult. Extracting sense from sound is even harder. The manufacturer Mattel blames the alleged proselytization on a misunderstanding caused by distortion and cheap foreign-manufactured electronics. "Because the original soundtrack is compressed into a file that can be played through an inexpensive toy speaker," says Mattel, "actual sounds may be imprecise or distorted." What they are saying is that proper audio fidelity would have prevented a collective misinterpretation of religious fidelity. Mass-manufactured gibberish ("baby babble with no real sentence structure") was misinterpreted as having meaning. Amidst intentional nonsense and unavoidable noise, a seemingly non-existent signal was heard, and acted upon. Zeal is the word we're looking for. Or is it exegesis?"

[Mudd Up]

This is just so bizarre I wish I could have made it up. It just shows that a lot of people are so wrapped up in this intense and illogical fear of Islam that they are reading irrational meanings into every insipid "signal." The doll is even being referred to as an "Islamic doll" by some. Incredible. Not that it matters to the kind of people who would be making these claims, or that this is even relevant, but if we were to really get technical, the Islamic take on this would actually be an outright condemnation of the doll since Islam does not allow its adherents to make figures that bear a human form in religious works. Mattel's response should not have been to blame the distortion but to point out the ignorance of such a claim, but I guess that wouldn't have been the best PR move...

Baz Luhrmann's Australia

2008-10-14T18:10:00.008-04:00

There's the tourism commercial which I first saw and gagged at and a movie, which I haven't seen but remain just as skeptical of, especially because they look so damn similar - they even use the same actor. And I thought Moulin Rouge! was bad. I honestly can't believe how these presumably educated and cultured people don't catch the exoticism (and misogyny - what's up with the broken woman in that ad who needs to take a chill pill and be rescued?) they indulge in when making this stuff up. Maybe I am just being cranky and need a magical Aborigine to sprinkle some dust on me and take me to the land of Oz. Or maybe someone needs to tip Luhrmann off on what's really important about Australia.

Oh, and by the way, trusty Annie Liebovitz shot the picture above along with a few others in honor of the film. The caption for this gem: "Ever dressed for the ocassion, Lady Sarah travels farther into the outback on a supply truck piled high with her belongings. Salvatore Ferragamo for Australia boots."

And, AND, speaking of which, while we arrange for Luhrmann and Liebovitz to get some help with their escapist delusions, can we also sign up the staff of the NYT Travel section?

The Brown Man's Burden

2008-10-08T00:48:00.012-04:00

In 2002, my father and I spent about a month in one of the world's most dazzling destinations. In fact, describing Dubai as merely dazzling is an understatement that is even less accurate today than it was 6 years ago. Everything - from the breathtaking airport to the first-class golf courses and the extravagant hotel resorts - was straight out of a dream. We visited an aunt of mine who lived in a posh expatriate community, where everyone had a pool and lush lawns. Experiencing any one of the many architectural feats - "spiraling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls" - one could hardly notice that Dubai is nestled in one of the world's most arid regions.

However, there was, as there always is in these cases, a sobering underbelly to this surreal delight. I wish I could say that my dad is one of those conscientious tourists who like to experience the places they visit as a local might, but fact of the matter is that he is as frugal a traveller as one might meet and we often ventured to the less tourist-friendly souks searching for bargains. It was here - in the back-ways of the markets and at the cheap gyro joints that lined them - that we brushed shoulders with the "army of migrant laborers" Ghaith Abdul Ahad writes of, and I was reminded of that old saying that has become cliched for a reason - all that glitters is not gold.

And funnily enough, it is through this peculiar binary that I guiltily remember my time in Dubai - through the pieces of brilliant gold jewelry my father bought me, and the indelible mind images of those laborers' averted eyes and bowed heads.

In any case, I think it's interesting that Dubai treats the laborers with just as much contempt as it does it's tourists.

Captain Ali Sparrow

2008-10-07T02:46:00.004-04:00

"Officially, the Ukranian T-72 tanks were designated for Kenya. But now there is mounting evidence that the tanks on board the Faina were en route to Sudan via Kenya. If this is true, it would be embarrassing for Ukraine and devastating for Kenya, whose president likes to portray himself as a peacemaker. At any rate, it looks as though pirate Ali and his men spoiled the deal."

[Spiegel]

War On Words

2008-10-06T23:48:00.005-04:00

"The most revealing moment happened earlier, when she was asked about Obama's attack on McCain's claim that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. "Well," Palin said, "it was an unfair attack on the verbage that Senator McCain chose to use, because the fundamentals, as he was having to explain afterwards, he means our workforce, he means the ingenuity of the American people. And of course that is strong, and that is the foundation of our economy. So that was an unfair attack there, again, based on verbage that John McCain used." This is certainly doing rather than mere talking, and what is being done is the coinage of "verbage." It would be hard to find a better example of the Republican disdain for words than that remarkable term, so close to garbage, so far from language."

[New Yorker]

Trust James Wood to put the election within a literary context.

Another African Line

2008-10-05T20:33:00.014-04:00

Junya Watanabe, of Comme des Garçons fame, showed an African-inspired line at the Paris Fashion Week. Apart from the elaborate head pieces, the line also features body-part print details such as lips and eyes and has generally been received positively (am I to assume from the Fader title that Watanabe has previously been to Africa? Or is this a misused allusion to the early American movement? Oh, you hipsters and your empty/ironic cultural signifiers).

I don't know - I am kinda tired of talking about appropriation / exoticism, plus I really do not know enough about Watanabe to make any comments - so I think I will refrain from doing this until I learn more about him. I will say one thing though - this whole Africa-as-one-entity stuff needs to get cut from our psyche.

I Called Her Mahogany

2008-10-03T23:59:00.014-04:00

"In an ode to the cult classic film, supermodel Tyra Banks and rising star Sessilee relive the high-octane glam looks of the '70s."

[V]

In other news (I'm sure if I think hard enough I will find a way to make a more graceful segue), Moe Tkacik (Moe-hogany?) aka Slut Machine (Moe-whore-gany? Is that too crass?) loses her place at Gawker. Does this have any bearing on my life? Hmm, not really... but I will admit to being perversely interested in these college dropout types (no dis/respect intended) and how they go about the world. Plus, Moe - in spite of those comments to the contrary - seems like a decent enough person, and is entertaining even when she is being bitchy. Still, Denton's retrenchings happen often enough to make this a non-event and I guess Moe will be fine with her Radar job. I mean, Gould doesn't seem to be fairing too badly in her post-Gawker life. But then she did graduate from college, putting her more in line with all those sad young literary men. Sigh... where was I going with this?

It's On

2008-09-24T16:37:00.010-04:00

Ha! Apparently s(il)ly McCain had planned to suspend Friday's debate aka hot serving of whoop ass because he wanted to take the time to focus on the country's current economic crisis. Obama's response: "We can handle both."

Is it just me or does McCain's decision only function to plunge the country into a panicked mood reminiscent of the one that gripped the nation immediately before we launched the most ridiculous war in modern history? Maverick schmaverick, this tactic is very much in keeping with Bush's politics of fear. Fail, McCain. And you can't hide behind your fancy make-up either.

African Genius

2008-09-24T07:36:00.002-04:00

Adichie wins the genius grant, formerly won by another fave, Aleksandar Hemon.

Lost & Found

2008-09-22T14:24:00.004-04:00

I am so sad. Citizen Tito seems to have recently disappeared. Does anyone out there know where he went to? This would have been an awful loss but my desolation has been tempered with the discovery of my new favorite blog. I had read the author's comments elsewhere, and enjoyed them all very much. So you can imagine how excited I was to find him. Through Zunguzungu nonetheless - another great find, where I came across an incredible post on what's at stake with the current US elections.

Hmm, I just took a minute to think about my reaction to all of this and have decided that I have too much time on my hands.