“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Jacob Riis
Archive for the ‘prose’ Category
Getting there
The Rest is Noise
I’ve just started reading Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise, and I’m finding it really enjoyable so far. I’ve been reading Alex’s blog for a few years now, and his New Yorker articles whenever I get the chance, and I have to say he does some of the best contemporary music coverage I’ve come across, classical or otherwise.
I’m going to try and write up something about the book whenever I get done reading it – for now, those with an interest in classical music or twentieth century history should really check The Rest Is Noise out.
In other news, Bloomsday is now a date to look forward to in the near future. It was a goal of mine to finish Ulysses on Bloomsday last year, but I didn’t even come close to making it – in fact, I barely got halfway through the book and I’ve been on and offing it ever since. This year is going to be different. As soon as April rolls around, I’m going to be picking up Ulysses again – perhaps I should try and start a book club to keep motivation up during the more “difficult” chapters of the book. Anyone else have any Joyce reading tips (besides, you know, just leaving the dang thing on the self)?
Reading
Currently trying to finish:
1) The Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
- I’m nearly done with this one, on the last of the three books, The Amber Spyglass. The story is great, compelling stuff, and Pullman’s universe(s) are dark and ambiguous. I love the clear, deep quality of the writing. Great, especially for a group of novels geared towards adolescents. Maybe as good, although not as gentle, as my beloved Earthsea trilogy. Certainly less patronizing than the Lord of the Rings series.
2) Naked by David Sedaris.
- Funny, poigiant, beautiful, maudlin, uplifting, non-fiction.
3) The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus trans. by Brooks Haxton -
Ancient Greek philosophy that sounds like ancient Chinese philosophy. The western compliment to the Tao te Ching. Heraclitus is the originator of the phrase, “You can never step into the the same river twice” although my translator phrases it much more beautifully:
“Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not.
“I also liked:”People ought to know themselves.”
“Any day stands equal to the rest.” and perhaps most of all:
“Things keep their secrets.”
Potter Mania
Unexpectedly, I took part in the Harry Potter mania that was unleashed on Barnes and Nobles Saturday night. Although I haven’t read any of the books, I accompanied Jess to lay claim to her pre-ordered copy. She describes the situation thusly,
Jon and Ryan accompanied me to the Barnes & Noble premiere party. After a frantic call from Jordan, I was rushed into arriving at 10 – ish. There were already a zillion people in line. Ryan was naturally more interested in the news crews and journalists. He regaled Jon with his version of how the Harry Potter premiere story gets written. According to him, it goes something like this: Intrepid young reporter arrives at miserable local interest event. He becomes aggravated with the crowds, the mania, and the general disorder. He spends a few minutes exchanging cynicisms with other reporters and then heads to the liquor store. With a fifth in hand, the story practically writes itself : “Muggles Invade Local Bookseller. .â€
Jon was bombarded by a blast from the past and Ryan’s headache was in full swing. My party would mutiny if I insisted on staying until my pre-ordered book was in hand. It was time to call on my lawyer training. I ferreted out the only person in the store without a wristband and manipulated them into waiting in line for my book. I almost felt guilty.
I don’t have much to add to that except that this was yet another occasion where I was glad to be part of a social phenomenon, even if I was silently cursing my bad luck all the while for ending up in what seems like an endless series of awkward situations this summer. Seriously, can’t a guy catch a break already?! As is the norm when I’m out with my sister, the evening was photo-documented, and you can see a few pictures of the event here in case you missed all the fun.
would you like a napkin?
i thought of a short story today. it goes like this:
I’m a messy eater. It’s not like i am careless, i just happen to be awesome at getting a percentage of food somewhere other than inside my mouth. in fact, i don’t even have to try. I just eat normally, and perfect strangers will walk up to me with a bizarre look on their face and offer me a kleenex, perhaps, or napkin, maybe, or if i’m lucky, an entire paper towel. “Uhm… you’ve got some… here, take this” and then motion to some part of their face or appendage. I’ve quickly learned that this motioning is to indicate an area that has been smeared with foodstuffs in an uncomfortably obvious way. Or so i’m told.
In fact, i didn’t even know that this was abnormal until i went to college, where everybody is a perfect stranger. Because collegiate strangers want to lessen their relative magnitude of strangeness among the population, students are not afraid to approach others and initiate conversation. So now, after having made friends out of strangers, i occasionally would eat in the school’s cafeteria with a group. After a particularly delicious meal of spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread, one of my strange-friends asked why i had to use about 86 paper napkins over the course of 3 servings. I looked around the table, and others had used anywhere from 2 to 0 for themselves. Everyone looked at my tray, upon which was piled a mountain of crumpled disposables. All thoroughly soiled. “What? I eat a lot.”
Such good strange-friends they are, they had no trouble making it apparent that the mess i make is disproportionate to the amount i eat. Some days later, I obliged their requests, and went an entire meal without using a napkin, just to see the level of destruction at the end. Just my luck, that meal was beef enchiladas, covered in melted cheese, with honey-drizzled sopapillas for dessert. Ay Carumba! Cheese, hot sauce, beef juices, and honey dribbled down my chin and neck, my fingers sticky and sweet, and refried beans stuck to the corners of my mouth. Everybody, including me, was a little grossed out.
I tried to clean up my act. Don’t take such big bites. Use utensils as much as possible. Scale down the net napkin usage per meal. Try not to put your face so close to the food. And please, please, for pete’s sake, don’t shovel food directly off your plate. It was terrible. Everything tasted… smaller. I missed the days where a giant flood of flavor would assault my mouth.
A year or so later, i meet a new student. She’s tall and thin, and carries herself with the grace of an angel. Everything about her is smooth and precise, delicate and soft. We have a casual friendly relationship, and before long, i am smitten. We go on a date to one of my favorite Italian places. Being with her heightens my awareness, and i am self-conciously attentive. I try my best to stay clean, which is hardly possible with the most delicious marinara sauce right in front of me. However, i notice that she is exceptionally perfect in this regard. Not one napkin reach. Her lip gloss has not even come off during the course of the meal.
The next date, I try something a little more daring. Fried chicken. It’s hard to keep my entire face out of the crispy chicken, and impossible to keep my fingers from getting greasy. She uses utensiles. Impeccable, but somewhat disquieting. Who uses utensiles with Popeyes? Do they even give you utensiles? Sporks don’t count. But she did it.
Feeling severely bested, i have got to see if this girl ever gets dirty. Barbeque Ribs. The kind that warrants moist towlettes for damage control. Messy, sloppy, almost barbaric. I can’t contain myself, and start to look like i dove headfirst into a vat of bbq sauce. I glance over at her, and stop. i am appalled. Stupefied. She has done it. Her fingers are sterile, her face is squeaky clean.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How do you manage to eat the most deliciously difficult foods with the most profoundly clean technique?”
“What? Deliciously difficult? oh, you mean to say you are enjoying the taste of this meal. Yeah, i never really could tell the difference in tastes. In fact, i don’t really like food that much. Too much variety.”
Atom Bomb. My Head Asplode. I can’t believe it. I can’t even fathom it. The words don’t make sense together in the way that she said them. Don’t? Like? Food? are you kidding? oh my god. I understand now. She doesn’t enjoy food. By association, she doesn’t enjoy eating. That’s why she can concentrate on her physical appearance, her own cleanliness. It dawns on me that this is why I can’t concentrate on my appearane… i’m too busy being taken over by my taste buds. The sensory experience for me is entirely captivating. I have been loving food for so long that when i changed my eating priorities, i stopped enjoying one of my favorite things: gastronomic ecstasy.
I’m going back to the old me. The one with a little ketchup on my cheek. And i found a new girl. She’s a cook.
The Reading Rainbow
All things being equal, college has been the most productive reading period of my life thus far. Every semester has led to a number of good books read, and this spring was no exception.
So, more for my own documentary purposes than for any other reason, the following books and journals are what I have been reading for the past three months. Obviously, they’re a bit skewed towards my academic interests, but there is some fiction and pleasure reading mixed in there as well. Most of these works I read all the way through, but about a third of them were read only in parts (as they pertained to what I was studying/researching/etc.) I admit, I’m a book pig.
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if i were an atom of Oxygen…
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i travel. a lot. i go everywhere. i see everything. i’ve been higher than the highest cloud, as an integral molecule of ozone, blocking cosmic rays. i’ve been buried deeper in the dirt than the roots of a great oak tree. i’ve been in cold, inescapable stone chambers (the most un-exciting atoms on earth are in those chambers), under pressure so immense that i can’t help but bond with the atoms around me.
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i’ve been in water molecules here and there; at the bottom of the ocean, rushing mountain streams, dead slow muddy waters, arabian desert oasis, you know how it is. i’ve served my time as an ice crystal, part of a massive glacier, ice-berging my way south, melting and evaporating, travelling travelling travelling, falling graceful forever as an intricate and amazingly delicate snowflake.
and then there’s the aerobic cycle. man, there’s nothing more intense and crazy than a living being. Into the lungs, into the bloodstream, bonded here, carried there, rushed to the right cell, squeezed in, pushed around, done my job, made friends with a carbon, out of the cell, back in the stream, through the heart, back to the lungs, ejected out of the body… all in such a short time period, i wouldn’t be able to remember it at all, had it not happened so many billions of times to me.
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so where did i come from? well, in the old life, my protons and neutrons came together as the result of the most powerful energetic change of matter ever: fusion. that’s right. every piece of me was once a simple hydrogen or just a plain ol’ neutron, til they got trapped in the center of a star. and that’s when it happened.
so yea, i happen to be one of the more interesting atoms out there. big enough to be important, small enough to get the job done.
but what’s the point?
the only thing that makes me who i am is my protons. give me another one, and i’ve turned into Flourine. dang. take one away, i’m a Nitrogen. my precarious identity is worsened by the fact that every single other atom of Oxygen out there is Exactly like me. exactly. so little room for uniqueness. it’s sad really. I am not unique. i can’t be. i’ve never been. always been part of a whole. the little guys are never unique. that’s the way the universe works, i guess…
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The Days Are Just Packed…
okay, here’s a little story:
there once was this guy; his name was Bill Watterson. he was (is) a thin man with a well-developed mustache
who wrote one of the greatest works in the contemporary english language in my opinion: the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.
I can’t even begin to explain the enormity of the role of this comic strip in my life, nor can I even begin to describe the utter despair I felt when the last strip was published in 1995.
Since the strip ended, Watterson has moved to a small town in California where he supposedly paints oil paintings with his father. (Further speculation on Bill’s whereabouts are readily available all over the net, if you are really interested.)
I have come across the commencement speech Watterson gave at Kenyon University in May of 1990. I think it’s an excellent example of Watterson’s humanity, humor, and well, overall goodness. I could only hope for such a speech at my own graduation.
Now that Calvin is gone, fans must turn to their collections for the magic the strip once provided daily.
Mr. Watterson, wherever you are, this is one loyal fan saying “Thanks.”
stair
Don’t you just love it when words that should be plural are written in their singular form?
I think it’s great.
For example, today I was happily strolling out of my Geology Lab on the second floor of the massive geo-science complex here on campus. As I approached the door that would lead me to the stairwell, I noticed that the sign on the door said, “STAIR”.
so of course, logically, when I opened the door I expected to see just that, 1 stair. Then I mentally prepared myself for the tremendous effort if would take for me to leap from the second floor to the first floor unharmed.
But when i opened the door, to my great suprise, I found a set of stairs. as in more than one stair. i thought, “how nice, someone thought to add more stairs for the safety of those people trying to go up and down between floors.”
seriously.
stair is not the plural of stair. stairs is the plural of stair. this is not like those other words in english that have plurals that do not end in ‘s’ such as:
man today stinks, i have a fungus. oh you think your life is bad, my room is full of fungi.
you don’t say, “oh boy i recieved two pro-tools system for christmas”, you say, “oh boy i recieved a pro tools system for christmas”. (wink-wink)
so maybe i’m being the language police. but still.
i for one resolve to make a conscious effort to pluralize word when they should be plural.
make that “words”.
just another thought straight from me to you.
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term analysis: cute
for some reason, my brain flinches every time i hear the word “cute” when applied to things that should not be cute. like shoes. shoes are not cute. clothes cannot be cute either. nor can cars. or computers. or anything else material. cute should only be used for people, please. like when your newborn baby raises wide eyes up at you and smiles a pure toothless expression of joy.
yes, i realize that cute connotes something small and aesthetically pleasing. however, it’s not your new skirt that’s cute. it must be the person IN the skirt who’s cute.
now, i don’t want to generalize and say that only girls fall into the mis-terminology of “cute”. but i will. because they do.
when desiree goes to Chem Lab, she prefers to use the low-volume flasks, beakers, and funnels because they’re “cuter”. in fact, she noticed that the plastic funnel in my drawer was significantly “cuter” than her supplied funnel. so we traded. and now i, with my un-cute equipment, can finally funnel my NaOH into a graduated cylinder in a reasonable amount of time, while des lags behind. this is proof. when you start being biased towards the “cute” laboratory equipment, it’s time to draw the line.
this is just an example; i’m not cutting down the girls who use the word “cute” inappropriately, i’m simply pointing out my observation: the overuse of cute has gotten out of hand. be a part of the cure. start using more colorful, intelligent expressions. it makes life better for all!
in honor of my own suggestion, perhaps i should provide an example:
“Oh look at that new pair of pants! Can you say, ‘trendy’?! Those are some stylin’ threads! They scream, ‘neo-funky-retro-modernist-who-shops-at-needlessly-expensive-designer-stores’! Where can i slide my credit card to purchase a pair of those new pants purposely designed to look approximately 25 years old?”
ok sorry. got a little carried away. i must admit, some of that stuff does actually look nice. sometimes. if you’re cast in a Robert Redford movie. or if you’re like this guy.
KV: a very cool guy
Bonjour and Hello,
Since I know that most people will enjoy spending their hard-earned seven fifty on 2 rerun 2 furious, legaly bland 2, and all the other influx of terri.. i mean… wonderful movies (full of artistic merit) out this summer, i have no idea why i am writing this but oh well here goes nothing…
For all you readers out there, (you know the thousands perhaps even tens) of people who enjoy the good ole ink and paper, let me make a suggestion that will blow away your summer doldrums.
My suggestion is (drum roll): Kurt Vonnegut!
Yes, that’s it. KV. Besides being the coolest living modern/post-modern/contemporary writer, Kurt Vonnegut is also one of the hippest, coolest, cats around (and he’s 80 years old)! So run to the bookstore right now and buy one of his books. Any one. I promise you won’t be dissapointed. His short stories are great. His novels are great. His art is great. He is great. He even has his own day in New York (November 11). Even if you hate reading, you will love this guy I promise.
If you can’t get to the bookstore at this second (although you owe it to yourself if you have never experienced Vonnegut) you can go here in order to find out more about this incredible human. So what are you waiting for, take that movie money and go, go, go!
oh and if you would like to share a KV experience or you are a fellow KV fan who would like to discuss novels, stories, writing, life, ect. then post a comment and i will gladly email you back.
Anyway, good luck and happy reading!
the word “lot”
How can one possibly have a lot of patience? or a lot of fun? I’d sure like to have a lot of fun!! but it’s impossible. Why, one might ask? I’ll tell you why! I asked my friend Webster, and he says the word “lot” is always a noun. okay! cool. a noun: person, place, thing. i can understand this…
I have a 200-acre lot.
I have a lot.
this is definitely a noun! we have a place, which we have designated as a “lot”. perfect! i can have a party on my lot! i can have cars on my lot!
i have a parking lot.
i have a lot of cars.
now, wait a tick! there’s some gray area coming in… do you mean a “lot”, a large number (which would somehow make the noun “lot” an adjective because it describes how many), or a “lot”, the noun, the place, the area of land? Well, to any natively english speaking person, either definition is correct. BUT WHY CAN “LOT” BECOME AN ADJECTIVE IF YOU PUT “A” IN FRONT OF IT AND “OF” IN BACK OF IT?!!
yes, it’s an adjective phrase… hmm. but we still call it a noun. Webster just calls it a ‘colloquial’ noun. shya right. so i have a plot of land with a bunch of horse poo on it, i really, literally, in all forms, have “A Lot of Crap”.
Allow me to speculate. thinking back to the roots, to the ancient Old Anglo-Saxons and the Old Germanic hamlets when merchants went around and sold stuff. “hip ho, good merchant man, i’d like to buy a gaggle of geese from your lot of geese.” “Oh yes, on my lot, i have geese. you can select your geese from this lot of geese over here.” And over many many years, the word “lot” has come to mean, ‘a large number’, because it was originally associated solely with the area of land filled with the subject matter (i have geese, i have a lot of geese.)
So let’s get serious and discount the colloquial form of the word “lot”, because the colloquial form and its connotative connivery means nothing. how can one have a plot of land with patience all over it? unless it was like carved into the ground or something? or FUN? I, personally, know a lot of people who are searching for a lot of fun. I tell you, they’ll never find it! But they don’t believe me… they look in all kinds of places, but as far as i’ve ever discovered, my lot of fun is in the verdant pastures of my very own brain. and thats it. period. there cannot Be a lot of fun. it is impossible.
the next thought you may be thinking could be, david has no life. david spends his time thinking about the origins and evolutionary connotations of colloquial speech patterns. what a dork! well, luckily for myself and the rest of society, i limit my extreme dorkiness to only my close friends and this very Blog. But next time you say, “Dang, that’s a lot of cheese muffins!” you’d better be describing a plot of land covered in gooey, tasty baked goods. and now i will exit like the equally dorky Sprint PCS commercial dude who is enlightening the silly world and its wacky cellular users with his PCS technology. my job is done here.
if i was a gelatinous blob…
comfort isn’t much of an issue: chairs are needless, beds superfluous, desks and stools pointless. feeding is easy. just throw some nourishment into my globby mass, and watch as i slowly assimilate and digest it.
my senses are limited… a sense of sight is desirable, but impossible, because eyes sink to the bottom of my formless self. i can definitely feel, but only that which touches me. i hear by absorbing sound waves.
it is nearly impossible to inflict pain… chemicals that dissolve can destroy me (at least part of me), but any physical act does nothing: i am not bound by the rules of solids. that being said, i can essentially be in two places at one time!! just pour a little of my outskirts into a jar and bring me somewhere. this makes for a great self-preservation method: always keep a little of my goo in a safe place, so if i get destroyed, the goo can be fed and grown into a full fledged gelatinous blob copy of me. Am i getting a little chubby? scrape a little off the edges! give some goo to a friend so i can be with them always.
the problems: i have no stomach to gauge my feeding; if i get overfed and grow to burst out of my surroundings, then oh well! and wherever i go, i leave a sticky, somewhat odorous trail. i unintentionally make really disgusting sloppy noises and squishes sometimes, most of which are little too biologically intense for more refined social tastes (a simple ‘pardon me’ does not suffice). relationships prove difficult, since i can neither communicate with nor have something in common with a partner. my intellect is disregarded, since i’m just a blob and i can’t do much. there would be much difficulty convincing ordinary people that i’m worth talking to. there would have to be some new research to implement controls that interpret my electrical impulses, to control things like computers and mechanical devices. and that would be cool.
the sadness of my life: i dream, i think, i listen, i wonder, i marvel, i bemuse, i weep, yet no one else ever can tell.
Music = Life = Music
There is not a moment of my life that goes by that I am not thinking, writing, playing, or listening to music. It is my quiet obsession, my passion. It is a habit that extends into every facet of my lifestyle. But for myself as well as many others, “music” is not something that is only created by a piano or guitar or orchestra. It is the sounds that I hear and live with everyday. And this is perhaps the most rewarding aspect of my daily musical adventure. To hear the sounds of life; the creaks in my floor, the hum of the fan, the rattle of the rain on the windows, this is the “music” of life, so perfectly composed with so many infinte possibilities, always different, yet so familiar. Some of these melodies, like the rustle of my sheets that I inevitably hear every night before my eyes close, are so familiar that I forget them. But they are there. They are the quiet chimes in the symphony of my life. They contribute to my daily experience in a way that I would only notice if they were left out.
I admit, there is nothing more beautiful than a sonata by Chopin, nothing more perfect than a fantasia by Bach, but there is nothing more divine than everyday life as composed by THE composer. I write to remind myself as well as others, to revel in the ultimate opus, the sounds that are life.
if i was a tribal indian…
i wear very little clothing, if any at all. my diet is sparse and hardy, often consisting of insects and wild grains. i get to wear brightly colored war paint all over my body, proving myself in hunts and battles over territory. 
my childhood was filled with learning the many ways of the tribe, such as how to skin and eat a small rodent, and how to smoke a big pipe. I pay homage to my chief, and pay no attention to my rival tribe’s chief. Throughout my course to adulthood, my family tradition and reputation is resting more and more on my shoulders. I must preserve my ancestors’ legacies. i beat drums and cry out in oral tradition. electricity is equated to magical light and fire. i squat in a far off place to go to the bathroom. i have a wife before i turn 15, and i have several wives by the time i am 20. wind isn’t just wind, it’s source direction is significant enough to change my plans.
Every day i sharpen my weapons. Every day i wonder where my next meal is. and i pray ritualistically to nature gods, oftentimes spending weeks in the wilderness to purify my spirit and speak with mother earth. i am always on a quest.
