Has everyone seen Food, Inc.?
12.12.09
3.12.09
Howl
Back in my twenties, when I read Allen Ginsberg's Howl for the first time, I didn't much like it and was disappointed. Some time later, a good friend sent me a mixed cassette tape which included this recording of Ginsberg reading his famous Beat poem.
Listening to his spare, liturgical reading, I was moved to tears. Until I heard him reading it, I hadn't realized how he had meant it. This was the first time I really appreciated that some writing is meant to be read aloud. From then on, I would read it to my friends or aloud to myself in Ginsberg's manner.
Each time, the emotion of reading it this way would build in me until I got to the part: "who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels", at which point I'd choke up and have to put every effort into continuing so I didn't ruin it for my listeners.
29.11.09
27.11.09
24.11.09
Cloven Hoof (Berkeley)
I love me a Sagittarius guy, so I was disappointed to have missed this sexy auburn centaur's tragic escape.
I can only assume that as he was getting into his car he was confronted by a knife-wielding ex-girlfriend or rival beast. Fighting valiantly for his life, he leapt into his car and slammed the door on his leg, effectively dismembering his own limb. He drove off to the hospital, blood spattering all over his car's ecru leather interior, while he skillfully alternated the gas and brake pedal with one hoof (his back two legs tucked behind him on the seat).
He arrived nearly unconscious, and his soon-to-be-next girlfriend, a slim pretty nurse in high heeled white pumps and satin Wolford thigh-highs, just off from her shift, glimpsed him slumped over the steering wheel of his idled car in the parking lot and alerted the emergency medics, saving his life.
At the very same moment that he was being wheeled in for emergency surgery, this white van pulled up in the empty parking space. The driver--in complete innocence of his potential role in the fate of the centaur, who will now live forever (they're immortal, aren't they?) with a slight (nevertheless chick-magnet) limp instead of receiving the state-of-the-art limb graft that would have preserved his (frenzy-inducing) swaggering gait--shut his driver-side door and wandered mildly over to the bike shop across the street to check out the new Campagnolo 'Centaur' derailleurs just in.
If only the bicycle-enthusiast driver, who had bad breath from fasting incorrectly, had been a fresh-scented Lothario with a bright-eyed companion who would have exited from the sidewalk-side door and spied the leg! If only the specialty bike shop had been on the sidewalk-side of the street! If only I myself had arrived earlier on the scene, but by the time I encountered this forlorn sight, it was already clear by its very forlornness that the moment for a heroic deed had long passed.
23.11.09
19.11.09
15.11.09
My New Favorite Book
Mr. Thompson Lives in France by Pierre Daninos
I now look forward to reading more British funnymen like P.G. Wodehouse, whom my mom loved but whose books I always ignored. I may yet turn into a full-blown humorist myself.
I just finished reading Eugene Ionesco's The Hermit for the first time, and although it was brilliant and My-New-Favorite-Book-worthy, it hit a little too close to the dark side and put me in a funk for days. Mr. Thompson provided just the right antidote.
I've always liked a good laugh, and as my own writing matures, it gets funnier. My reading tastes have followed. Now, in addition to all-time-faves like Henry Miller and the French writers with their dark sarcasm, I've come to be in awe of master wizards of light like Calvin Trillin who, in his satirical pieces, keeps heavy matter swirling weightlessly without ever once dropping it.
6.11.09
The Tyranny of E-Mail
What have I been doing?, my Twitter prompt asks me. I've been successfully avoiding Twitter, that's what! But after three or so years of resistance, basically as long as Twitter's been around, I finally broke down and I am tweeting.
Last week, intrigued by the subject and in need of some therapeutic kinship, I attended new Granta editor John Freeman's reading at City Lights Booksellers for his hot-off-the-press book The Tyranny of E-mail, during which he proposed a Slow Communications Movement, against the tyranny of our addiction to constant instant connection.
I wholeheartedly agreed, bought the book, spoke briefly with Freeman himself about my own tyrannical experiences, vowed to rethink my relationship to social media, and now somehow, little more than a week later, I am signed up on Twitter.
I wholeheartedly agreed, bought the book, spoke briefly with Freeman himself about my own tyrannical experiences, vowed to rethink my relationship to social media, and now somehow, little more than a week later, I am signed up on Twitter.
But guess what? This, my first supposed tweet, was already much longer than 140 characters a quarter of the way through, so I've turned it into a blog post instead, which means, technically, I'm not yet tweeting at all. Does this mean I'm still eligible to join the SCM (Slow Communications Movement)?
At least until tomorrow when I try tweeting again?
Meanwhile, for those of you in the SF Bay Area, be sure not to miss Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi's reading this coming Tuesday, November 10th at City Lights for their book Wherever There's a Fight. (Hey, this addendum is actually tweet-sized!)
30.10.09
My New Favorite Book
I'm on page 31 and I am jealous maybe and invigorated, excited, thankful, anxious and adoring. It's rare that you come upon a true-written book. I'm so sick, frankly, of literature sludge. Impatient with form. Want, in my own fiction, to cut so much out of 'writing', and I do it in bits, but not whole like this.
I dislike books (which will remain nameless in this public forum) that wank 'brilliantly' with language, that pretend to break it apart by being almost unreadable, that include footnotes and different fonts, whose writers bore us in the name of their own supposed genius, whose pretense to new form is actually just over-intellectual ego-spewing.
This book, so far, strikes me as radically different. It's honest in a way that's really hard to access as a writer, or at least hard to admit to fully so that it actually ends up on the page instead of being transformed into literature by the time it reaches the page, or even the arm, or even maybe the frontal lobe, or whatever it is.
27.10.09
Pink Fur
photo: Heather Angel
My friend H. lived in Manhattan for the same fifteen years that I did. Now she's back in Japan and writes an elegantly presented blog which, unfortunately, I can't read because it's in Japanese. Today, however, I pressed the google translator button, and the result, though a poor translation, was pure poetry. Here is one particularly gorgeous, Gertrude Stein-worthy post:
________________________________________________________________________
Today, we've heard from friends that the mutual friend's Christmas present to my boyfriend at some Wow, it got a pink mink coat. And Chanel shoulder and back, seemed to us to shop for groceries.
Pink fur is a friend of the same age as me.
Boyfriend is a whopping two or more people around on.
I met up with my boyfriend once who was like, What is really good.
Well, to hear the story, it immediately thought, "Wow. I wish good, the boyfriend of the rich, even lavish Yokutsu." I was, Why do not you think later, it really says Deru me is what I want? What was that.
Now, some people I do not even like my boyfriend, as he likes people, as marriage or was thinking, I imagine.
Do we also, together with the cool older rich people, you get what you want to figure that has occurred to where to live comfortably off.
Of course, if you want to be rich Re, want to live without having to worry about money.
Go and the wind is only going to say that I think, well, like saying I'm not from the beginning.
(Of course, I first say that it is poverty that is never good.)
But I want peace of mind, not saying I'm against the whole favoring hug.
For someone to say that something is difficult.
Maybe, he would be looking for a relationship I feel closer to each other. Of course, my ex-boyfriend, friends, and that you are not living comfortably.
What a rice cake but my boyfriend is money, and all'm not fed her.
Her own, but people in the house of money, rice, and it was also like a lot trouble, and I think not even the slightest thought that all the money Nante.
Sun gah rich, and I'll be out in society, sometimes they want to become.
Beautiful Bebe dressed, out of the party.
But it is a top, the party Tara In fact, I think people like me very well and I wonder how.
But I'll end up socializing.
Takunai not go to a party or even to go, and it is likely great.
Just wondering what the situation say that when everything goes, once you experience the kind you can about that.
Try to imagine the most apposite, and close to my age and I wonder about people who have enough income to raise a family on the go.
Oh, too much too much too?
Um, tell me you want from any pink fur.
Pink fur is a friend of the same age as me.
Boyfriend is a whopping two or more people around on.
I met up with my boyfriend once who was like, What is really good.
Well, to hear the story, it immediately thought, "Wow. I wish good, the boyfriend of the rich, even lavish Yokutsu." I was, Why do not you think later, it really says Deru me is what I want? What was that.
Now, some people I do not even like my boyfriend, as he likes people, as marriage or was thinking, I imagine.
Do we also, together with the cool older rich people, you get what you want to figure that has occurred to where to live comfortably off.
Of course, if you want to be rich Re, want to live without having to worry about money.
Go and the wind is only going to say that I think, well, like saying I'm not from the beginning.
(Of course, I first say that it is poverty that is never good.)
But I want peace of mind, not saying I'm against the whole favoring hug.
For someone to say that something is difficult.
Maybe, he would be looking for a relationship I feel closer to each other. Of course, my ex-boyfriend, friends, and that you are not living comfortably.
What a rice cake but my boyfriend is money, and all'm not fed her.
Her own, but people in the house of money, rice, and it was also like a lot trouble, and I think not even the slightest thought that all the money Nante.
Sun gah rich, and I'll be out in society, sometimes they want to become.
Beautiful Bebe dressed, out of the party.
But it is a top, the party Tara In fact, I think people like me very well and I wonder how.
But I'll end up socializing.
Takunai not go to a party or even to go, and it is likely great.
Just wondering what the situation say that when everything goes, once you experience the kind you can about that.
Try to imagine the most apposite, and close to my age and I wonder about people who have enough income to raise a family on the go.
Oh, too much too much too?
Um, tell me you want from any pink fur.
23.10.09
Petrified Forest (Arizona)
It was affecting to walk amongst these ghosts of trees from a forest that stood lush and tall about 225 million years ago. They are no longer wood themselves, of course, but because they are so identifiable and detailed, they provoke 'closer', more personal sentiments than do the more anonymous geological layers of the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, which inspire an abstract, distanced awe.
As with so many sights in this area, it gave me poignant sense of my very small part in everything, and my very, very short life.
In the future, we will have digital images of most everything, and they will be the fossils of the future, floating around forever in space. They will be the petrified landscapes. Physical petrification may well occur again too, and certainly vast physical changes will occur.
On that train of thought, wouldn't it be odd if the physical changes are someday so great that all civilization as we know it disappears? Suppose then that there is new life, and the new life develops surrounded by these digitized fossils, but without any equipment with which to access them, and therefore completely unaware of them (except maybe intuited by some or many, and subject to all sorts of interpretations).
This begs the question of how much we ourselves are unaware of or misinterpret simply because we don't have the equipment to access it. It's hardly an original question, and I'm not sure it merits a whole lot of contemplation (unless it's applied to something physical and specific); it's the kind of question that makes you think too much--to no end or to a confused end. Better to go clean the house instead.
In the future, we will have digital images of most everything, and they will be the fossils of the future, floating around forever in space. They will be the petrified landscapes. Physical petrification may well occur again too, and certainly vast physical changes will occur.
On that train of thought, wouldn't it be odd if the physical changes are someday so great that all civilization as we know it disappears? Suppose then that there is new life, and the new life develops surrounded by these digitized fossils, but without any equipment with which to access them, and therefore completely unaware of them (except maybe intuited by some or many, and subject to all sorts of interpretations).
This begs the question of how much we ourselves are unaware of or misinterpret simply because we don't have the equipment to access it. It's hardly an original question, and I'm not sure it merits a whole lot of contemplation (unless it's applied to something physical and specific); it's the kind of question that makes you think too much--to no end or to a confused end. Better to go clean the house instead.
22.10.09
Grape Picking (Napa Valley)
Last Sunday, our friend G. invited us to help out with the second picking at her friends' small vineyard in Napa Valley. I've always wanted to pick wine grapes and couldn't have been more excited. I'm happy to say that the experience fulfilled my expectations. Our hosts, the wine-making family, were charming, friendly and down-to-earth, and enthusiastic about sharing knowledge; there were snot-nosed goats which might be sheep in a neighboring pen; kids (not goats, not snot-nosed) running around; and the surroundings were, of course, gorgeous.
The first picking of the heavy, low-hanging fruit had been handled by professionals a week or so earlier, and the lot sold off to Stag's Leap Winery. This second picking was solely for the family's own use. The smaller batch will serve as the son-in-law's first initiation into the rigours of winemaking, so we were told with a laugh that we may or may not be receiving the bottled result, depending on how things go...I hope they go well!
I learned a lot more about wine-making that day, but the most satisfactory elements of the whole experience for me were simply the obsessive search for the dark purple clumps in the green foliage, and the crisp, easy snip of the tender, juicy green vine, and the soft plunk of the little bunches of grapes into my hand and then into my bucket.
The first picking of the heavy, low-hanging fruit had been handled by professionals a week or so earlier, and the lot sold off to Stag's Leap Winery. This second picking was solely for the family's own use. The smaller batch will serve as the son-in-law's first initiation into the rigours of winemaking, so we were told with a laugh that we may or may not be receiving the bottled result, depending on how things go...I hope they go well!
I learned a lot more about wine-making that day, but the most satisfactory elements of the whole experience for me were simply the obsessive search for the dark purple clumps in the green foliage, and the crisp, easy snip of the tender, juicy green vine, and the soft plunk of the little bunches of grapes into my hand and then into my bucket.
20.10.09
Chicken 11
There has rightfully been some confusion over my chicken presentations. Some have asked for photos of the birds when they're all crispy and done, or have wondered which recipe D. follows.
Frankly, I couldn't care less about their culinary value or their final, Saveur-worthy results; at least, that's not why I photograph them.
I'm interested instead in their Gaston Lachaise quality, their proud, awkward, vulnerable, matronly nakedness; their pink-and-yellow plumpish pulchritude; their 'Oh My!' gestures; their knock-kneed, disingenuously ladylike attempts to hide their basted and oiled-up privates; their fetishized flesh; their luscious, denatured obscenity; their over-civilized utility; their blank, helpless, put-on-a-pedestal moment of glory as a fashionable commodity; their simple commonness exploited to the extent that they develop a naiive pretension to delicacy and refinement, which makes them endearingly vulgar; the reality of their existence as living meat.
There, I think I've covered it.
