Give me a smile?

These are the ghosts

2005-11-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

Well, once again A's shamed me into this, and I don't really know why I've been so resistant to writing here. Perhaps I'm just by nature fickle, faddy and unable to finish what I start. But this shouldn't all be negative. I've had an unsuccessful day as I have a stack of grading still to do. I quite like the phrase 'stack of grading', don't know why. Don't like the reality of it, but I don't mind feeling like a real teacher. Yet grading - damn. I shouldn't get tied up into such emotional knots about it, but I just find the way we do what we do to make no sense at all, and it traps bright students into writing below their ability. Furthermore writing has always been like breathing to me, and how the hell do you teach somebody how to breathe?
Anyway. Sorry, DR my love, if this is inadequate. Just read this Times article, and can somebody tell me how we got into this damn mess? I shouldn't try and post when I'm tired and grouchy. And nothing makes me tired and grouchy like misogynistic 'Christian' political assholes who just can't sleep at night unless they believe they've done everything in their damn power to ensure that all single women everywhere are safely locked up, alone, knees pressed together, dreaming chastely of their weddings.

Seed will grow

2005-10-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

Structure! Damn, I love it. Even the shakiest matchstick framework over my amorphous non!dissertation is a relief and has re-energised me. Even confronted by darkness and rain I'm in a good mood and still loving the change of seasons. I like getting out my winter clothes and making oatmeal for breakfast and the prospect of huddling by a heater to read. Sure, the novelty will wear off soon. But it seems my research is always going to be fundamentally opposed to sunny weather. So long, jobs in Southern California.
Soon, soon, I will be sorting out this blog with pretty pretty pictures. For now, though, you're just going to have to imagine the rain.

The future of the future/Happy Endings

2005-10-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it took much prodding from Delia Ray, and much faffing, fannying, and farting around (dirty!) to recover my name and password, but inspired by the rain, here I am back again. Long time coming.
I got up early this morning to attend a conference on 'The New Comparativism' and had a many times repeated reaction of: whaaa?...oh, I think...I get it!!...what?...no, losing it...losing it...is there coffee? to the keynote speech and the following roundtable. But this guy was awesome (he's a Nobel laureate chemist and a poet and philosopher) and I learned a lot about indigo that I didn't know. Like what happens when you put it in fermented urine, and how many snails have to die for the purple on your robe, battle-winning Roman mollusc-murderer. Ach, it were a metaphor. He didn't mention Marina Warner's novel named for the dye, though, which was a shame as it's a wonderful, rich, slightly crazy reimagining of the Tempest - specifically, Sycorax's island is the disguised Caribbean island of St Kitt's, where Warner's family were colonial governors, and Sycorax as a dyer of indigo and the adoptive mother of Caliban, son of an African slave woman who drowns off the coast of the island, and actual mother of Ariel, a girl who grows up to be the mistress of one of the first white settlers. One day when I get my snails and urine together to produce an opulent academic website, I will link to the conference paper I gave on it. Yes, it has nothing to do with the first or ANY world war, but it's kinda about memory, as was the conference.
By the way, what exactly do we mean by the term 'rich' when it comes to literary criticism (or book reviews, really)? I just used it and realised I don't know, and I'm troubled. It has overtones of 'exotic', doesn't it? Also: lots of description, probably about sex. Or at the very least, sensuality. And the landscape. Vivid, evocative. IS it code for 'exotic', now? I'm worried if it is. Like 'lush'. It's never used for the likes of Ian McEwan, is it? Is it subtly gender-coded? Racially coded?
Am I overthinking this? Has anyone written about it?
Well, that was a rambling return, and I said nothing whatsoever about my summer in London, the fact that we're all going to hell in a flu-infected hurricane-whipped bomb-wired handbasket, but I'm taking comfort in the little things.

Maverick A Strike / It's True that We Love One Another

2005-07-03T23:11:00.001-07:00

An appropriate tune that for me will always be associated with Ali's London crew, specifically the first Bethnal Green flat, Toby and Jay and a changing cast of others, and hot weather. I'm looking forward to going back, not that anyone's there any more. In BG, at least. Except my girl Rosie, this summer's bride.
Today lots of walking and wandering around Soho and the LES made me sad to leave, although for a few weeks I have been feeling restless, antsy, unable to work but unable to kick back without guilt. I'm saddest of all at the thought of missing out on six whole weeks of baby Jack's development, who'll be nearly three months when I get back. For the sake of his parents, that will be wonderful - he'll be so much more settled and secure - but there's something about his sheer, indescribable newness right now that we're bound to lose and never recover. He'll continue to be a marvel and a mystery in any number of ways, but we won't have our sense of (for want of a better term) "wtf?!" As Miranda from Sex & the City puts it after the birth of her baby - "it's weird - like suddenly there's a giraffe in the room". When I come back, there'll just be a baby. Cutest baby ever, perhaps, but still.
Anyway, I intended to write about London. I can't wait to see Lucy, Ali, Grace and everyone who's still in and around the city along with the visiting New Yorkers - Maeve and Sara, and L & S. I also can't wait to get started writing toward the dissertation, celebrating Rosie's hen-ness, going to Toulouse, and getting myself ready for a new school year with three fresh King's expats.
Wow, this was a narcissistic post, and not very coherent, but I'm tired, and I still have to figure out which shoes to pack - a project with vast existential implications. I'm a little tipsy though, so that should help.
Farewell my lovelies.

Maverick A Strike / It's True that We Love One Another

2005-07-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

Independent Women

2005-07-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

No jokes this time, and no laziness. Depending on the email lists you're on, you may or may not be in a state of panic over the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court this afternoon. No doubt there will be a lot of noise about this over the next few days and weeks, but Bush may just capitalise on the holiday weekend to announce a nominee on Tuesday, so that through the hangovers Americans may wake up to a new world. A disturbing new world that in certain lights looks eerily familiar. It looks kind of like the 1950s.
Melodrama aside, we should all at least sign this petition, and read more about it here and elsewhere.
It's up to all of us to read up on Roe v. Wade and get ourselves ready for a fight.

The Soldering Life

2005-07-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

Work panic setting in, so don't pay attention to me today.
Read this instead

Commercials

2005-06-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

Late night TV can be scary. I was working in front of Roseanne repeats last night (reliving my childhood when it was my all-time favourite show and I had the hugest crush on David) and using the brilliance of DVR, was able to pause the TV during the commercials while I went to the kitchen for chocolate.

When I came back I saw that THIS was what was on the TV where I'd paused it:

Holy. Crap. My eyes!!! Perhaps this is a sign I should go to the library, right now.

I dream a highway / Human Fly

2005-06-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

A holiday in my home town.

Friday. K and I, fortified by cocktails that I blended out of peaches, lime, vanilla rum and peach schnapps, made our way downtown for a night exploring the world beyond Morningside Heights, specifically, the Meatpacking district (fnar). We discovered several things: cobbled streets are cute and all, but murder on one's stilettos (Aerosoles wedges, people - get on board). The white jeans revival is a very bad thing. (especially on men). Ditto for the knee-length shorts trend. And we remain mystified by some things: stretch limos. Lindsay Lohan. All this VIP door-muscle nonsense...

This, I have to say, is one aspect of New York nightlife (although I believe it's spreading) that simply baffles me. Dear nightclub managers: when your real estate is limited, is there really anything to be gained by herding the majority of people into a tiny space in front of the DJ while gaping on either side is the 'VIP' section, policed by hapless bouncers who are painfully in the way and really ought to be considering the futility of their job at this point? I mean, these people are ALREADY IN THE CLUB. Do 'VIPs' really feel that they have arrived if they get past a bouncer ON THE FUCKING DANCEFLOOR to go to a table THREE FEET AWAY on the same level, just as visible, with no discernable increase in wealth, power, privilege and attractiveness in the crowd on the other side of the barrier. Seriously. This club, AER, had possibly the most astounding sound system I have heard in a long time, the DJs were fantastic at building the crowd up, but the arsey segregation tactics meant that nobody was able to dance (not that that stopped the grope'n'grind, of course. Note to unattractive men: get your bloody hands off me. I am not dancing with my friend for your titillation. It's because I don't want to dance with you. And you know whose problem that is? NOT MINE! Gah!). Are these people so stupid that they don't realise this utterly artificial division of space means that you get totally empty, cold, over airconditioned areas and tiny little sweatboxes, which is not the happiest compination? I have nothing against tiny little sweatboxes since my days helping 'run' one, but if you have space, use it! Everybody will be happier. Most people will not leave because you have made them rub shoulders with non-VIPs (U[n]IPs? M[oderately]IPs?) Don't design your club to cater to people who do not exist. Instead, try appealing to people who don't want to be ripped off, don't want to be treated like cattle, and just want to have a good time. Which, all ranting aside, I did in fact have, absolutely, due to the aforementioned fabulous company and what was, in fairness, a very nice-looking and kick-ass-sounding club (with a mystifying demographic, but that's another story and this is too long already). But really. If only people would let me run everything, we'd all be happier.

And so to Saturday, and my explorations south went to the crazy lengths of the L train BEYOND 1st ave. Yes, people, I went to Williamsburg in the baking baking heat, to the Renegade Craft Fair, which was held in a scruffy park with people playing softball (madness). It was fun but for the heat, which baked me into such lassitude so that I didn't get too excited by anything. Lots of cute(sy) bags, clothes, jewellery, baby stuff, lots of ideas, but not so much with the 'renegade' that I could see.

Now, saving the best till last, was this:

A whole other part of Brooklyn (one that I'm afraid appeals to me more, perhaps because I am at heart more bourgeois than hipster), Prospect Park, and a fabulous night with Canadian bands at the bandshell. Celebrate Brooklyn indeed. All concerts should be like this: the end of a hot, hot day (hi to everyone at Glastonbury!), a $3 charge, beer, wine and good food for sale at sensible prices, a huge sloping picnic lawn behind seats should you so desire them, and Stars, who I adore. As someone I met aptly described them: "they're like candy! Pot candy!" Sweet, a little bit trippy and a little bit evil as well. Here they are:

The Sadies, who opened, were pretty good (surf rock! For reals!), but the headliners, the New Pornographers (in the running for worst band name ever?) sounded to me kinda samey and derivative, but tight, energetic and fun for all that. By that time I had run into some peeps I know (having successfully avoided the other peeps I saw who I know but who I intensely dislike) and wandered up to join their big group of Brooklyn-dwellers. I was profoundly envious for a little while there, but the rest of the time - well, you basically live in the suburbs. Funky, sexy suburbs, maybe, but...I like my Manhattan. It's nice to be home.

Lost in the supermarket / Happening

2005-06-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

I love this picture (and these shoes) - took it today at MOMA. The Lee Friedlander exhibition is fab, if vast, and I loved the the product design and architecture galleries. The painting galleries were so stuffed with riches they were hard to enjoy. Another Picasso... As for the building itself, it's nowhere near the knockout structure that is Tate Modern, but it's airy and joyful.

Aaand, now that we've got the joy out of the way, there's this:

"Yesterday bills were introduced in both Houses of the U.S. Congress to make access to birth control more difficult for young women.

The so-called "Parents Right to Know Act" (S. 1279, H.R. 3011), would delay or even prevent access to contraception for young women by requiring clinics receiving federal funds under Title X to notify at least one parent five days before issuing them prescriptions. While it does not require consent, it still restricts access to birth control for young women, and will endanger the health of some young women.

The bill, which may not pass, reveals where the right wants to take the fight over reproductive choice – way beyond abortion." (from Ms.)

Yes, indeed. As New York City gears up for Pride, I'm struck again by the twisted, chilling brilliance of whoever it was on the arch-conservative right wing who came up with the idea of co-opting the rhetoric and the energy of the decades-old fight for rights and recognition being carried on by women, minorities and gay people, and applying it instead to groups that have been suffering the neglect and oppression of being at the top of the pile for, ooh, ever. Won't somebody PLEASE think of the middle-aged Christian straight white men? Will nobody hear their voice? Will nobody help to stop the tragic decline of their ability to control the lives of their daughters?

On the bright side, I only caught the last half of this documentary on PBS last night: The Education of Shelby Knox, but it was fabulous. Shelby Knox was your average teenager in Lubbock, Texas, raised a 'good baptist girl' - abstinence pledge and all - who one day looked at sex education and STI/pregnancy rates in her town and realised SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE. She's now a political science major at UT Austin (the bookstore of which I worked at in summer 1998, so I have fond memories of the campus), and she's an inspiration. Good luck to her. Try to enjoy this tale without thinking about the proposed slashing of PBS's budget - damn, would you look at that? I want to scream again. High time for Jon o'clock.

Smile like you mean it / Danger! High Voltage

2005-06-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Cults are scary. That's the only reason I'm allowing Fox News to appear on this blog. Because I like my knee-jerk conspiracy theories when they involve celebrities.
In other news, I have just come from a lovely reassuring meeting with gorgeous Advisor Extraordinaire, and am no longer in quite the state of panic that led me late last night to trawl Amazon for 'how to write your dissertation' guides. Instead, I am comforted by the clear light of a sunny day and the sensible advice of finding some books I want to write about, then taking it from there. I knew my approach of trying to synthesize everything that has been written about war ever into one grand theory about life, literature, politics and everything was...perhaps a little misguided.
Am now trying not to be too envious (hollow laugh) at AE's summer plans: two weeks in the Hamptons with the nanny (in her own private cottage). I know someone who will particularly enjoy that one. Is it too late to retrain as a nanny? I hear the English accent is a big bonus.

Such Great Heights / No Aloha

2005-06-20T08:32:00.000-07:00

Out walking yesterday on the Upper East Side (which just featured in the fabulous flying dream I just had - haven't had one of those in a while - which started on a huge white rollercoaster on the UES) and I took a photo of this beautiful house, which stood out because of its clean and restrained Regency-townhouse air, less frilly than some of the carved and curlicued balconies on 82nd. Look at those pillars! [/frustrated architect]

Anyway, I was walking on to the end of the block when a little old lady stopped me, and asked, 'Miss, where you taking a picture of number 61?' She was your classic UES lady, neat set white hair, Chanel jacket, Hermes scarf (though no little yappy dog, thank god). She didn't seem upset, but I shrugged it off, in case I had violated some sacred UES privacy law. She started to tell me how she'd lived there years ago, renting the apartment on the third floor with three other girls, when they all worked at the Met. I kept thinking of 'How to Marry a Millionaire'. We kept walking and she told me her life story, about her musical husband who'd died eight years ago and had been worried before their wedding that she didn't really *love* music. She had studied Art History at Columbia, worked at Harvard then at the Met for 12 years, then at MOMA, and still goes to the Met most days ("making my minimum donation", hee). The point is: I love New York. I miss my grandma.

Lullaby vs A Place in My Heart

2005-06-18T22:58:00.000-07:00

I swear I'm not making that post title up: DJ Kicks, Erlend Oye (all one track). But seriously: a beautiful afternoon playing with my favourite new family and then a horrible conversation finally stamping to death something that should have died several months ago.
One day I will learn to make a clear sentence beginning with 'I', continuing with 'feel' and ending with X, whatever X may be. And I won't resort to the written word, pouring my heart oh-so-eloquently onto the page (ok, screen) when it's all over, sliding the letter under the slammed door, not even hoping for a reply, but hoping perhaps to influence the recipient to regret, a little bit, what he probably didn't even realise he had done.
Well, I say that one day I will do all this. Truth be told, I probably won't. Cheers!

Happiness / Little Room

2005-06-17T05:55:00.000-07:00

Once again, a serendipitously appropriate post title. Last night's bitching and misery is all gone, I assure y'all. Thanks to Gracie for bringing this article to my (and now, dear reader, your) attention. The author, Joan Bakewell, for those of you not British, was one of the first female TV and radio presenters and for many years presented the kind of show the BBC used to make a lot of, 'Heart of the Matter' which was a kind of morality debate show. Which funnily enough is a very different beast when your national broadcasters are a bunch of overeducated commies (god bless them) instead of the barely coherent protofascists at Fox etc. Suffice to say, it was no 'Great moments in punditry as read by children'. Interestingly enough, in view of what she's writing about (the murder of Shaima Rezayee, the female host of an MTV-style TV show in Kabul, if you can't be bothered with the link) JB was always bedevilled by comments about her looks (she's still a fox at 72 - there you go). She's pretty sanguine about women being judged by their looks in general life - shrug and embrace it - but the problems arise when those judgements become actions. I haven't exactly got my thoughts in order here, yet I'm intrigued by how far women's freedom of dress, thought and action (including, presumably, sexual activity) in Afghanistan is taken as symbolic of wider human freedoms by western journalists - particularly in the US, in a culture that contains many loud voices condemning American women for wanting those freedoms enshrined in law. How long before these strong women being praised for 'discarding the burkha' (as the London Times puts it) are condemned for demanding birth control? Or is it OK to turn away from your religious values, as long as your religion is not 'our' religion?
All that, and this article inspired me to learn how to do links. Would be easier in another browser, apparently. Anyway, perhaps I will now be more use when G and I finally get our website up and running. I mean, how busy is she going to be at law school, anyway? Speaking of running - that's where I'm going before it gets too hot.

Rest in peace, Shaima. Let's hope your killers are punished, especially if, as it's suspected, they include your two brothers.

(pic from Reporters Sans Frontières)

Magic and Loss: the Summation

2005-06-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

Feeling kinda lonely, kinda out-of-sorts. A day where things don't work. Specifically the combination of the Endnote software and the MLA bibliography, that conspired to drive me fucking insane most of today. ProcrASStination indeed. I seem to have forgotten how to read, or settle to anything for more than a minute or so. I could blame the internet but I should probably blame myself. I'm trying to get my thoughts for my prospectus together, or at least line up and organise the books I have to read, but the task feels mountainous right now and I have no idea how to break it down. And my resistance to those 'how to write your dissertation' books is monumental, like my resistance to being told how to do anything in the writing sphere. Guess I have lingering big-r Romantic leanings toward such notions as talent, inspiration, individual effort? I suppose some stupid teenage part of me wants to produce the Great American (or Barely Acceptable Temporary American at least) Dissertation out of seeming nowhere.
Sorry to anyone reading this who objects to narcissism and swearing. Next time I'll be better. And there'll be pictures. For now, read the Trippin' and Translatin' blogs for some things that really matter - one of them tiny and joyous, one of them huge and dark and tragic. In fact, the title of this post (courtesy of Lou Reed) is singularly appropriate here. Can't promise that'll happen again:
There's a bit of magic in everything
And then some loss, to even things out.

Cecilia Ann / All over the world

2005-06-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Frank Black is a very very big, very very bald man:

My inner music geek was spoiled rotten last night with a fabulous Pixies show at Jones Beach, about which I would say more but I have to concur with Elvis Costello on this: writing about music is like dancing about architecture, plus I have no technical musical ability and these things just wash over me in a haze. In a good way, of course. I would have doubts about the whole reunion/stadium tour/greatest hits/80s-rock-revival-kitsch-for-college-kids elements of the Pixies' return, but they are so damn good, and so utterly unapologetic and unpretentious on stage that I can't resist. Kim Deal has the best, biggest, happiest smile ever and she dresses like a geography teacher and I love her.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go listen to Velouria some more.

Oh, and Interpol were pretty good too.

These are the things

2005-06-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Duly chastised by the beautiful X, I am updating the "I heart" links to show that I do, indeed, heart her, despite her foreign tongue. All my bad for not learning the spagnol. Although I think I understood that last post pretty well. Off to see the Pixies...more later!

Stop dat / When you smile

2005-06-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

As good a place as any to get your heart broken:

Magnolias in DC are freakishly big, white-leathery dishes resting in towering trees, and scented, but if you pick the petals (or one is picked for you) they go brown and rusted-looking in an hour or so. Chance metaphor? I don't think so.
And yes, that's the Capitol peeping through the branches. Capitol Hill is a pretty, oldish neighbourhood that is very quiet and residential for being so close to, well, the Capitol. Much of DC is very quiet - or at least, its times and areas of noise or quiet are clearly delineated. You can walk two blocks and leave a crowd so completely behind that suddenly you're all alone - and cities where you can be all alone on the street on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon freak me out a little. Coming back in to Canal St on Saturday night was a relief - even the Times Square N/R to 1 interchange that I usually hate was exciting and woke me up. Particularly after four hours on the pee-scented Today Bus, shivering in the a/c and weeping with fury at the events of the day.
This is getting a little melodramatic so I'm going to wrap it up, with some love going out to my uptown girls, the fine people at the Cazadores tequila distillery, everybody at Apple who helped make my ipod and get through that journey, and Sarah who was able to dispense words of wisdom while also dispensing essential sustenance to her beautiful newborn son. Now that, ladies and gents, is multitasking.

Street noise

2005-06-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

I'm in a state of nervous anticipation that is helped only by the knowledge that it is roughly one one-meeellionth of what Sarah and Andy are living through right now. For little Jack is on his way at last. My project for the day is to finally purchase a decent digital camera so I can have better pictures at my disposal than the blurry cellphone crap. Anyway. All power to you guys, good luck, and much love. See you (all three!!) soon.
In other news: I'm still sewing (though my pleated skirt is stalled as its pleats are rather too loopy and tube-like right now - I need to locate the iron), still reading interesting-though-unrelated things (getting very interested in the American Civil War and cultural memory in the South right now), and occasionally hanging with the achingly hip:

All kidding and carping aside (not easy for me) these people are doing a damn sight more than, say, me, to change the world, or at least the system. To be specific, this: "Downtown for Democracy raises money through innovative, high visibility cultural events including concerts, auctions and readings. Funds raised in Democratic “safe states” like New York are used to challenge Bush and his allies in the key battleground states." Right now they are focusing on the Virginia governor's race (I can't bring myself to use that stupid 'guber'-whatever adjective) and I really need to stop interrupting myself (in parentheses like this). So, more power to them, hipsters or no.

Also - I was struck by a terrifying convergence in atmosphere and character between the two Rivington streets of my acquaintance, in Hoxton in London and on the LES here:

OK, so I couldn't find a decent pic of the NY version. But there are eerie similarities between both neighbourhoods: street names (Essex st/Essex rd, and OK that's it), general street-level scuzz (that's a technical term) interspersed with cool bars/clubs (Tonic/Cargo/etc) and more recently, more upscale but still cool restaurants (Gt Eastern/Inoteca/etc), and most importantly, a parallel tendency when one is there to a) get lost and b) wander aimlessly in a large and somewhat disgruntled group while someone tries to locate a bar/club/party, until people get bored and go home. In my case (both cases) in a painfully expensive cab because I live at the geographical and cultural opposite pole in each of the respective cities. Though the cab is easier to find and cheaper in NY, you don't have the fun of holding a street auction with all the illegal cabbies parked outside your bar of choice, to see who'll do a run to Blackheath for less than twenty quid.
Ah, London. See you soon.

Cheating on you / Picnic by the Motorway

2005-06-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here, in somewhat altered form, is the recipe for what I like to call Gazpach-jo (with apologies to my fellow chef and this awesome recipe book:

It's a great investment if you Yanks can handle all the 'aubergines' and 'courgettes' and 'grilling' and lack of cup measures. Anyway, this is the best ever summer food. Accompany with lots and lots of Rosé wine (Marques de Caceres if you can):

1. Roast 2 LARGE RED PEPPERS on a baking sheet in a hot oven (425degF) for 25 mins, turning occasionally so the skins blacken. When they're done, get them out and put them in a plastic bag with a seal to cool.
2. Meanwhile, skin 1.5 lb VINE RIPENED TOMATOES (or any tomatoes, I used cherry, but skinning them is a bitch) and chop them up, removing the seeds first if you are anal like that.
3. Get the peppers out of the bag, skin them and chop them up. Add to the tomatoes.
4. Use a blender to make 2oz breadcrumbs off a SMALL CIABATTA LOAF. Add the breadcrumbs to the tomato and peppers. Keep some bread back to make croutons.
5. Add 4 tbsp SHERRY (OR WINE) VINEGAR; 1 clove of GARLIC (crushed); a quarter pint of OLIVE OIL; 2 tbsp CASTER SUGAR; SALT and PEPPER to the tomato & peppers mixture. Stir together.
6. Puree in batches and pour into a bowl; thin with a little cold water. Chill for 2 hours.

Serve in chilled bowls with ice cubes and croutons (toss small pieces of ciabatta in olive oil and bake in 400F oven for 8 mins). Don't serve with futons. Enjoy!

6 Underground / ...

2005-06-01T12:48:00.000-07:00

Ikea, I love you, particularly for our new rugs, hall table, and my fabulous bedside table which is artfully piled with the books I'm currently reading (or looking the covers of): the aforeblogged Murakami, a biography of Rebecca West, West's The Judge, The Culture of Defeat by Wolfgang Schivelbusch (oh to be German), and Lawrence's The Rainbow, which (sshhhh!) I never read despite its being on my orals list. Ikea in Elizabeth NJ, thankyou, and thankyou S. for taking us there, and thankyou most of all for not being here (location of L's and my first home shopping expedition and a truly hilarious-in-retrospect nightmare of mall security guards, broken plates and walking the wrong way up a scary unlit highway):

Anyway, the sun's come out and it's nearly 4 so the city of New York might have deigned to turn our water supply back on. Most of the time I love this city, but occasionally its crap-ass infrastructure pisses me off, particularly when I start doing laundry only to realise the water is not exactly - there. Our maintenance guy assured me that it wasn't dangerous to run the machine anyway (as was happening) but if my sheets have caught fire for all the wrong reasons I won't be happy. Although this is making me happy:

It's petrel blue PVC, not that the photo is any good, and it used to be a slapperish miniskirt from Morgan that I wore occasionally as a teenager but finally had to accept was too short and too tight (and too, um, PVC) to be a viable wardrobe option. Now it is a fab slouchy bag. I love it. Just don't look too closely at the stitching...although I'm getting better at working my adorable little Dressmaker II thirty-dollar sewing machine.

Oh, and my titling policy holds: '...' is the first track off the Manic Street Preachers' fabulous Holy Bible album (thanks G!), from God knows how long ago in the dim past of the early 90s. What's not to love about a song, and indeed a band, that glories in the lyric 'Tipper Gore was a friend of mine'?

Are you a hypnotist?? / In Bloom

2005-05-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

Well, ARE you a hypnotist?

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's answer was an increasingly decisive 'yes' in 'Cure', his 1997 "designer serial killer movie" (as described somewhere online), which we watched last night. It heavily featured the ideas (philosophies? fantasies?) of Anton Mesmer (b. 1734) and made him out to be more of a shaman (or a quack, depending on how seriously you take such things) than I'd thought. I was racking my brains throughout to figure out where I'd heard of him before and I'm still at a loss, but I think it was in connection with The Story of San Michele, Axel Munthe's strange autobiography/biography of his beautiful villa on Capri, and his past as a doctor during a cholera epidemic in Paris in the late 19th century. The missing link is Jean-Michel Charcot, who also practised hypnotism, and worked with Freud and others but I think may be more respected than Mesmer. Anyway, I think that was the connection. I remember very little about that book except for the accounts of the hospitals and some horribly matter-of-fact misogyny that poisoned the rest of the story for me. I gather it's one of these strange books that everybody used to read, indeed was the best-selling autobiography of the 20th century or some crazy statistic like that, but now nobody does.
I was told about it during one of the best contemporary literature courses I ever took, while I was still at school - a general studies elective at Dulwich College (the highlight of the sixth form for my all-girls' school, of course) taught by a fabulous young English teacher whose name I forget, who was writing a book on Proust, I seem to recall. I read a surprising number of the books he recommended - of course, now I'm blanking on them. Patrick Gale's The Facts of Life, a couple of novels about public school (in the British sense) and homosexuality whose names I can't find. I can't remember if the class had a theme (beyond the rather obvious connection to the lives, repressed or otherwise, of the boys in that strange school) but I do remember how fantastic the teacher was. I also don't remember his name, but he had also taught my brother and had a nightmare attempting to do so, and I think Rob got into pretty major trouble with him shortly before the accident. Which must have made it a little odd for him to have me in his class only a few months afterwards. But he was great.
Where was I? Oh yes, Cure. Good movie. Although I've probably ruined the plot now with all the talk of hypnosis.

It's May 31st, J-day (for l'il Jack). My bet is on for J-day+6, but we'll see. Here's to Sarah and Andy!

Calendar girl

2005-05-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Coffee with Boots
Originally uploaded by Scuttsy.

...from Set Yourself On Fire, by Stars, who are another of L's recommendations and who I'm digging, though I can't believe no-one's called their band 'Stars' before. Well, L and I are just relieved they're not called 'THE Stars'. They also (at least the female singer) have a little bit of that shimmery Dubstar sound so maybe there's a(n) homage there?
Anyway. As photographic evidence here shows, we finally have OC-worthy coffee cups. We're still working on finding a suitable juvenile delinquent for the pool house.
In other news, Sheffield Wednesday beat Hartlepool 4-2 in the playoff finals today. Celebratory ales all round.

Sunday Sun / In Yer Face

2005-05-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'd complain about the weather, but I can barely unfold my frozen fingers to type, so I'll be brief. What can you do with $7,000? Some people make cool, strange, unsettling movies in their friends' apartments. Like this guy, Shane Carruth:

Between 'Primer' and the crazy anime exhibition, I had quite the surreal day yesterday. Starting on Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes before I went to bed rounded things off nicely. Time to go back to war, I think.

On and on / Expecting

2005-05-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

Takashi Murakami, 'Time Bokan - Pink', 2001

Went with Adela to the exhibition 'Little Boy' at the Japan Society today in cold, cold, grey late May. It was a cool, beautifully curated and disturbing exhibition of anime and subculture-inspired art since the 70s, all by artists brought up in the postwar period and reacting in some way to the WWII bombings. Endlessly recycled images of apocalypse coexist with an obsession with cuteness and stylised infantilism - and we learned that 'Lolicom' is a nickname for 'Lolita complex', understood as something that people may be 'afflicted' with... I don't understand how this works or fits in with what I have been studying but it's part of the same question: how do individuals and groups react to and recover from collective trauma?
http://www.japansociety.org/events/current.cfm
We walked back to the subway through Grand Central - I love finding myself unexpectedly near places I've been wanting to explore. Lingering memories of freaky anime schoolgirls will now be overlaid in my mind onto the vaulted mint-green and gold ceiling of the terminal. We then ended up at the Borders Dean & Deluca in the Columbus Circle mall, which is full of recreated Friends sets - why is Time Warner doing this for a show that's ended? I don't understand. Is it going to turn into Cheers, with a Central Perk in every airport? Or does that already exist? Exploding subculture, indeed

Lily dreams on/ The district sleeps alone tonight

2005-05-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

Scared myself yesterday by forcing myself to look at what a dissertation actually involves. School's website tells you most clearly (in BOLD type) what it should NOT be, all things that had never occured to me ('a magisterial summing-up' being one). So now I am anxious in case I accidentally fall into those NO categories, but not much clearer on what the YES category, as it were, might be. Four or five chapters. 250+ pages. In basically two years.
However, I've started to break it down and I think I have some ideas of how I'm going to organize the reading lists, at least. I'm excited, really - I like the idea of doing some actual writing and reading and thinking every day. I just have to do more than 20 minutes of it. And actually do it, not just get myself to the point of being near it, and then stopping. As I am doing right now. I know that there are a million books out there on how to write your phd, and I shouldn't be so snobbish about not wanting to be told how to do it. The crucial thing is knowing the difference between working and just pretending to work. I know this. Why don't I act on it?

Just the humming of my laptop fan/ the cat's miaow

2005-05-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

No music this morning. Just a little background buzz. I'm getting up the motivation to use my free trial at the NY Sports Club; I still fear gyms. I want to slip in and out of them unnoticed, but I know that noticing (comparing, judging) is the whole game. But hey. I just bought a sewing machine, which is a propos of bugger all, but perhaps a sign of my new determination to make all of my annual summer lackadaisical hobbies actual and real: I will start making (altering) my own clothes, I will get to the damn end of the story. Next up: a reading list, a plan for the coming six weeks, serious dissertation thoughts. Perhaps I'll even get around to prettying up and personalizing this page. And telling my friends about it...

Clementine/Evil Will Prevail

2005-05-20T13:02:00.001-07:00

I don't have Lianne's mad blogging skillz so for the time being I am titling these posts by the song that is playing as I begin to type, and then as I finish up. Clementine is by the Decemberists, to whom L also introduced me. I'm so her bitch. Evil Will Prevail is The Flaming Lips - I now sound officially like a nauseating and slightly out of date hipster.

So I'm post-orals now. Do I look different? Feel different? Do I seem older to you?
For the record, over the past few days I've felt basically a little tired, a little restless, a little out-of-sorts. Unable to settle to anything, apart from OC marathons. Not very sociable (sorry Steve). I recognize this as my classic summer-holiday behaviour. I spend too much time making plans, lists and resolutions for the new school year, and very little time doing anything, producing anything, achieving anything. Mostly for a lack of ideas about what exactly I want to achieve, apart from vaguely: art, literature, money.

New today: Ali has sent me the catalogue from her kickass graduation show at the Royal College of Art, 'Do Not Interrupt Your Activities'. So I can at least get some idea of the revelatory collection of contemporary art that she helped to put together, blood, swearing, tears and all:

NB The cover is not radioactive, it is a serene sky blue, and my bedspread is green, not that gross bile colour. By the way, I think Bootsy approves, as she's sitting on top of it right now.

Finally, in the spirit of achievement, real or desired, I'm making a mini-resolution to stop lying to people when I've been writing. Granted I haven't being doing too much of it, but I'm happy with the new shape of the book and the work I did this morning, and I'm going to stop prevaricating. Adela, I lied to you. I wasn't reading this morning, I was *whisper* 'working on my novel'! There, I said it. Nobody cares, do they?

And here it is!

2005-04-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Central Park 17/4/05
Originally uploaded by Scuttsy.

Yes, yes. Sunshine, haze, water, grass, harmony of man and nature.

late to the party

2005-04-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

I never know when or where the party officially starts, but I feel like I'm usually late to it. Thus with this blogging...phenomenon? Malarkey? Fad, trend, game? Party? I still have my reservations about the interweb and its ever more elaborate, flamboyant time-wasting possibilities. Yet this feels marginally more creative than spending forty-seven hours a week on televisionwithoutpity. Marginally. A tiny margin the size of the sliver of the page underneath that is currently showing to my right. And which just happens to be televisionwithoutpity.
So, it's Sunday, it's been a blessedly sunny day and New York is blossoming. Walking back from Central Park to the subway I felt once again as happy, at home and at peace as I ever hope to feel in any city. I don't mind admitting it. I have learned that admitting my love for NY does not necessarily entail denigrating London. It always feels a little like that, but it's also been good to figure out that the idea of 'home' and the fact of 'the place where you grew up' (especially perhaps when it's as fixed in one place as was my growing up) don't have to, or don't always, or don't ever overlap. One thing I love about the many fabulous people I have met here is how far and how freely they have come. I don't know anyone who was born in this city.

Anyway, here (if I can work out how to do it) is a picture of the park taken at around 4pm today. Pretty, innit?