New Year

In the spirit of the most underwhelming evening of the year, here are some of Richard Avedon's photos from New Year's Eve of 1989, which he spent near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The complete series, which views exactly as you may expect (blurry, observant, and chaotic) may be found here on his website.

Snowbound

We can't leave our house!

So I'm reading. Lots. I'm trying to finish up The Broom of the System, which venture is going rather slowly. It's hilarious and impressive, written as a senior thesis by a twenty-two-year-old David Foster Wallace (a fact on which I try not to focus at all as I create my own thesis project). By no means is it the best book I've ever written—it borrows heavily from Thomas Pynchon and sometimes feels overeager to be intelligent. But for a first novel, one written by a pimply kid barely out of puberty, it's got some darn good dialogue.

The basic, vague arc of the novel follows, so far as I can tell, a woman named Lenore Beadsman as she tries to track down her grandma, who disappeared from a nursing home in suburban Cleveland. In the following scene, Lenore meets Mr. Bloemker, the nursing home director, in a bar with a blow-up doll named Brenda:

“This area of the country, what are we to say of this area of the country, Ms. Beadsman?”
“Search me.”
“Both in the middle and on the fringe. The physical heart, and the cultural extremity. Corn, a steadily waning complex of heavy industry, and sports. What are we to say? We feed and stoke and supply a nation much of which doesn’t know we exist. A nation we tend to be decades behind, culturally and intellectually. What are we to say about it?”
“Well, you’re saying pretty good things, really; I sense some interest on Brenda’s part, too, I think.”
“This area makes for truly bizarre people. Troubled people. As past historians have noted and future historians will note.”
“Yup.”
“And when the people in question then become old, when they must not only come to terms with and recognize the implications of their consciousness of themselves as parts of this strange, occluded place...when they must incorporate and manage memory, as well, past perceptions and feelings. Perceptions of the past. Memories: things that both are and aren’t. The Midwest: a place that both is and isn’t. A volatile mixture.”

I don't necessarily agree that the Midwest is "culturally and intellectually" behind the coasts: that's the easy and reductive conceptualization of the Midwest. It's perhaps more fitting to make that generalization about rural places more specifically, and this part of the country has a lot more of those due to mere landmass.

Or maybe it's generally bad to make generalizations like that. But then how are we supposed to make sense of the world without creating even detailed brushstrokes of abstraction?

My back hurts.

Here are some photos from this morning, before the snow really started.

Weston Bend

In the flesh.

Missouri + bits of Kansas

Improvisation (Girl)

A month or two ago, I was feeling pretty down and decided to watch the movie Antichrist.

As you might guess from the title, this was not a wise decision. I went from being sad to disgusted and scared. The movie is saturated with hellish images of nature, like a fox disemboweling itself. There's also a lot of gruesome bodily harm, like Charlotte Gainsbourg cutting off her own body parts. And that's the least explicit description I could muster. There's also a fine scene in which Willem Dafoe, whose leg is attached to a grindstone, crawls into a foxhole to seek refuge from his grief-stricken, bloodthirsty wife.

In summary, this movie is messed up. Worth watching, if you like being unsettled and perplexed and physically uncomfortable. It's also got some deep commentary on femininity, loss, religion, and the like. Just prepare, if you do see it, to be a little fraught and grossed-out.

The final shot

So anyway, the imagery in the below poem reminded me (much less disturbingly) of Antichrist. I don't mean to impose my own associations, or to dictate your interpretation of this poem. I'm just blathering, as usual.

Regardless, may you read and appreciate this.

"Improvisation (Girl)"

I think she wanted to explain

                                      the silence

             hidden

within her voice—

blue egg in the nettles.

            She wrote something

on a rock, used the rock

                        to bash in the skull

             of an injured deer.

Bloodied swan-neck arms.

                                        She

slinks into her own viscera,

a baby fox

             backing into its trunkhole.

The wordbone's connected to the

                         gutbone.

Meanwhile, her desire

           for nobody now

bucks like a rabbit

                           under her ground.

by Rebecca Lindenberg, from The Logan Notebooks (2014) 

Pups and Pine Trees

In all seriousness, I couldn't be happier to be back in an open landscape filled with open people.

Aside from that, I don't have much to say this afternoon. Writing is really hard, so I'm instead focusing on the reading side of things: I just got back my copy of The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace and am plowing through in typically hyper, undergrad fashion.

Merry Christmas Eve, if you're into that kind of thing.

Removed

So I'm finally back home in Platte County. As soon as I turned on my computer this afternoon, I was immediately reminded of my context: Internet bandwidth is limited, and connectivity is slower than a sleepy sloth. On top of that, our cell phone reception is finicky at best. I tried to upload a few photos I just had developed, and after a few minutes of waiting, gave up. Which, now that I type it out, seems like a rather "uptown" complaint--there's Internet access at all, and I've been remarkably spoiled by Wellesley's omnipresent, ultra-fast wi-fi.

This awareness of resources applies outside of technology, too. When I went to wash my hands, I let the water warm up for a few solid seconds before remembering how finite water is (my parents' house lacks public water access, which means we haul our supply from a nearby town and store it in a cistern under our house). This realization was minute, but felt important.  At least for a moment, I considered my habits of consumption and (more broadly) the ways in which I interact with the world around me.

By no means am I arguing that everyone should throw up their hands and move into the countryside, away from the comforts of "modern living." Nor am I attempting to paint myself as a saint of conservation. To be honest, even in my moments of reflection I'm still more wasteful than most people—I threw away like half a bottle of spicy mustard while I was moving out last week.

Nonetheless, I wonder how much less waste we would generate if everyone took a bigger part in the harnessing of their own resources.

Or maybe that's crazy talk. I'm still pretty jumbled from school/traveling.

One of my favorite drives on the planet

Full Circle

As of this afternoon, I've been at home for exactly six days in the last eleven months. The last time I saw Missouri was in June.

Sitting in the Cleveland airport, I can hardly wait to get back.

- "I'm Comin' Home" by Murder by Death, from Red of Tooth and Claw (2008)

Ohio

Dispatches from a cell phone:

Westside Market

Oberlin

Back in the Midwest.

Driving a Hearse

I wish I'd known Dennis Hopper, at least after he was sober. He was one hell of an artist.

Tuesday Weld, 1965

Self-portrait

Pangea-monium

After amassing a respectable sleep debt, I am either on the verge of an intellectual breakthrough or a nervous breakdown. Currently, I'm on a writing tangent about the implications of modal verbs, which are really cool. Basically, modality is the way in which grammar expresses subjectivity, often by making claims of necessity or possibility (think of the verbs should, might, and must). Modality exists across languages, meaning that the desire to explore and communicate potential alternatives is universal. And though that's not news to anyone (who doesn't love to discuss daydreams?), I'm weirdly overjoyed that this desire is preserved in language, perhaps because that makes it seem more concrete.

To level with you, I slept for an hour and a half last night, so I would probably be just as excited if a stranger high-fived me on the T.

...And there you have a modal verb (would) in action.

But because I am anxious to get back to my work, I leave you with this cool map of Pangea, marked with the current corresponding political boundaries.

Sister I'm a Poet

This time last year, I was a complete mess: my body was covered in hives, I was moving out, my entire bookshelf was soon to be lost by the USPS, and finals were happening. December, this time around, is a breeze in comparison. It feels like the last few weeks have happened without much thought or planning (though that's certainly not true).

Already I'm dreaming of trekking to the river and diving into some Arthur Bryant's burnt ends when I get home. New England can do a lot of things well, but barbecue is not one of them.

But before I get ahead of myself, I'm going to keep working to these sweet melodies.

"Along this way

Outside the prison gates

I love the romance of crime

and I wonder does anybody feel the same way I do

and is evil just something you are or something you do"

- "Sister I'm a Poet" by Morrissey, from Beethoven Was Deaf (1993)

The Michael Jackson Generation

Today I nailed down another final exam. I'm done with John Milton, now and forever. Did you know that he forced his daughter Deborah to learn to read ancient Greek, just so she could read aloud to him once he went blind? The worst part is that he taught her how to read it, but he failed to teach her how to interpret it, so she just had to read him long epics in a foreign language she couldn't understand.

And though academia is currently the sun in the solar system of my life, I'm truly and absolutely excited about my work.

It's also worth noting that I've had way too much coffee today, but that after I finished my final I went and ran hill repeats because I was so jazzed about being done and caffeinated. While I was running those hills, "Billie Jean" unexpectedly began playing, which made this video feel even more appropriate. Can you imagine someone making a commercial like this today?

We're Cooking Quinoa

One day, I'll be so funny that someone will film me cooking dinner for one.

In this low-resolution video, several of my favorite things collide: David Lynch; low, ambient lighting; sitting outside telling stories; and quinoa. It's twenty minutes, ergo I don't encourage you to watch the whole thing. Unless you too love the above-listed things, which perhaps you do. I don't know your life.

That's all for today.

Federal Dust

"They don't cream

and they don't dream in Kansas City"

If I ever meet David Berman or Stephen Malkmus, they'll receive an immediate and heartfelt earful in disagreement with those lyrics.

-"Federal Dust" by The Silver Jews, from American Water (1998)

French Chris at the Drive-In

Electrified.

"French Chris at the Drive-In, NJ" by Nan Goldin, 1979

It Wasn't Me

I could write a book about this song, at the very least. But I'll leave it at this: "Angel," Shaggy's subsequent single, was undoubtedly about "the girl next door."

- "It Wasn't Me" by Shaggy, from Hot Shot (2000)

Out of Hiding

One of the best gifts I think I ever received was a framed copy of this poem. It supervises my bookshelf in red velvet, paper torn, and is one of the only pieces of writing I see daily.

As always, thank you for reading this.

"Out of Hiding"

Someone said my name in the garden, 

while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies, 

grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient 

under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and stranger. 

When I heard my name again, it sounded far,
like the name of the child next door,
or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer, 

while the quiet seemed my true name,
a near and inaudible singing
born of hidden ground. 

Quiet to quiet, I called back.
And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning.

by Li-Young Lee, from Book of My Nights (2001)

Hot Knife

With a music video directed by the inimitable P.T. Anderson.

(Special regards to my friend Sweet Deeks, who shows me 98% of the things I post on this blog.)

- "Hot Knife" by Fiona Apple, from The Idler Wheel... (2012)

Gelatinous Ghosts

Taken with a Minolta Maxxum 7000 on a poorly-loaded roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 film. If these weren't so underexposed and sad, I'd be more excited about the weird framing. I suppose that's part of the reason why analog is fun, though--mistakes and surprises run abound, and the gratification of seeing those mistakes is not instantaneous.

And because it is the last day of classes, and because I should be working harder, it's time for Patti Smith singalongs and eventual studying.

Pizza Mine

I like this artist, Valeriya Volkova, quite a lot. Her website is here, if you want to see more (which you certainly should).

Chin Up, Cheer Up

- "Chin Up, Cheer Up" by Ryan Adams, from Demolition (2002)

Unknown Treasures

August 2015; a well-loved desk.

I Can't Stand The Rain

Driving down Grand Boulevard in Kansas City in the dark.

- "I Can't Stand the Rain" by Ann Peebles, from I Can't Stand the Rain (1974)

Somewhere in California

In this vignette from Coffee and Cigarettes, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits play hilariously cruel and exaggerated versions of themselves. Other highlights from the movie include a scene wherein Bill Murray serves coffee to the RZA and GZA and a scene in which Cate Blanchett plays both her fictional self and her bitter cousin. I recommend watching it if you have a short attention span, like to chortle, or pretend to be cultured.

"You callin' me a Taco Bell kind of guy?"

- "Somewhere in California" from Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch (2003)

On the Low

Today: rain, cold lighting, wool socks, broken umbrellas, formica conversations, body aches, amusingly scary paintings, breathing.

- "On the Low" from Bavarian Fruit Bread by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions (2001)

Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild

Last night I had a nutty dream.

I had taken shelter with a bunch of people in a building that looked like a hybrid of South Station and my former high school. We were there because of a bomb threat or something. I was alone, so I befriended this female scientist who looked remarkably like Annette O'Toole. She was there with her daughter, who was maybe like four years old. Everyone in the building was remarkably calm about the whole scenario. It seemed like everyone had adjusted to the anxiety of the situation. Because the atmosphere was so relaxed, this gaggle of kids, the scientist's daughter included, ran across the street to a convenience store. I was looking out the door when everything suddenly got super quiet and then these ear-splitting sirens began. The scientist was nowhere to be found, so I grabbed her kid and we ran across the station, which had somehow emptied out entirely in the course of like fifteen seconds. I carried her down the first promising doorway we found, which was a staircase into the basement. We sat in this space for a moment of overwhelming unease, and then these glass windows above us shattered as a bomb detonated. So we ran around the corner, back under the staircase and away from the open air, and we waited while the bombs continued to get louder and closer. The last thing I remember is trying to keep this girl completely enveloped and protected from debris as everything began to completely crumble around us.

Then I woke up.

I'm not particularly inclined to interpret dreams, but this one left me feeling a little uneasy. For all of the messed-up things I tend to imagine in my sleep, something about the kid in that dream really got to me as I was waking up.

I don't have anything particularly profound to say further about the topic, and will probably forget all about this dream in a matter of hours, but haphazardly typing this out seemed more fun than doing my homework.

And anyhow, this is what I'm listening to.

- "Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild" by Jonathan Richman, from Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild (2008)

Vistas Cambiantes

There are over thirty library books in my room right now. I haven't felt so right in weeks.

Here is the westward view from my window, as seen by my little dinky focus-free camera, maybe in August and September. (I have no idea.)

Towering Trees

Greetings from Salt Pond.

I never realized how watery Cape Cod really was until this weekend, which is perhaps a testament to my blissful, willful Midwestern naivete. The trees here are all basically the same, though: lots of pines and oaks. Not that I know anything about trees (I don't), but they're pleasantly familiar and nonthreatening in a way that much of the New England landscape isn't. The forests here feel dense and indifferent, as though they're older than those of Missouri simply by virtue of being further east.

But because my mind is drifting rapidly, inevitably back to the mountain of schoolwork that awaits me, I cut this short with a few words by Amy Lowell. In the fifty-degree air this morning, I took an outdoor shower, which was exactly as exhilarating as one would guess. This sounds exaggerated, but it was a simple reminder that the feelings of certain seasons are nearly always inside our heads, somewhere, if we can only dig them out. Even in late November.

This poem, to me, exemplifies that feeling well.

"Spring Day [Bath]"

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots. The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

- by Amy Lowell, from Men, Women, and Ghosts (1916)

Tive Razão

"I was right."

- "Tive Razão"  by Seu Jorge, from Cru (2004)

The Space Between

I bumped into these images this morning. They're by the artist Marc Yankus, and are taken from his website, which is full of fascinating glimpses of constructed spaces and the like. Surely this is only due to my context of familiarity, but these photos remind me a bit of the work of Francis Alys, several of whose cityscape paintings hang in the Davis Museum at Wellesley.

That's all I've got.

For reference, one of the aforementioned cityscape paintings:

Francis Alys, part of the New York triptych in the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Dusty

It's been awhile since this camera's seen the light of day.

Side note: I just discovered that there are like fifteen James Bond films on Hulu. I'm probably not going to get any work done for a few days.

Today I learned that the state motto of Wyoming is "equal rights"

Maybe Montana

Ugly

Does anyone else remember the episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch where she and Libby meet The Violent Femmes?

- "Ugly" by The Violent Femmes, from their self-titled debut (1983)

Amber (Scribbles about Ancestry)

Before my grandfather died, he wrote a brief memoir. In it, he talks about his parents Antanas and Amelia, both of whom were orphaned serfs. The little stories he shares about them as children in rural Lithuania are simultaneously funny and heartbreaking. They had very little, but it seems as though they did their best to be children and have fun when they got the chance, swimming in the river or playing the concertina. I've been thinking about them a lot, and how hard so many people have worked for me to be right where I am.

Even more than that, though, I'm stuck on the last two paragraphs Gramps wrote, about when he first met my grandma Katherine. They were maybe one of the most loving and complementary couples I've ever met. Grams could be infuriating. She was stubborn, witty, and nearly always right. In my fading memories, Gramps was almost the polar opposite: proud and demure, yet extremely learned. On more wistful days, I imagine what their conversations must have been like, piecing these ideas together with the clues they left. Almost teasingly, his memoir concludes right at the good part. My imagination fills in the rest, probably more happily or perfectly than reality ever could have been:

My law fraternity had one formal party each year, and as new members Al Ragan, Charlie Strubbe [my grandmother's brother] and I had to go. Trouble was neither of us had a “date,” or much money, or the required “white tie and tails.” Al and I dipped into our tuition savings for the next year, and got ourselves outfitted in tailor-made to measure garb for the exorbitant price of forty dollars. Next came the girl part. I was footloose. So was Charlie. It turned out that each of us had a sister of suitable age and free on that particular evening, and made suitable arrangements to proceed accordingly. On the eventful (for me) Saturday night in 1939 my life was to change forever. 

Charlie lived on the northwest side of Chicago and I on the southwest side, about twenty miles away. I had a car, a ’37 Chevrolet purchased by pooling the resources of my parents, Teddy, Emily and myself (the price was $778). Monthly payments were $35.54 shared by all. On that fateful (as it eventually turned out) Saturday night, Emily wearing a beautiful evening dress, and I, in white tie and tails took off for Charlie’s house. I had never been there before. As we entered, there in the living room stood this very good looking girl garbed in evening dress. No one else was in the room. Addressing the smiling girl, I said “You must be Katherine. I’m Bernie and this is my sister Emily. Is Charlie ready?” She said “Pleased to meet you both, Charlie is nearly…………………………………………………………

-taken from Amber, by Bruno Verbeck

The Berries Were Sour

While pretending to study for this astronomy exam, I'm reading newspaper archives:

"The Berries Were Sour."

The Washington Post says that a Washington physician owns a cranberry bog at Cape Cod. Two or three years ago he entertained an English cousin, and at dinner one night there was cranberry sauce. The Englishman was delighted with it. Indeed, he expressed his pleasure so much and so often that after he had returned to London the doctor sent him over a barrel of fine Cape Cod cranberries. A month or so passed and then came a letter from the Englishman. "My Dear So-and-So," it said, "it was awfully good of you to send me those berries, and I thank you. Unfortunately, they all soured on the way over."

- from the August 20, 1896 issue of the San Francisco Call (Volume 80, Number 81)

A Week in Cellphone Photos

This week, my phone camera saw:

Such light that couldn't be done justice by a camera

Salman Rushdie + a scalp

How to Be a Straight-A Student:
A guide to Saturday night sadness
(To whichever Wellesley student was camping in the stairwell,
I am so sorry.)

Missouri (Confusion and Reflection)

When people ask me where I grew up, my usual response is one of pride: "I'm from Missouri, which for all its problems is one of the most beautiful places I've seen."

This last week has challenged that belief extraordinarily.

Looking through my high school yearbook, I count fewer than five people of color in my graduating class of fifty-two people. I begin to wonder: as a middle-class white girl from rural Missouri, would I truly be as proud of my home state if I weren't a member of the group which benefits hugely from the oppression of others?

Weston, Missouri is an aesthetically gorgeous town full of honest and hard-working people. But since I've left, I've come to realize that--like a lot of small towns in America--it's a sheltered bubble away from the real world. Questions of race and privilege never came up, because the vocal majority of people chose to believe that those issues were irrelevant to our lives. People are routinely discriminated against; so what? That doesn't matter when nearly everyone in your town is white. Right?

As if that weren't enough, an alarming number of people seem proud of these beliefs. Scrolling through my Facebook news feed, I've noticed an unsettling trend. There are hundreds of posts declaring solidarity with the students of color at Mizzou, but 99% of those posts seem to be coming from my peers in the contrarily sheltered world of liberal arts colleges. I might know a lot of people who are openly expressing concern for the safety and expression of students of color, but it seems to me like very few people in my virtual "friends list" from Missouri are talking about the protests online. The ones who are talking about it are posting hateful comments about how "ridiculous" the protests were to cost the school "a five-star football recruit." In case it wasn't obvious, most of these people are choosing not to post about the valid and real motivations for the protests.

To nuance that a bit: I'm not in Missouri right now, and I don't wish to condemn any of my at-home acquaintances for keeping silent on Facebook about the protests. I have no way of knowing what sort of true, face-to-face dialogues about race are taking place right now. And those in-person conversations are vastly more important than simply copying and pasting three sentences into your Facebook profile for a day (which is what most of my Wellesley acquaintances seem to be doing).

What this trend does suggest to me is a reluctance to publicly open the door to these discussions. In the three years since I began college, I cannot enumerate the number of times I've been called out and corrected for being misinformed about privilege. Those discussions, though not always easy, have helped me learn a lot. When I first came to Wellesley, I was far beyond ignorant. For instance, I recently found an old high school journal, in which I wrote that, "as guilty as I feel about being white and never truly knowing prejudice," I found affirmative action "a bit unfair" because "how blacks were treated in the Fifties was a disgrace," but "the wrong we did sixty years ago" was over.

I look back on that passage and feel a lot of emotions: guilt, shame, disbelief and disgust are perhaps the strongest. How did I truly believe that racism wasn't still an issue? Only now, after having lived outside of a homogenous and insular "All-American" town, am I beginning to realize that the battle for equality is so far from over. It's thoughts like that--like the ones I wrote in my journal a few short years ago--which are quite possibly our biggest obstacle to achieving true justice.

But perhaps most importantly, I've learned that there's a lot I can't know. I can academically understand that life in our society is more difficult for people of color, but I will never be able to truly understand that experience, simply because I will never live it. Our society was built for my success at the expense of others. And though no one alone can change that, we can unify to work toward goals of equality and peace. We can acknowledge and even embrace the differences. We can have honest, open conversations about them.

I've spoken my voice. I'm ready to listen.

Why Go Out?

As the dregs of the semester grind away at everyone's motivation, I find myself reading more. This reading, more than anything, is propelled by a desire to procrastinate "productively." My astronomy problem set might not be started, but at least I'm challenging myself with this collection of William Blake poems. Right?

As one might infer, reading more has also meant that I'm staying in my room more. I haven't left the building yet today, choosing instead to clean, to stare at my ceiling, and to play musical instruments that I've no idea how to play.

This might not be entirely healthy, but my point is that everyone needs time alone. And if you're like me, you need a lot of it.

So it was serendipitous when I stumbled across this article by Sheila Heti. It's called "Why Go Out?" The entire article is hyperlinked in the title below, but I've included a few of my favorite excerpts. (Sorry, Ms. Heti, to bastardise your piece.)

Once I click "publish," I'm going to finish my astronomy homework and (eventually) make my way outdoors.

Maybe.

* * * * *

From "Why Go Out?" by Sheila Heti

For many years I have asked myself, Why do you spend time with other people? but I never really attempted to come up with an answer. I always believed I was asking myself a rhetorical question, but this week I thought I would try and find an answer, because a question you ask yourself a thousand times eventually deserves to be answered. 

And I figure if I know why I go out, I might feel less suspicious of myself for going out. I might criticize myself less. I might be able to look around a party without thinking, What a fool – why did you come – you should have stayed at home.

At home, you can wear your pyjamas. No one is going to snub you or disappoint you. 

I’m always super-conscious of how whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am. And I continue to go out even though who I am always comes up short. I always prove myself to be less generous, less charming, less considerate, not as bold or energetic or intelligent or courageous as I imagined in my solitude. And I’m always being insulted, or snubbed, or disappointed. And I’m never in my pyjamas. 

And yet, in some way, maybe this is better. Each of us...could suffer the pangs of withdrawal and gain the serenity of the non-smoker. We could be demi-gods in our little castles, all alone, but perhaps, at heart, none of us here wants that. Maybe the only cure for self-confidence and courage is humility. Maybe we go out in order to fall short… because we want to learn how to be good at being people… and moreover, because we want to be people.

Monster

If you like scary movies, I encourage you to watch this. It's a short film called Monster, created by the filmmaker Jennifer Kent. Eventually, she took a lot of the themes and ideas from this piece and wove them into the 2014 film The Babadook, which she wrote and directed. In case you haven't seen it, I'll refrain from writing any spoilers, but suffice it to say that The Babadook is a terrifyingly honest meditation on motherhood and mourning. It may be the most intelligent and truly scary horror film I've seen in the last several years. Monster is like the CliffNotes version: slightly less intense and experiential, but interesting enough to fill you in and make you sound smart.

- Monster (2005) by Jennifer Kent

One Sunday Morning

- "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)" by Wilco, from The Whole Love (2011)

Hometown Pride (Fairweather Excitement)

Alright, so if you've ever heard me talk about Kansas City's sports teams, it's probably obvious that I don't have much confidence in them. I love to talk about how disappointing the Royals are and how bad the Chiefs are. (This might be a good point to disclose that I don't follow sports closely, or really at all, and that I'm also a contrarian, so my words should be taken with a large grain of unrefined sea salt.)

Despite this, I was a little excited when I heard the Royals won the "World Series" of American baseball. It had been thirty years since they'd earned the crown, and I like to think our humble little city deserved some love and recognition. When I found this cover from the Kansas City Star a few days ago, I felt unexpectedly emotional. Maybe it's because I've never seen so many people gathered at Union Station and I felt a rush of nervous claustrophobia. Or maybe I was just tired from doing homework until 2 a.m.

Either way, this visual affected me, so I'm sharing it here now.

I guess I'm trying to say that, although I'm not particularly fond of professional sports, I am so proud to have grown up around Kansas City, for all its flaws and imperfections. Even if I never live there again in the long-term, it'll always be home, and for that I am grateful.

Fools Rush In

Whenever I'm feeling worry for myself, I remember that Annabella Lwin, the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow, was fourteen years old when the band released this song. Bow Wow Wow was originally formed as a promotion tool for Vivienne Westwood's fashion line, which some might argue counts as child exploitation.

It's not that Vivienne Westwood didn't design remarkable clothing, because she did. More generally speaking, though, her role in the "punk movement" makes me uneasy. She took the superficial, aesthetic elements that characterized a lot of clothing worn by punks and introduced them to the mainstream, effectively creating "punk fashion." Maybe people would equate punk with clothing even if Vivienne Westwood hadn't existed--in fact, I'm sure they would. But I what I really want to say is that I can't decide if she was a forward-thinking, practical determinist who cashed in on an opportunity, or whether she was a capitalist appropriator (or maybe both?).

To conclude this brief discussion of things I know nothing about, here is Bow Wow Wow.

- "Fools Rush In" by Bow Wow Wow, from Your Cassette Pet (1980)

Valerie Plame

I love Halloween so much.

I've decided that, if my current costume doesn't pan out, that I'll dress up as Valerie Plame. I thought this was painfully clever before I realized that a good 70% of the nation has likely forgotten who she is.

This afternoon, I also went for a run, which helped me realize how terribly I've prioritized my health in the last few months.

Oops.

I saw this tree

Take Me Back

I don't have words right now.

August 2015

Satan and Sin (and my Browser Tabs)

The tabs I have open as I work on this paper about John Milton include:

• The OED definition of the word "take"
• A yellow plaid skirt on Amazon
• Intended for my Halloween costume, which now I am realizing won't come together in time unless I make a damn skirt, which I very well might do, depending on how willful I feel
• Or else I will dress up as something else entirely; I'm not very certain at this point, but I love Halloween and am determined to observe it with some sort of costume
• A summary of Aristotle's appeals
• "The Best of Chopin" from YouTube
• Which came on autoplay because I was listening to Debussy and YouTube algorithms are pretty good at compiling similar music
• "A Feminism Where ‘Lean In’ Means Leaning On Others" from the New York Times
• A JSTOR article by Nancy Frey about the Camino de Santiago
• A brief article from OpenCulture wherein Nabokov is quoted as referring to Faulkner's work as "corncobby chronicles"
• And finally, this painting:
  

"Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich

I'm writing about the ways Satan projects his image onto the female forms of Eve and Sin in Paradise Lost and it's not very uplifting. Compiling this post was a worthy distraction, albeit a fairly underwhelming one for you, reader. Sorry about that.

Zowwies!

This afternoon I walked into a low-hanging branch by the lake. Hard. I don't know how I didn't see it coming, and whether anyone else has smacked their face on the same branch.

At least the weather is beautiful, in every sense of the word. I am eager for winter and snow and stillness, but the process of getting there is pretty nice too.