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)