taking it personally – Page 35

September 7, 2003

back, in color.

No matter how hard you try, it is impossible to unpack and clean and generally feel a grip on life in one day.

I AM PROVIDENCE, says H. P. Lovecraft’s gravestone. Gunther and I did find it, with a little help from our Google.

I’m cosmically exhausted, but battle with illness is proceeding better now that driving hundreds of miles is not daily reality. My mind is laced with things and people, tied tight with the largest ball of twine in the world. (Photos to phollow, when developed – ah, analog cameras!)

I’m also finding myself all too ready to revert to old, frustrating, poor time-management patterns; so about ten minutes ago Cox agreed to disconnect my ‘net service from home. This means I’ll be doing everything internet-related from the university, which should suffice. Home will be quiet, and the inside of my head will be quiet, and sanctuary is an appealing prospect. This is a long-winded PSA: in short, e-mail is no longer the most efficient way to get in touch with me (although I’ll still likely check it every day). If you don’t have my telephone number(s) and want them, uh, e-mail me.

Exhausted or not, tomorrow is a work day. I’m not ready for this.

September 2, 2003

so much

to say —

but will have to wait,
which is a shame
because ‘net access is free at this Delta, UT library.

I’m driving so many miles alone. Marvelously contemplative, this is the perfect setting for right after Burning Man.

I’m taking notes, and will post them (and photos) later. Soon, life will resume; but not as we know it.

August 24, 2003

All packed up and nowhere to go.

Untrue, of course. In 28 hours, I’m driving out from Los Angeles toward Reno. There I pick up friends and, after a shopping stop, we drive on until Burning Man.

To say I’m excited doesn’t begin to cover it. This is my first, and likely only, time there. I’ve been told to plan nothing, so I’ve planned nothing — except for making an extended trip to a copy shop, and packing survival gear. I’ll be there with friends who matter.

I am oddly more sad about leaving here than I ever thought I would be. Mom and I will miss each other; overall we had many more good days than bad.

I’ll miss granny, too, and am sad to think that she may not recognize me when I see her again in a few months. Memories will keep me company, though, the most recent among them from yesterday. Driving over to the doctor’s for what turned out to be a four-and-a-half-hour visit, I was flipping through radio stations and eventually settled on one playing classic rock. Grandma was indifferent to the music… until I noticed her tapping her fingers along to Sunshine of Your Love.

August 17, 2003

Late.

Found out through George that Walter Ong has died.

When I was just starting out with this humanities computing doctorate idea, one of my advisers-to-be sat me down and provided me with a list of books that I was to read before we could speak to each other about anything. Orality and Literacy was the first among them. Much like Matt, I found myself nodding to what seemed were my own past instincts about literature and other word-based communication suddenly articulated on paper. Ong’s arguments keep making their way back into my own, as starting points for discussion, provocations for thought. I am deeply thankful that he lived and wrote.

August 17, 2003

Belated

[Wrote this during the blackout, was utterly unable to post it, made the connection to being unable to retrieve my e-mail, checked others’ blogs for news, hunh! half the east coast is blacked out, and I’m blissfully unaware. Of course, had ifMUD been up, I’d have found out in no time; but it, as my ‘net space provider’s servers, lives in New York City.]

—–

Just yesterday I wrote the following in an e-mail:

“I’m doubting myself heavily, finding myself restating others’ truths over and over again, not saying anything new. I draw parallels that others have not drawn, but don’t feel that this is enough. It’s difficult to have faith in this monster project while in the midst of it, while unable to see the whole, the whole does not exist yet. I return again and again to the thought that I’m much better suited for the role of facilitator, or feeder of the masses, creator of an environment in which cool things happen; not one who makes cool things happen. This makes me sad.

“I cannot wait [to be back home], but will come back to an unreal backlog of work, and fear that I will drown in it. I will cancel my digicablemodem ‘net service from home, as an attempt to create some quiet inside my head…”

Today, while driving back from an errand that took an hour and a half instead of the fifty minutes it should have, I saw a police car with a rainbow sticker on it. It was like someone had suddenly shone the sun on my abysmal mood: there’s hope for tolerant humans yet, hmm? I thought nothing more of it, until Joseph Campbell shone his eyes at me from the TV screen and spoke about following your bliss in a rebroadcast of The Power of Myth on a public television station. The universe is telling me something again.

August 11, 2003

RIP

Gregory Hines is dead. At 57, of cancer. For goodness’ sake.

August 10, 2003

Return of the

Well, I wasn’t planning to take a hiatus this long, but there we are. The past month was spent too busy living to update; now, the schedule has calmed a bit, although I’m not sure how long that’ll last. In 15 days, I’m off to Burning Man, and after that will drive back to Providence with a friend. Although there’ll be a bit of a rush to get back to the place H.P. Lovecraft called home, I’m looking forward to several days in a car with Andy, chatting and eating fruit and listening to music. Plus, he can drive too. Big plus.

Right. So what’s happened? The whole last half of July another friend was houseguesting here from Britain. He’d never been to Los Angeles; this was Jon’s second ever time in the States. We took advantage of relative freedom of action and did the following:

– allowed ourselves to be attached to hard bodysuits and harnesses for the privilege of being hoisted Really High Up by a rope, our bodies parallel to the ground. After which he pulled on a string and we hurtled forward and down, swinging at “up to 60 miles per hour.” There were two of us in this thing (maximum is three), and at the end of the first swing we had gone so far forward that for a few moments we were suspended vertically in the air many meters above ground. It was quite easily the best thing I’ve ever experienced in an amusement park.

– hiked up a little residential hill to see a house built like a Mayan temple, which was used in the filming of Blade Runner.

– watched several movies. Rented Blade Runner and Christopher Nolan’s Following on DVD. That last one was excellent. Beautifully shot, good use of black-and-white, good acting. Also saw Tomb Raider 2, god help me (no, it really wasn’t *that* bad, indeed I quote enjoyed myself, but would’ve never gone to see it on my own), as well as Chicago which, to be fair, received a lukewarm review from Jon.

– shopped in a good bookstore in Venice Beach, in which I bought my first Harry Mathews book. Human Country is a good solid collection of short stories. I like Harry Mathews enough that I would say I’ll seek his work out some more, except that realistic expectations of dissertation workload prevent me from making foolish promises.

– lounged about the house. glorious.

– took an afternoon to lounge on the beach in Malibu. Cold, cold ocean water and warm sun, with burritos afterwards which were so good, even Adam might have approved of them.

– attended a João Gilberto concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Be still my beating heart! That man seems in love with his guitar, still, after all these years.

– spent time at the Getty Center, where I gawked most of all at the medieval bookmaking exhibit and all the manuscripts. You’d think I’d have gotten this fascination out of my system by now, but no.

– went to Las Vegas. Another thing I’d never have done on my own, but this is the way to do it: with a Briton fascinated by its gaudy Americana, whose comments make you laugh even when it’s ungodly-hot, at midnight.

Good visit, that was. My grandmother thought he was great, and was duly impressed with his obscure mathematics book. Every morning, they re-introduced themselves to each other. (sigh.)

Besides this, I’ve been working on an online journal (of which I’m the techincal editor – watch this space for the grand opening), and on a book review. As well as cooking, cleaning and taking grandma to sundry doctors. Mom’s away on a well-deserved week-long vacation, and I do hope that she’s having a fabulous time. It’s quiet here.

July 3, 2003

Okroshka.

George wants cross-blog recipes, so here’s a wonderful cold soup from the old country, for a hot summer day. Its name is pronounced uh-KROSH-kah. Some also call it cold borsch, but it’s really a very different soup.

Before we begin: it involves beets. Even if you don’t like beets (which I don’t), this is excellent food. The amounts below are enough for one of those large soup pots. Oh, I don’t know, probably a couple of quarts.

2 medium-sized beets

radishes

boiled potatoes

green onions

hard-boiled eggs, if you like

cucumbers

plain (not fruity) kefir

cooked hot dogs, cubed or

bologna cubes or

mortadella cubes, if you’re not vegetarian

salt

Quarter the beets; cut one of the quarters again in half and reserve one of the pieces for later. Make a beet broth: just boil them until they start to get soft and the broth is fragrant. The water will lose a bit of its pretty color towards the end, so just add the reserved piece of beet, cook a couple more minutes, and let cool. Then refrigerate it, with the beet pieces still in it, until cold.

Cut everything else (but not the kefir) in cubes and/or slices, and if you’re using eggs, use half an egg per plate. Put a little of everything in each plate, pour some of the broth over, mix in kefir to taste. Add some salt, if the soup needs it.

If you can’t find kefir in your dairy section, or if all they have is the fruity stuff, use some plain yogurt — for this soup, probably anything but full-fat, or it’ll get too heavy. Feel free to improvise with the ingredients.

June 21, 2003

Tasty sin!

Today I transcribed enough of the Neverending (Because Victorian) Roland Novel to feel satisfied; watched an amazing war movie; bought gorgeous books I cannot afford; talked over the phone with two brilliantly fun friends from back East; and drank a frappuccino, which is sending shivers all through me right now: oh, corporate Americana! In addition, I got out of the house—!

Hm, this’ll probably get long. I’ll break it up into several posts. Since the sort order is by most recent post, this little blurb will reside at the “top” of the few that follow.

June 20, 2003

Pole Chudes

Then there are good days. Today, Grandma and I started up a new activity: I read Russian classics to her. This benefits both of us, as I’ve been meaning to read more of these but haven’t had time. On her part, Grandma seems to be happier and doesn’t call us over to her room quite as often as usual. At least, that was the case today; we’ll see how long it lasts. Today’s reading was a short story by Chekhov and some poems by Pasternak at bedtime. Can’t say I’m complaining; besides being generally pleasurable, this also trains me to speak for long periods of time. Since I’m planning to conduct a few sessions of my humanities computing course as more or less lectures, this is great practice.

We had her a foot bath; we ate tasty food; she even let me work for over an hour with surprisingly few interruptions. (Today my imaginary monkey and I learned about lists and arrays in Perl.) Mom was relaxed when she came home from work, we ate more good food and watched Russian TV. Usually I tolerate it and/or try to tune it out (hm, funny; I’ve been reading DeLillo’s White Noise lately). Today, however, I enjoyed watching not only a film based on Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, but also – to my surprise – a game show.

I don’t know, does Disney’s Pinocchio have the Field of Miracles in it? In the Italian original, as in the Russian version named Burattino [“puppet” in Italian], Pinocchio meets a deceitful Fox and Cat, who tell him about the Field of Miracles, located in the Land of Fools. You bury your money there and pour some water over, and overnight it grows into a biiig tree full of money! Then you’re rich and can buy Geppetto (or Papa Carlo) that new jacket and all.

Well. Pole Chudes is the name of the Russian take on The Wheel of Fortune – with four important exceptions. First, everyone gets a participation prize. Three-times-three people play in each half-hour show, and they all get the same prize, although the prize changes show to show. They’re all practical prizes: microwaves, vacuum cleaners, what-not. Second, this must be a tradition that has evolved over the show’s near-decade-long run so far: the participants bring gifts to the charming host. Gift-giving has taken on a life of its own; sometimes a whole town or village (if it’s small enough) from which the participant hails participates in the gift. For example, some of the gifts brought out today were:

– two live rabbits and some Armenian cognac;

– a drop of crude oil encased in glass, from a town near the Baikal;

– homemade Ukrainian vodka-like drink;

– children’s drawings of Moscow done specifically for the occasion;

– a full assortment of non-perishable products from a dairy factory, including powdered soy milk;

– homemade smetana (thick Russian sour cream, tasty stuff, and homemade it is well loved) – this was specifically for the beautiful helper girls on the show, as they were proclaimed too thin;

– a beautifully-done icon of some saint or other;

– and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember now.

The host cracks jokes, lewd to a greater or lesser degree, and never lewd with children. That’s the third thing: many people, participants and audience members alike, bring along children, who announce commercial breaks. The fourth and final difference is that this isn’t really about money so much as it is about prizes and banter. The puzzles are all single words, never phrases; and the clues given to them are not, say, “thing” or “sport” but rather interesting trivia questions. For each show, there is a theme to the questions; today’s was symbology. (Is this the right word?) For example: what did the walnut mean in ancient Greece? What was the meaning of this other particular nut (I think it was hazelnut) for the ancient Germanic peoples? What does the almond tree symbolize most often all over the world? Finding out the answers is left as an exercise for the curious reader.

All of these particulars make the show homey, interesting. Nobody seems to care how much money they’ve won, it’s not about that. Fun stuff.