Thoughts in Random Patterns

Playing with Friends

Haven't posted for the past few days because we have fun visitors here from Boulder.  Dave Jilk and his wife, Maureen, arrived Friday afternoon, which meant that Friday I cleaned all the small nooks and crannies and corners of kitchen and bathrooms with Clorox Wipes and ran both the upstairs and downstairs Roombas and put clean fluffy flannel sheets on the guest bed and bought and arranged fresh flowers and did all the things that I think are necessary to be ready for company.

Only on page 321 of Infinite Jest because I've been staying up late talking with Dave and Maureen and looking at maps of Alaska and deciding that time zones are strange and nonsensical.  Dave and Maureen got up and out of the house this morning to take the water taxi across Kachemak Bay to do some hiking and glacier viewing in the park.  Brad and I stayed in bed, which is really one of my favorite things to do on a Sunday morning.  Going to go for a long walk on the Homer Spit (an ugly name for a beautiful spot) while Brad runs, and then probably take an afternoon nap before Dave and Maureen return.  We're heading to Halibut Cove for dinner at The Saltry and are hoping that the sun will shine sometime today.

Gloomy Sunday

It's a gloomy cloudy Sunday morning, following several other days of gloom.  Sometimes when I first get here I get overly enthralled with the idea of what it would be like to really move to a town of 4,000 people with great coffee, and a bookstore where you can get detailed advice on hiking trails as well as books, and super fresh sushi, and the limitless expanse of ocean and mountains.  It was extra easy to spin out these fantasies this year because the weather really was inordinately hot and sunny (almost 70 degrees) for the first 3 weeks or so.  But now we're back to the reality of temperate climates, which is lots of clouds and the possibility of spatters of rain at any moment.  I couldn't take months of not seeing the sun on a regular basis, which is certainly part of why we'll be going back to Boulder on Labor Day.

Infinite Jest: Prolix

Prolix:  tediously prolonged; wordy, or tending to speak or write at excessive length. Antonym: concise. 

I'm on page 198 of Infinite Jest, and while I'm thoroughly enjoying myself, I must say that David Foster Wallace asks a lot of a reader.  You actually must pay attention, read slowly, and use all of your vocabulary -- and then some.  I've used www.dictionary.com to look up palaver and apotheosizing and, ironically, prolix.  I'm not finding it to be excessively wordy or tedious; it's highly amusing and he has a real knack for capturing different voices and small moments that feel genuine -- but he does use a LOT of words.  David Foster Wallace is the anti-Hemingway.  Antonym:  concise.

Here's his description of an FM radio show on M.I.T.'s station,  "WYYY 109, Largest Whole Prime On The FM Band." [Although I want to ask some radio geek whether the FM broadcast band really goes all the way up to 109?]

Albeit literally sophomoric, "Those Were the Legends..." is a useful drama-therapy-type catharsis-op --- M.I.T. students tend to carry their own special psychic scars:  nerd, geek, dweeb, wonk, fag, wienie, four-eyes, spazola, limp-dick, needle-dick, dickless, dick-nose, pencil neck; getting your violin or laptop TP or entomologist's kill-jar broken over your large head by thick-necked kids on the playground -- and the show pulls down solid FM ratings, though a lot of that's due to reverse-inertia, a Newton's-II-like backward shove from the rabidly popular Madame Psychosis Hour, M-F 0000h.-0100h., which it precedes. (p. 182)

And a juicy tidbit from the almost 100 pages of end notes:

57. Ingesters' accounts of the temporal-perception consequences of DMZ in the literature are, as far as Pemulis is concerned, vague and inelegant and more like mystical in the Tibetan-Dead-Book vein than rigorous or referentially clear; one account Pemulis doesn't completely get but can at least get the neuro-titillating gist of is one monograph's toss-off quote from an Italian lithographer who'd ingested DMZ once and made a lithograph comparing himself on DMZ to a piece of like Futurist sculpture, plowing at high knottage through time itself, kinetic even in stasis, plowing temporally ahead, with time coming off him like water in sprays and wakes. (p. 996)

And a small jewel of a sentence: "He had never been so anxious for the arrival of a woman he did not want to see."  (p. 23)

And let's not forget the herds of feral hamsters rampaging through the desert outside of Tucson (p. 93, and likely more to come since I'm only on page 198).  This struck a personal chord with me because one of my numerous and varied types of childhood rodents was a mouse named Farrell; named both as a play on "feral" and as an homage to Suzanne Farrell, prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet and Balanchine muse.  I like lemmings and capybara and pika and appreciate a writer who has the good sense to include hamsters in his sometime-in-the-alarmingly-near-future world.

Some of the things that other people say about Infinite Jest and one of his other books, Oblivion, and what he says himself corroborates my sense that he's asking readers to dig deep and engage, and I'm happy to do so.  I'm going to keep reading along -- only 800 more pages to go..

Blind Auditions

Today's New York Times Arts section has a fascinating article about women musicians achieving parity in orchestras, especially when they're judged on musical ability alone.  And another fascinating article about the male violinist who is filing a reverse discrimination suit against the New York Philmarmonic.  The down and dirty world of classical music..

Infinite Jest: Biting Off a Big One

Instead of just reading junk/beach books during the summer (which I certainly also do), I like to tackle some big books, too.  Last summer I read A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth, which was the longest book I had ever read at 1474 pages in a small font and narrow margins.  Several kind commentors / bloggers have mentioned Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace in the same company as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which is currently #1 on Amy's Top Ten Books of 2005 List.  My bulky copy (1079 pages including end notes) of Infinite Jest with its bright orange binding cover has been waiting patiently on the Read Me shelves here in Alaska for at least a year. I haven't been able to start Everything is Illuminated for some reason -- afraid I'll be disappointed if it's not as good as Loud/Close, maybe, or still letting that wonderful book seep into the aquifer of my memory. 

I've been reading my Theravada Vipassana Buddhism books, too, which is the type of formal meditation I do, when I do it. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: the Path of Insight Meditation is a classic, and Dharma Punx and Buddhism without Beliefs are all favorites.  All of the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh do me good, too.  An End to Suffering:  the Buddha in the World keeps sitting at the bottom of my Current Reading pile, but I imagine that I'll get to it before the Summer is over.

I'll keep you posted on my progress as I read my way through Infinite Jest.

What do feminists think about in 2005?

My very new friend, Philip Greenspun, has a post on his blog today, saying:

Women have seemingly achieved most of the goals of the folks in the 1960s who called themselves "feminists."  Women can work 24/7.  Women can vote (for the white male of their choice, at least in the last few presidential elections).  Women can get abortions without having to travel beyond their home state.  Women constitute close to 50 percent of the young folks training for and holding jobs that are actually worth having (e.g., medical doctor).

And I could only think of about 7,324 things that I'm still thinking I'd like to change, and am actively working to change, as a woman in our society, starting with equal pay for equal work, the fact that only 7 of the Fortune 500 companies have women CEO's, and myriad other enormous issues.

And I would like to see a woman be President of the United States.

And I'm delighted to say that the women's right to vote passed in this country long before the 1960's. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified August 18, 1920.

Any other women and men out there who think of themselves as feminists want to say what they're thinking about in 2005? 

Altered States

I hardly ever get sick, but Brad brought me the gift of some kind of virus from the Lower 48 that started to take hold Friday afternoon with a sore throat, and has now developed into a full head cold with lots of goo in the face and that sensation that the brain is wrapped in a layer of fuzzy cotton, making the world seem soft and distant and faintly echoing.  I didn't feel too bad yesterday, and got lazy with the fluid intake and didn't swath myself in eucalyptus oil at bedtime.  I am definitely sick today.  Brad has headed off to yoga without me, which is a first for the summer.  I think I will just roll with this virus today, and be lazy and mostly stay in bed in my ancient Apple sweatshirt and cups of hot tea and orange juice.

Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars

I read this memoir last summer and ran across it on the shelves today while looking for Tobias Wolff books for Brad.  It's a fascinating story of the childhood of Lauralee Summer who grew up in poverty and homelessness and went to college at Harvard.  Ben Casnocha, I recommend that you read this book in your voluminous spare time as you think about college choices.  Pros and cons, food for thought. 

from p. 223

During the first week, we attended many orientation sessions about diversity.  At one of these gatherings, the speaker asked the audience of two hundred to raise their hands if they were from working-class backgrounds.  I looked over the heads of the mass of students and saw seven raised hands, one of which was my own.  Only seven out of two hundred Harvard students were from working-class families.  My mother and I were not even working class; we were welfare class.  During Freshman [sic] Week, I met many students whose parents owned companies, had millions of dollars, or were faculty at other elite universities.  It was a shock to learn that such people existed in my own world.

The Audre Lorde quote in my last post is from the epigraph from Chapter 28 of this book (p. 266).

A poem written by an anonymous homeless youth is the main epigraph:

we are not lost

we know where we are

but our itinerary is chance and weather

we do not believe in destinations

and we are in no hurry

we have learned patience

from statues in a thousand parks

and joy from dogs without collars.

Free Speech: Audre Lorde

We can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid...[I]n this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.  And it is never without fear -- of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment....But we have lived through all of those already, in silence....And I remind myself all the time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.  It is very good for establishing perspective --

from "Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, Santa Cruz, CA:  Crossing Press, 1984

Poem: For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

(by W.S. Merwin)