10/30/2003

interesting. the shins' new CD debuted #6 in billboard's top 20 bestselling indie albums last week ... more surprising is that the postal service has been on billboard's top 10 bestselling electronic albums for 29 weeks and is currently #7. mariah carey's remix album is currently #1. hmmmmmm. i love lists.

10/29/2003

when i was home a few weekends ago i went to a reading of maureen morehead, my high school creative writing teacher. she has just published a collection called a sense of time left, and it is simply quite extraordinary. i was actually surprised, and among my first reactions was the thought, "wow. i knew she was good, but i didn't realize she was -that- good." the majority of them are worth reading over and over again and pondering and some of them immediately feel like mini-masterpieces. she takes all the elements of "good writing" you learn about in school and uses them all in a virtuosic way (in "Plans" she wonders, "What if ... God's brain had been full of stars, not mud, that night" and in "Sabbath Poem" she observes, "three ruby-throated hummingbirds / vie for one needle of bliss. / They'll chase one another to winter."). her language is relatively simple and she has often been compared to a modern day emily dickinson. she uses repeated images throughout the collection as motifs and symbols (such as planes, trees, sky, particular species of birds, and even weather reports and baby teeth, as well as colors like red, yellow and green, and light and dark). like the title, she also juxtaposes the personal past with the present and the future as well as the historical past in startling ways. one of the more idiosyncratic things she does is twist the poem in the last few lines as a sort of spine-tingling punchline. she also has a way of using seemingly jumpy narrative (as in "A Chorus") to force you to make connections between the lines, or intentionally ambiguous word structure as a little hiccup to force you to stop and unravel a crucial line's meaning or to suggest multiple meanings (as in "all human plans one has here" in "My Body"). i also love how the collection is arranged. it's divided into five sections, and i'm sure different people will have a different favorite section, although mine is "how hurt you had been" which focuses on poems about a third person, and "september meant the end of summer" which are poems related to teachers and teaching. the only bad thing about this collection is that it's not more readily available and that, poetry being the little-read genre that it is, it probably won't get half the recognition it deserves.

it was hard for me to pick out poems to post, but here are two that i think will give a good idea of the scope of this, yes, i mean it, great writer. from A Sense of Time Left by Maureen Morehead THE HESSIAN IN PHILADELPHIA, 1778 `A young man when he first comes into a house is invited to dinner in a friendly manner. If the master of the house has one or more daughters, after the table has been cleared, he offers that stranger should also stay in his place and pass the night in bed with his daughter. This offer is, quite naturally, seldom refused.' Hessian soldier in The Hessians (Cambridge University Press) by Rodney Atwood I said he should wash first. I said he should lay his coat and musket over there. I said no need you should talk to me. I said sometimes I talk, sometimes I'm just thinking. I said my mother planted that sugar maple. I said her arms were long, and she had tangled hair. I said when we came here, she brought her mother's letters. I said my grandmother's words are brown and in a hurry. I said the sky turns gray, then black, then morning. I said you are not my first. I said one kissed me here, one here. I said when my father kisses me, I smell woodsmoke and oil. I said he killed a Patriot. I said all night is long and square, I said I'll lie here, though you can see me. I said I'll lie here very still, but once my mother hears me thinking, I'll either be or be not real. MY BODY is busy healing itself, here in this quiet house with no one to thank or love or answer. Mine is a wall of windows. October's filtered sun invests me. Jays alternate between the broken tree and goldfinch    feeder, between the fidgeting squirrels and rusty sedum. When I was ill, my mother placed warm cloths upon my head, one, two, three, and then another. Veronica wiped the brow of Jesus. Did he rest his eyes upon her? Just last week I lay on the road unlucky as a sparrow who cracks into the windshield, The neighbors ran out, placed a blanket on my broken bones and called an ambulance to get me. Perhaps it is to them I should be grateful, but for this I am grateful finally-- my shattered leg will mend. I am not broken irreparably, but when Jesus reached the hill, he died there; lifted into the falling night, all human plans one has here. I had conceived a hundred letters but did not write them, ignored a hundred poems called home for making.

10/25/2003

whoops, i meant the 'ville as in louisville, not somerville. my whole point is that louisville's food is sooo bad. i think i mentioned this before, but i think the distance b/t louisville food to boston food in terms of quality is about 100 gastronometers, but the sad thing is that the distance b/t boston food to new york food is about the same (i.e. 100 g'meters) ... SAD!

10/24/2003

went to the 'ville last weekend. can i just say how bad the food there is? i went to this medium nice restaurant and the curry i got was so subpar. it was about on par w/ something you'd get at i dunno, friday's or something. our appetizer, which at least had tofu in it, was equally sad, although marginally better. oh well, at least it was cheap. went to the rialto for the first time a couple of weeks ago. it actually wasn't bad. had a really dull redleaf (is that what it's called?) salad and a vegetable dish they whipped up. the vegetable dish would've been rather boring, but they had a lot of different types of interesting mushrooms, all of which were quite tasty. i should learn more about mushrooms, i think. the people i went with said their food was about average. our desserts weren't bad. i forget exactly who had what, but there was a whisky-ish (?) custard that was interesting and a maple walnut ice cream that was pretty good. i don't know anything about the place, but i get the impression it's rather standard, not particularly adventurous. this report is kind of skimpy b/c i have a bad memory, sorry, winnie, heh. going to diva tonight and sultan's kitchen (from winnie's recommendation) w/ andy tomorrow for lunch. found out diva is owned by the kashmir people. not surprised. going to sit down and rank my fav indian places in boston this weekend i think. i keep thinking i've already done this, but i can't find it so i guess i'll just do it again.

10/22/2003

the other day i was walking to work from andy's and took some pictures randomly. i think that having lived in boston for so long i've really forgotten that the city has a definite look and has some really great visuals. here are two (click pic for slightly larger image):
also, just a reminder of how unbelievably cute my little kitty is:
allow me to take a minute to rave about fastmail.fm ... i really really love this email. some highlights: - 5 times the space of hotmail (10 MB) - you can mask your address so it looks like you're sending everything from whatever account you want - you can set it so that the webmail and your home mail is perfectly synched. i use pine at home and the webmail at work. works like a charm. super easy to save messages i don't want to read anymore to my computer at home. warning: i only send messages from the web interface. if you want to be able to send messages from another email reader, i think you have to upgrade your account. - you can also use it to retrieve your yahoo/hotmail or from any other account you have - stylesheets! you can completely change the look w/ one of their stylesheets or make your own. there are only a couple of downsides to the guest (i.e. free) version: 1) they put a line at the bottom of every email saying something about fastmail but it def beats yahoo or hotmail's multi-line sigs 2) no spam filter, but they have this "bounce" feature that deters spammers from spamming you again 3) you have to watch your traffic quota, but that's prob. not a big deal if you don't send loads of email and the first upgrade is only $15. 4) you have to automatically poll for new mail, but there's a free program called eprompter that you can use as a workaround that will notify you when you get new mail. my username is spacedog7 so you should tell them i referred you. try it, you'll like it! :)

10/16/2003

in case you didn't hear, bush (fascist) has declared this week to be "marriage protection week ... here's a petition supporting marriage for all. to give you an idea of the incredible ignorance of the people we're fighting against, here's the ludicrous quote of the week:
    "[Studies] clearly show that society must not approve of domestic partnerships. Societal approval of same-sex marriages is likely to lead to the increased spread of disease and death from HIV infection, the normalization of pedophilia, and polygamy. Our society must not approve of behaviors that destroy the lives of women and children" --From a document that the Traditional Values Coalition is urging members to print and distribute during "Marriage Protection Week"

10/15/2003

funny pic from a family trip to portsmouth when my mom and lil sis were in town. -> enid points out that this picture is actually from the beginning of the summer when the three of us went out to dinner before g moved to sf.

10/14/2003

i need to read more poetry i think. found a really great quote from a kentucky poet named frederick smock on writing: "For I have always felt that one does not write in order to explain the world; rather, we write to deepen its mystery, to unfold, like a blown rose, its power to enchant us. Science will explain the world to us. Art, like religion, like childbirth, teaches us how inexplicable the world is."
is merriam-webster's word of the day great or what? today i learned that in latin opera is the plural form of opus. COOL.

10/10/2003

somewhere in china there's a bitter old chinese man writing fortune cookie messages.

10/09/2003

been listening to a lot of opera lately. in particular, a sumi jo disc i had, a naxos release i got wicked cheap from newbury comics that people on amazon seemed to like by a woman named luba orgonasova, and a recital disc i got from the library by leontyne price ... i really like how in opera a little less so than in other art forms like film or musical theater, the appearance of the singer doesn't really affect what roles they can take. not sure why i'm on this particular kick (do i need a reason? heh) ... i guess i'm just getting back into it. in a lot of ways opera bores me, but there's something strangely beautiful about the sound of it. as in there are things that a professional singer can do with her voice that most singers can't. which isn't necessarily to say that the non-classical singers are inferior in any way, but i think it's nice to change it up every once in a while. right now i'm hankering for a recording of a mozart opera ... i guess i'll have to dig up that copy of the magic flute i have w/ dawn upshaw (and james levine?) i think ...

10/05/2003

i've been listening to some really old school P5, before the irreplaceable nomiya maki-chan joined ... some of the lyrics read like twisted haiku poetry ... i think this is true of their lyrics in general, but i was particularly struck by this when reading this particular song, called "t.v.a.g." (translation thanks to the pizzicato five lyrics database) we two always dream a different dream even though they sleep arm in arm in the same bed ... we two will always take life as a game tell me you love me right now, you can lie ... though the TV is on we two are always so bored we could die even though we're in love this brings me back to my original thesis: P5 RULEZ. i just won a P5 video collection off of ebay ... you can bet i'm eagerly checking my mail every day when i get home from work.

10/03/2003

americans are finally catching on ... about @!#)( time. Poll Shows Drop in Confidence on Bush Skill in Handling Crises