Sunday, August 23, 2009

updated 52 books in 52 weeks: 

1. Zoe Wicomb/Playing in the Light
2. Amitav Ghosh/The Shadow Lines
3. Alison Bechdel/Fun Home: a Family Traigcomic
4. Judith Butler/Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life & Death
5. Leslie Marmon Silko/Ceremony
6. Giorgio Agamben/The Open
7. Thomas Pynchon/The Crying of Lot 49
8. Ralph Ellison/Invisible Man
9. Jack Kerouac/On the Road
10. Ann Cvetkovich/An Archive of Feelings
11. Maurice Blanchot/The Instant of My Death; Derrida/Demeure: Fiction & Testimony
12. The Essential Acker: Selected Writings of Kathy Acker
13. Linda Williams: Screening Sex
14. Anne Carson/Autobiography of Red
15. Gopinath/ Impossible Desires
16. Agamben/Homo Sacer
17. Woolf/Women & Writing
18. In a Queer Time & Place
19. Popular Culture: a reader
20. Toni Morrison/Beloved
21. Sherman Alexie/Reservation Blues (2nd/3rd? read)
22. Winterson/Written on the Body (2nd read)
23. Neil Gaiman/The Graveyard Book
24. Bill Bryson/Notes from a Small Island
25. Watchmen (reread)
26. Philip Roth/The Human Stain
27. Maryse Conde/I, Tituba
28. Breslaw/Titube, Reluctant Witch of Salem
29. Jakobsen & Pelligrini/Love the Sin
30. Kerber/No Constitutional Right to be Ladies
31. Harriet Jacobs/Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
32. Hartman/Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in 19th C. America
33. Johnson/The oxherding tale
34. Ida B. Wells/Southern Horros & Other Writings
35. Bederman/Manliness & Civilization
36. R. Zamora Linmark/Rolling the Rrrrs
37. Alice Echols/Daring to be Bad
38. Lisa Duggan & Nan Hunter/Sex Wars
39. Grewal/Transnational Feminisms
40. Freud/Beyond the Pleasure Principle
41. Derrida/On Cosmopolitanism & Forgiveness
42. La Capra/Writing History, writing Trauma
43. Joseph Conrad/Under western Eyes (2nd read)
44. Jean Rhys/Voyage in the Dark
45. George Lamming/The Emigrants
46. Zoe Wicomb/David's Story
47. J.M. Coetzee/Disgrace
48. Ngugi wa Thiong'o/Petals of blood
49. Caruth/Unclaimed Experience
50. Woolf/to the Lighthouse (reread)
51. Sophocles/Antigone
52. Bronte/Wuthering Heights

more...
53. Jaime Hernandez/Dicks & Deedees
54. Munoz/Disidentifications: Queers of Color & the Performance of Politics
53. Evenson/Last Days
54. The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature 
55. Maggie Estep/Alice Fantastic
56. Vizenor/Narrative Chance
57. Orwell/Keep the Aspidistra Flying
58. FM Ford/The Good Soldier
59. Waugh/A Handful of dust
60. Fowles/The Collector
61. Spark/The Prime of miss Jean Brodie
62. Ian McEwan/Saturday (2nd read)
63. Lessing/Memoirs of a Survivor
64. Greene/Brighton Rock

things I learned this weekend: 
Mako sharks can swim 35 mph = fast a cheetah but not fast as a peregrine falcon. 
prior to 1492, Native pops in North America are est. at up to 18 million. By 1900 this # was 237,000.  
D9 was not as bad as the backlash says it is. It is not, however, as good as the hype says either. The aliens = supercool.

things that annoyed me this weekend:
random people announcing their relationships/sex lives on Twitter. really? how old are you?
the weather. will it just f'ing POUR already & get it over with? 
the beaches being closed. the one weekend I actually had time to GO to the beach.
my knee has gone out on me again. and again. and again. I'd like a new one please?

things I enjoyed this weekend: 
SLEEP. finally I have time and ability to sleep all the way through the night & then some. 
going to the movies = good company + good air conditioning
my kitty being in a highly social mood & not eating any spines of any books.
having time to watch Geek TV (Nature, Discovery Channel, etc.)
Brian Evenson's "Last Days" 
teaching. as always. 
and did I mention, SLEEP...

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

watching a very old episode of Waking the Dead mainly because there's f'all on TV as per usual. Eating some Maine blueberries & wishing I was back there. It was my first trip to Maine & it's absolutely gorgeous there. Not at all like the PNW beyond the rough similarities of big trees and rugged/rocky coastline.  We stayed in Bar Harbor at an okay hotel w/a nice balcony & lousy service. It was a good location though & we got to use the local free bus service (great idea - Sedona should try this!) to get around.  We did lots of touristy things like a 3 hour Nat'l Parks bus tour w/a highly entertaining driver/guide named George. He drove like a wildman all along the very steep & winding Park Loop Road but told us great stories all the way.  We stopped at a few places for 15 minutes each: Thunder Hole (which was very unimpressive), Cadillac Mountain Summit, and the Jordan Pond House.  We'd been to Cadillac Mountain that morning at 4:30 (ouch!) to catch the sunrise but it was nice to see it during the day & Roger showed us wild Maine  mountain cranberries - SO good. And of course, the ever present wild blueberries. We did a Whale Watch tour which was worth the overcrowding, the annoying girl who ruined most of my photos, and the incredibly high ticket price.  We went 20 miles out to sea and we saw both puffins AND humpback whales. They came right up to the boat. We hiked the Beachcroft Trail, then swam & got sunburned at Sand Beach & then hiked the Ocean Trail out to Otter Cliffs.  I took hundreds of photos & most of them turned out okay though, of course, not the photos of the humpbacks. I could've spent many more days hiking around the lovely trails in Acadia but sadly, I have to pay rent.  Bar Harbor itself was okay - packed with tourists & very little in the way of decent vegetarian food.  There is LOTS of good local beer and the service in most places was good.  Testa's was a big exception with perhaps some of the WORST service I've ever had: a waitress who kept disappearing & had a MAJOR attitude when I finally gave up and asked for our food & our check.  The Thirsty Whale was great as was a small Irish place we went to. My guidebook listed a place called "Eden" but we found out from locals that it was closed :( and so we went to the local Thai place which was pretty awful -perhaps the worst pad thai I've ever had.  We ate at the local "fancy" organic place, Burning Tree and that was okay but they were really trying too hard with combining flavors. The advertised "vegetarian options" consisted of veggies (mostly peppers) on skewers or an overblown miso/tofu soup with lots of bok choy.  The service was great as was the setting - the food not what I'd hoped for but certainly better than the Thai place. The best part of the trip? sitting on the hotel balcony watching the sailboats anchored outside and the sun on the water. or the sunrise from Cadillac Mountain. or diving into the freezing cold ocean on Sand Beach. or...anyway, hope to get back to Maine again soon though likely I won't for quite some time. 

Saturday, August 08, 2009

This is the time of year when I want to move to Alaska or Iceland or Siberia - somewhere cold, somewhere without humidity and traffic and overcrowded subways full of people who dno't bathe and most of all, without sushi. There is nothing worse than the smell of the piles of garbage in front of the four sushi restaurants in a one block radius from my apartment. No, it doesn't smell like the ocean or the canneries of my childhood and no, it doesn't remind me of the fish stall at the Pike Place Market or the waterfront in Baltimore or Newport or Astoria.  And no, there's nothing good about that smell or about the fact that they've opened another sushi place down the street making it five now and, of course, this one's also a sake bar which means even more drunk sushi eaters throwing up on my block. Sometimes it seems like I'm back in New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras but really, it's just the East Village in August. I dream of quiet streets without rotting garbage. I dream of sunkissed trees rising up to jagged mountains. I dream of clean air and no traffic, of no crowds of people who don't have the good sense to cover their bodies when going outside.  I dream of a yard with a chair or a hammock and hours of uninterrupted reading; the only sounds: a dog barking chasing butterflies, the warm purr of my cat asleep on my belly, the creak of the hammock, wind in the trees, an airplane far off on the horizon.  Maybe there's a river at the edge of the yard, maybe the hard goes gradually down into rock then sand then ocean. Being so close to the ocean makes me think of storms so let's make it a river instead, but a river could flood so let's make the river at the bottom of a steep hill and the hard on top of the hill safe from harm, the hammock swinging gently but well-secured between two sturdy trees. And the book is not something I have to read but something I want to read and full of interesting plot twists and compelling characters and perfectly formed sentences. 
(c) 8/8/2009
from this morning's class. 
10 mins. using words of only ONE syllable.

It was a cold dawn. He stood at the top of the hill and stared at the lake.  A duck dove for food over and over. The trees still held some dark, some night. A loud crack (a gun? an axe? a branch?) came from the far side of the lake. He thought of fresh cut wood, of an old gun he'd had, of a tree branch on a roof.  There was a shout - a man's voice - loud, sharp, then gone. The mist on the lake stood in clumps then it was gone - just like that. The sun rose to sit on the tops of the trees - hot, bright but still the trees held their dark, held their cold.  A yawn, a stretch and then he dove straight down to the dark, the cold of the lake.  He swam, he dove, he swam and came up on the far side.  He saw no man, no gun, no axe, no branch. There was sun, trees, the lake, that was all. 
(c) 2009
It's amazing to me that: a) Petland didn't fire this b*tch and b) Facebook didn't censor her for posting this. 

To quote one of my favorite singers: "People just ain't no good." 
Apparently, there is a Gateway to Hell in Brooklyn. No surprise there - reference my post in re: Red Hook and Lovecraft.  Brooklyn: Where Evil Dwells.

Watching Madagascar forests being leveled by mining companies. People never f**king learn do they? That's it, I'm going to go live in a cave. And it won't be in Brooklyn.


Eddie Izzard is running way too many marathons in support of Comic Relief.  You can support him/donate here: http://www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie

Here are some cool/creepy pieces of art featuring children, clowns, other lovely things: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Strange-and-creepy/231948

Film Forum has a "Brit Noir" fest running right now.  Some of these are all time favorite movies of mine (the Third Man for one).  

This is very sad.  I always liked his work: Willy DeVille, Mink Deville singer/songwriter dead at 58.  
Today's press conference in re: the plane/copter crash in the Hudson proved once again why Bloomberg needs some media training (of course, I'd love it if he'd just step down but that's never going to happen: "Mayor for Life"?)...He showed up 40 (?) minutes late, snapped at anyone who asked him a question he didn't want to answer & without any preamble, announced there were no survivors only hours after the accident. 

Watching "the loneliest animals" on PBS' Nature.  It's incredibly depressing - all about animals who are going extinct.  Wow human beings sure suck. Except of course conservationists. 
I cannot believe that people would kill an animal threatened with extinction.  Sure, I get it - they need the money/need to feed their families/etc. but I for one, just can't stomach the arrogance supporting that belief that humans are superior to animals.  Because you know? we just aren't. Not in any way.  


Tuesday, August 04, 2009

wrote this on Saturday in my class @ the Vet Center: 
prompt: write as many nouns as you can think of in 5 mins. then using one or more of those nouns, write for 15 mins. 
Nouns (w/some adjectives added): air conditioner in the hallway/a book with a broken spine/grapefruit soda/a high cliff/an old boyfriend/a sharp wind/a very noisy raven/a limping dog/a dusty road/a melting block of ice/a bruise/a ladybug/a beached whale/pink shorts/old smelly sneakers/a wooden tennis raquet/a library/a broken window/a horse/an empty house/a fairy tale/a bank of threatening clouds/a long summer day/an abandoned well/a man who used to be handsome/green eyes/an overgrown orchard/a blue workshirt/muddy boots/an old radio/a fire escape...

This morning on the way out of the apartment I stubbed my toe on an old air conditioner blocking the hallway.  It didn't bleed but hurt enough to have me limping down all five flights of stairs from my apartment to the street.  On the ground floor I noticed an odd smell - odder than the usual smells of forty people and their various animals living in close quarters in the middle of another breathless NYC summer. I'd left my animal - a cat - with a friend for the weekend - to assuage some of my guilt at leaving town for some fresh air when she (the cat, not the friend) never got any. It was seven a.m. and already sweltering. I decided to ignore the smell and the broken window in the salon on the ground floor and catch a cab to Grand Central. The subway would be cheaper but I would pay fifteen dollars to not have to wait in that viscous stifling air - the blast furnace of the Second Avenue station.  Grand Central was relatively empty and I thought of the late night trips I'd made through there - returning from teaching in the suburbs and the early mornings I'd stood there pack and hiking sticks in hand, ready to climb that weekend's mountain. But not today.  Today I was off to visit an old boyfriend - a man who had once been handsome and now was just sad. On the train I sat across from a woman in pink shorts wearing old smelly sneakers and looking like nothing more than a beached whale.  I turned away from her and concentrated on the bright scenery flashing by.  I got to the small station, hailed a cab and was soon standing in front of an empty house. A sharp wind came off the high cliffs to the north of the house.  There was no sound other than a loud raven objecting to my presence.  I pushed my way in the front door: nothing but dust and spiders.  I walked through the house and found a book with a broken spine, a wooden tennis racquet with no strings, an old radio that did not work and a blue workshirt covered in grease stains. In the back was an overgrown orchard and a memory of green eyes. I sat on an old lawnchair and watched the gathering clouds all day - a storm rising over the river. I would wait until the rain came. 
(c) 2009
Trying to write a paper on V. Woolf but just can't seem to get started. It's my last paper (aside from my MA Thesis) for the Masters Program I'm currently in. It should be easy enough to get started - I've already written a 5 page propectus (sort of) and I've done the research and I've read & reread the book.  So what's the problem? I just want to sit here in the a.c. watching bad TV. My brain does not like to work during August. It never has. This was part of the reason I started out on this whole going to graduate school thing - so I could have a job where I don't have to work during the summer (aside from research/writing of course).  But it hasn't turned out that way so far & in this economy, not sure that it will. I also haven't produced those 2 children yet (Trevor and Ruby I believe were the names I'd planned on).  Nor have I "settle down."  Not sure if I ever will at this point. I think I'd just rather watch bad TV. There is so very much of it. 
when I was very young I used to live in fear of the large drains in the center of public restrooms. Not because I was afraid of rats or cockroaches (I'd never seen either other than grain rats in a horse barn & muskrats at the lake) but because I'd read HP Lovecraft & was convinced that fish people would come out of the drains and get me while I was least able to run or defend myself. When I was a little bit older, I moved to Brooklyn & learned that there was really a place called Red Hook.  I've been there once. I will not go there after dark for any reason. I've read Lovecraft & I know what lives there.  Today while visiting the restroom at work I thought I saw some movement in the large drain in the center of the tile floor. Despite many years in NYC & a great deal of close experience with things that slither & move in terrifying ways, my first thought was not "rat!" or "roach!" but...Red Hook. Fish people. HP Lovecraft. 

Sunday, August 02, 2009

something I wrote in workshop a little while ago:

The station was hot, ripe & oddly empty - no sound but water dripping somewhere & the occasional squee and squeak of a rat.  There was a stream - water dark & oddly fast moving flowing along the tracks on one side.  He wondered if it was some underground river pushing its way through subway tunnels all that long shifting hot darkness all the way to the East River with its angry gulls and slow moving tugs, fat tourists and the many many bones each with its own story.  His feet hurt.  His new shoes had given him blisters - a large one on his ankle.  He longed to be barefoot in soft sand, maybe facing a day of surfing at Laguna and not a long hot train ride followed by a crowd of faces - all strangers.  His stomach hurt at the thought.  He fingered his father's wristwatch, his thumb tracing the engraving.  Every time he held it he thought of Benny Goodman, he thought of the library towers their shadows massive across the sun-filled space that lead to the dining hall.  He thought of the dip and sway of the sailboat, its graceful rail skimming just above the water and his terror of falling, his father's laughter and the way he recoiled from the sound.  The subway train came.  He stood although the car was mostly empty.  Soon he was on a northbound commuter train, fingering his ticket stub, the watch carefully hidden, the sounds of jazz faded.  He sneezed loudly and closed his eyes against the day rushing by outside the train windows.  He closed his eyes and he dreamed of library towers and hot sun of too many books to count and of his father, tall, broad-shouldered laughing loud in the too-bright sun. 
love this.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8180806.stm
hope she wins so the rest of us can follow suit...of course, none of my degrees qualify me for a job so I guess I wouldn't have a case....
home on a Sunday night & watching the Brit show "Strange" with all its scary priests...should be expanding my paper on Woolf but just don't have the energy. I did get through both novels for this week's classes: Doris Lessing's "Memoir of a Survivor" and a re-read of McEwan's "Saturday."  2nd was better written than the first but not as good a read the 2nd time around. Looking forward to being done with school for the summer although seriously stressed that I can't find my thesis advisor.  I have some form thingie that's due by aug. 17th & it needs his signature.  I do love these grad school profs who don't even bother to send back final papers...ah well. blogger keeps giving me these BRIGHT RED error messages...why can't anything ever work the way it's supposed to?...Can't decide which book to read first: the new Batman, the new Evenson, or any one of the stack of books that have been patiently waiting for me to have time to read them.  Of course, I've spent too much of today reading the MOON guide to Acadia Park & Southeastern Maine...looking forward just a BIT to getting out of NYC.  Of course, I should be spending this spare time writing (other than a few stories I've finished over the last month or 2) and doing research for my thesis but I'm not.