"These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love."
The quote is worth the weight of the book, that at times is an absurdist rendition of a Jewish stetl attempting to prove that even the Holocaust can be postmodern and jaunty, and at times a tear-jerker, confused about where it's going and where it's been, similar to your lead characters Alex, Jonathan and Alex Sr. Even Sammy Davis Junior Junior, a deranged "officious seeing eye bitch" seems to be unsure of her footing in this novel about so many things and so many nothings...
Where does the law of coincidence end and the law of plausibility being? Is it at all likely that this man would meet another? I suppose in the end we can only argue that Foer does a good job making something out of the darkness that is history, and that does make for illumination, even if it feels like that illumination is, as Alex so aptly describes his friend, "a world removed."
I can't give it five stars because I know that feeling of emotional distance too well - it makes this book unfamiliar and daunting. As if there is a 614th type of sadness: the sadness of knowing that human beings can never truly know one another.
The last thing I've ever wanted from a story about illumination is to know the real truth, and so despite its insight and wisdom, it can't be made numero uno.
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading labyrinths - jorge luis borges
now listening breakin' up - rilo kiley
i am at metrosphere office, tivoli 313e
15.1.09
jesse's tasty lunch;
Jesse's Tasty Lunch
How to make Jesse's Lunch:
You will need;
1/8 small box Acini de Pepe (small, risotto like things of pasta)
1/8 cup red lentils
1/4 small can Black Beans
4 large leaves of Napa Cabbage, shredded
2 tbsp. Rice Wine Vinegar
1 tbsp. Plum Wine Vinegar
1 tbsp. Cilantro
1 tbsp. Basil
1 tbsp. Some sort of Pine Nut Flavoring; I used a Vegan seasoning for Salads that simulates Cheese, Pesto, and Oregano.
1 tbsp. Vegannaise; any sort of sour cream, mayonnaise, etc can do.
A pinch of salt
1 shred cabbage into a bowl and place a little bit of each of your spices (except salt) on the leaves. Leave there.
2 Boil half a medium pot of water on the stove. When boiling, add Acini, Lentils, Black beans and a little bit of their juice.
3 Boil for 3 minutes, add in other wet ingredients and salt
4 Reduce for 20-30 minutes, until there's about 1/4 of the broth left.
5 Pour directly over cabbage and season with remaining spices + Vegannaise, stir in, eat!
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer; labyrinths - jorge borges
now listening unchained melody [techno remix]
i am at my apartment, surprisingly so
How to make Jesse's Lunch:
You will need;
1/8 small box Acini de Pepe (small, risotto like things of pasta)
1/8 cup red lentils
1/4 small can Black Beans
4 large leaves of Napa Cabbage, shredded
2 tbsp. Rice Wine Vinegar
1 tbsp. Plum Wine Vinegar
1 tbsp. Cilantro
1 tbsp. Basil
1 tbsp. Some sort of Pine Nut Flavoring; I used a Vegan seasoning for Salads that simulates Cheese, Pesto, and Oregano.
1 tbsp. Vegannaise; any sort of sour cream, mayonnaise, etc can do.
A pinch of salt
1 shred cabbage into a bowl and place a little bit of each of your spices (except salt) on the leaves. Leave there.
2 Boil half a medium pot of water on the stove. When boiling, add Acini, Lentils, Black beans and a little bit of their juice.
3 Boil for 3 minutes, add in other wet ingredients and salt
4 Reduce for 20-30 minutes, until there's about 1/4 of the broth left.
5 Pour directly over cabbage and season with remaining spices + Vegannaise, stir in, eat!
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer; labyrinths - jorge borges
now listening unchained melody [techno remix]
i am at my apartment, surprisingly so
12.1.09
willard and his bowling trophies; richard brautigan
Richard Brautigan is a secret of American skill. Reading Willard and his Bowling Trophies, a one-hundred page nothing of sarcastic analysis of the American sex-life, I can only wonder why I'm not studying Brautigan alongsides the likes of Vonnegut and O'Brien; his style of characteristic half-truths intercepted by implausible irony and sprinkled with absurd humor reminds one and often blows away previous works of satiric beauty.
Though without the maddening meta-writing, mind-blowingly good self-insertion of Breakfast of Champions, Willard reads with the same ubiquitous message of anomaly. As no one is important, as no one is truly special, so too are Bob and Constance singled out as one case of what should be or shouldn't be normal. Their reprisals, something that comes not from deserving it but from the irony that no one individual in the story should deserve the fate that is brought upon them, underscores a sarcastic all-too truth from the American writers of the 60s and 70s: It can happen to anyone.
Without giving away the relishing results, I will describe to you what Willard is "about:" Bob and Constance's proto-sadism in the wake of genital warts; Pam and John's turkey sandwiches; a 3 foot art sculpture and it's bowling trophies; and the three brothers who want those bowling trophies back. As a good friend of mine put it: "This is the first time syntax has ever been funny."
Give it a read. The themes I feel are pertinent to the now... after all, the more death, destruction, and financial ruin that hits the world, the more people ask "why me?"
and I, and it seems Mr. Brautigan, have only to say: "Why not?"
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer
now listening bario alto - thievery corporation
i am at the metrosphere office, tivoli, 313e
Though without the maddening meta-writing, mind-blowingly good self-insertion of Breakfast of Champions, Willard reads with the same ubiquitous message of anomaly. As no one is important, as no one is truly special, so too are Bob and Constance singled out as one case of what should be or shouldn't be normal. Their reprisals, something that comes not from deserving it but from the irony that no one individual in the story should deserve the fate that is brought upon them, underscores a sarcastic all-too truth from the American writers of the 60s and 70s: It can happen to anyone.
Without giving away the relishing results, I will describe to you what Willard is "about:" Bob and Constance's proto-sadism in the wake of genital warts; Pam and John's turkey sandwiches; a 3 foot art sculpture and it's bowling trophies; and the three brothers who want those bowling trophies back. As a good friend of mine put it: "This is the first time syntax has ever been funny."
Give it a read. The themes I feel are pertinent to the now... after all, the more death, destruction, and financial ruin that hits the world, the more people ask "why me?"
and I, and it seems Mr. Brautigan, have only to say: "Why not?"
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer
now listening bario alto - thievery corporation
i am at the metrosphere office, tivoli, 313e
9.1.09
the new canon: blindness, by jose saramago
I've just finished a book, and though this book is probably written about tirelessly, endlessly, and without hesitation, I just have to say how wonderful this book was to my outlook (at least, we can argue, for today). The book of course is Jose Saramago's Blindness, something that I'd purchased some odd years ago and finally gotten around to reading. I've also got his book The Body-Double just laying around, ready to be devoured. Anyway, this book centers around a country that suddenly, and inexplicably, begins to suffer from White Sickness, a sudden and vivid whiteness taking over their sight.
It serves, in a way, as a quick and neat allegory for the uselessness of our current, sumptuous society; towards the latter pages of the book, blind prophets preach about the head of the praying mantis and the claw of the hen, the tail of the rabbit and the circumfrence of who knows what. Simultaneously, equal prophets gain audience for preaching of free markets, circles, vertical, diagonal, tariffs and the imaginary, putting both society and religion into an equal realm of obsurdity. While wading through the reality of the human animal - that without our world of society to protect us, we indeed reveal ourselves to be the worst of animal kind - the reader is confronted with the shit, literally, of thousands of defected and defeated humans with no other way to express their base instinct.
We are given one seeing narrator, safely, a female, removing the initial need to make a connection to Jesus or any other allegorical bullshit. Then again, Saramago brusquely deals away with any questions of God with a church where all the icons have been hidden by swatches of white paint. God cannot see, Saramago proclaims in a sweep of images, and is as ridiculous as the head of the praying mantis (which I would like to add is often eaten by the female of the species).
To extend so far as I am able, I would argue the work is a strictly irreligious sort, but only insomuch as it is not religious; it is neither strictly atheist, nor is it strictly theologist. It decides with an unflinching eye - to be ironic - to dispose of the notions of the non-physical, and argue as the doctor's wife does, that it is all irrelevant. "The soul and the body must be one or none," she thinks to herself, after correcting her own metaphysical idea that this rain will wash the soul or perhaps it will wash the body instead...
Ultimately, I've never been so fortunate to see. The text is hard: his choice to emulate blindness by removing a lot of necessary paragraph breaks and quotation marks is admirable and symbolic but without a desirable result. It can read in a distracting confusion of who's speaking and what's going on, looking for capital letters when certain words must always be. But I assure you, the read is worth every penny of your reality; if you are, like me, one of the seeing who is sometimes too concerned with the size of her thighs or the condition of her bedroom's floor.
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading willard and his bowling trophies, a perverse mystery - richard brautigan
now listening automatic (jonny vicious remix) - hikaru utada
i am at the metrosphere office, 313e, tivoli
It serves, in a way, as a quick and neat allegory for the uselessness of our current, sumptuous society; towards the latter pages of the book, blind prophets preach about the head of the praying mantis and the claw of the hen, the tail of the rabbit and the circumfrence of who knows what. Simultaneously, equal prophets gain audience for preaching of free markets, circles, vertical, diagonal, tariffs and the imaginary, putting both society and religion into an equal realm of obsurdity. While wading through the reality of the human animal - that without our world of society to protect us, we indeed reveal ourselves to be the worst of animal kind - the reader is confronted with the shit, literally, of thousands of defected and defeated humans with no other way to express their base instinct.
We are given one seeing narrator, safely, a female, removing the initial need to make a connection to Jesus or any other allegorical bullshit. Then again, Saramago brusquely deals away with any questions of God with a church where all the icons have been hidden by swatches of white paint. God cannot see, Saramago proclaims in a sweep of images, and is as ridiculous as the head of the praying mantis (which I would like to add is often eaten by the female of the species).
To extend so far as I am able, I would argue the work is a strictly irreligious sort, but only insomuch as it is not religious; it is neither strictly atheist, nor is it strictly theologist. It decides with an unflinching eye - to be ironic - to dispose of the notions of the non-physical, and argue as the doctor's wife does, that it is all irrelevant. "The soul and the body must be one or none," she thinks to herself, after correcting her own metaphysical idea that this rain will wash the soul or perhaps it will wash the body instead...
Ultimately, I've never been so fortunate to see. The text is hard: his choice to emulate blindness by removing a lot of necessary paragraph breaks and quotation marks is admirable and symbolic but without a desirable result. It can read in a distracting confusion of who's speaking and what's going on, looking for capital letters when certain words must always be. But I assure you, the read is worth every penny of your reality; if you are, like me, one of the seeing who is sometimes too concerned with the size of her thighs or the condition of her bedroom's floor.
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading willard and his bowling trophies, a perverse mystery - richard brautigan
now listening automatic (jonny vicious remix) - hikaru utada
i am at the metrosphere office, 313e, tivoli
7.1.09
there's probably no god, so stop worrying and enjoy your life;
I think it's best when discussing the world at large to think of the world as a snowglobe. When I look out at the horizon and see the trees touch the sky, I imagine that the curved sky only lands to the other side; that there is actually no equidistant atmosphere. My knowledge of the world's reality is such that I am enclosed and ready to be shaken within however many miles of my life.
The reason, I think, that I do such things is not because I'm trying to be manipulative or imaginative, whimsical or otherwise restrictive in my perceptions, but only that when I think of the world as it really is I am either too depressed or too overwhelmed to do much about it. If you imagine a piece of sidewalk that is only two feet long, that travels under your foot in any given day, and you concede that there are five thousand plus feet in a mile, and there are a thousand plus miles in the nation of America, and four thousand plus miles in the circumfrence of the equator, you're faced with the realization that all of humanity is in general operating on the miniscule. Further, when you factor in that despite this incredible ratio of actual earth occupied to actual earth present, outside of the ocean we have taken over an incredibly large chunk of it. We have taken over enough to justify a climate change. The last creatures to do this were the dinosaurs.
And underneath every bit of cement there is dirt, and this dirt is easier on our feet than the cement. Underneath every piece of tar there is earth and crust and grass that could be growing, and that is sometimes easier on our tires than pitfalls. The honest truth is that underneath most of the cement is actually stuff that is better for us and the creatures around us, but we've covered it up and now ruined it... and sadly, recovery will be long and excruciating.
I once read in biology class, in the tenth grade, mind, so this was just barely post-millenium, sometime around 9/11 biology, that an ecosystem can take over one hundred years to recover from devastation. So everywhere we have paved, there is a hundred years or more of recovery work. It's at this point I become depressed or overwhelmed... it depends if I become Platonic. You see, if I become Platonic, then I start to think, "then for every piece of my person I have paved over, as the city is but the soul writ large..."
Does that mean it's a year for every piece?
Ten years?
One hundred?
And that will take me to the world of depression. Regardless of psychotherapy, psychoactive drugs, retroactive reality or whatever the fuck 'ive' you want to use, it seems that world reconstruction is just as slow and painful as internal reconstruction, and life has infinitely less time to reconstruct than a giant rock hurtling through time/space does.
If I'm to be overwhelmed, I begin to think about what might be under the sidewalk. The worms, the grass, the rocks and pebbles, and I imagine them without me, without anyone, finally broken through the cement after a particularly freezing rain storm without the trucks to replace what has been cracked by nature. I imagine Chernobyl, and try to picture what the deer are like now, the deer that have survived the radiation - I try to imagine what the steppe is like there, and the trees, and what that would be like at the RTD station on Broadway with the homeless man huddled on a bench when the dirt would be softer, but we don't want to sit on the dirt, or the cement, or the cement that we use to cover the dirt, because both are too dirty.
Then I'm overwhelmed by frivolity, disappear into my headphones, and wonder if there could ever be a god in this kind of universe.
At least in a snowglobe I'd get to shake his ass up with me.
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading blindness - jose saramago
now listening any motion - hyori ft. eric
i am at the metrosphere office, 313e, tivoli
The reason, I think, that I do such things is not because I'm trying to be manipulative or imaginative, whimsical or otherwise restrictive in my perceptions, but only that when I think of the world as it really is I am either too depressed or too overwhelmed to do much about it. If you imagine a piece of sidewalk that is only two feet long, that travels under your foot in any given day, and you concede that there are five thousand plus feet in a mile, and there are a thousand plus miles in the nation of America, and four thousand plus miles in the circumfrence of the equator, you're faced with the realization that all of humanity is in general operating on the miniscule. Further, when you factor in that despite this incredible ratio of actual earth occupied to actual earth present, outside of the ocean we have taken over an incredibly large chunk of it. We have taken over enough to justify a climate change. The last creatures to do this were the dinosaurs.
And underneath every bit of cement there is dirt, and this dirt is easier on our feet than the cement. Underneath every piece of tar there is earth and crust and grass that could be growing, and that is sometimes easier on our tires than pitfalls. The honest truth is that underneath most of the cement is actually stuff that is better for us and the creatures around us, but we've covered it up and now ruined it... and sadly, recovery will be long and excruciating.
I once read in biology class, in the tenth grade, mind, so this was just barely post-millenium, sometime around 9/11 biology, that an ecosystem can take over one hundred years to recover from devastation. So everywhere we have paved, there is a hundred years or more of recovery work. It's at this point I become depressed or overwhelmed... it depends if I become Platonic. You see, if I become Platonic, then I start to think, "then for every piece of my person I have paved over, as the city is but the soul writ large..."
Does that mean it's a year for every piece?
Ten years?
One hundred?
And that will take me to the world of depression. Regardless of psychotherapy, psychoactive drugs, retroactive reality or whatever the fuck 'ive' you want to use, it seems that world reconstruction is just as slow and painful as internal reconstruction, and life has infinitely less time to reconstruct than a giant rock hurtling through time/space does.
If I'm to be overwhelmed, I begin to think about what might be under the sidewalk. The worms, the grass, the rocks and pebbles, and I imagine them without me, without anyone, finally broken through the cement after a particularly freezing rain storm without the trucks to replace what has been cracked by nature. I imagine Chernobyl, and try to picture what the deer are like now, the deer that have survived the radiation - I try to imagine what the steppe is like there, and the trees, and what that would be like at the RTD station on Broadway with the homeless man huddled on a bench when the dirt would be softer, but we don't want to sit on the dirt, or the cement, or the cement that we use to cover the dirt, because both are too dirty.
Then I'm overwhelmed by frivolity, disappear into my headphones, and wonder if there could ever be a god in this kind of universe.
At least in a snowglobe I'd get to shake his ass up with me.
now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading blindness - jose saramago
now listening any motion - hyori ft. eric
i am at the metrosphere office, 313e, tivoli
dead center;
The thing is, I want this thing to be cooler than anything else, so I'm going to be futzing with it more than most.
It's ironic how history bends over itself - when I first started blogging, or, as I would say, when I first started dedicating some amount of myself to the internet and the social prospects there-of, I started on Blogger. That was when it was still its own entity, not part of the google empire, and the millenium had JUST happened, and I'd just decided some heavy stuff about me, and I was under the age of 18 but pretending I wasn't.
But when you look at things, all of things, round and round again, sometimes you just end up at dead center again.
I do know how to use commas, I just refuse...
Hello! I am Jesse, please don't call me Jessica, 23, vegan [but not too strict], horoscope nut, writer, reader, good!girlfriend, generally one with dirty nails, tearista, hippy-liberal-face, cute[?], nice to a certain extent, and my shoulders are sore this morning. I sleep on the floor, you see, in my two bedroom apartment, largely because I haven't been able to afford a bed and the couch hurts my back and the blow up bed reminds me too much of my pre-21 days so I try to avoid that thing. Air matresses. Suspicious buggers.
Last night I slept rather fitfully. I knew I had to get up early so I could get to work early. Speaking of work, I currently sport two jobs and a full-time school schedule. I work at the Pekoe Sip House down at Cherry Creek, please don't stalk me (♥?) and Metrosphere, my school's literary arts magazine. I pull at least 40 hours a week if not more. Rent! It must be paid!
I'll be writing my thesis this spring and gradjeeating with a degree in writing and a minor in linguistics. I've applied to LSU's MFA program, or, well, will apply as soon as I take what is known as the scary test of scary, the GREs.
Yesterday, I sponsored a kid in Africa. ♥
I have a modicum of interesting interests (ha, ha, writing major, RIGHT?): comics, music, asiatic culture of all sorts, postcolonialism, africa, human rights, animal rights, logic, defeating the crazy vegan monster, principles of good design, character analysis, psychology, history (in a glancing sort of way), astrology, health, aromatherapy, holistics/homeopathy, BOOKS, the media...
Any and all of these interests might be the subject of a post here! Back in my old world I did a lot of personal posting, but I think I'd like to try and show my brain power and actually talk about things for a change. I mean, if I'm going to be public and all. (oo, scary.)
For now, until I figure out another way to do this, I'm just going to put this on the bottom.
now writing: "the gravedigger"
now reading: blindness - jose saramago
now listening: sake and the non-drinker [sake to geko] - tokyo jihen
i am at: my apartment, in the pjs
It's ironic how history bends over itself - when I first started blogging, or, as I would say, when I first started dedicating some amount of myself to the internet and the social prospects there-of, I started on Blogger. That was when it was still its own entity, not part of the google empire, and the millenium had JUST happened, and I'd just decided some heavy stuff about me, and I was under the age of 18 but pretending I wasn't.
But when you look at things, all of things, round and round again, sometimes you just end up at dead center again.
I do know how to use commas, I just refuse...
Hello! I am Jesse, please don't call me Jessica, 23, vegan [but not too strict], horoscope nut, writer, reader, good!girlfriend, generally one with dirty nails, tearista, hippy-liberal-face, cute[?], nice to a certain extent, and my shoulders are sore this morning. I sleep on the floor, you see, in my two bedroom apartment, largely because I haven't been able to afford a bed and the couch hurts my back and the blow up bed reminds me too much of my pre-21 days so I try to avoid that thing. Air matresses. Suspicious buggers.
Last night I slept rather fitfully. I knew I had to get up early so I could get to work early. Speaking of work, I currently sport two jobs and a full-time school schedule. I work at the Pekoe Sip House down at Cherry Creek, please don't stalk me (♥?) and Metrosphere, my school's literary arts magazine. I pull at least 40 hours a week if not more. Rent! It must be paid!
I'll be writing my thesis this spring and gradjeeating with a degree in writing and a minor in linguistics. I've applied to LSU's MFA program, or, well, will apply as soon as I take what is known as the scary test of scary, the GREs.
Yesterday, I sponsored a kid in Africa. ♥
I have a modicum of interesting interests (ha, ha, writing major, RIGHT?): comics, music, asiatic culture of all sorts, postcolonialism, africa, human rights, animal rights, logic, defeating the crazy vegan monster, principles of good design, character analysis, psychology, history (in a glancing sort of way), astrology, health, aromatherapy, holistics/homeopathy, BOOKS, the media...
Any and all of these interests might be the subject of a post here! Back in my old world I did a lot of personal posting, but I think I'd like to try and show my brain power and actually talk about things for a change. I mean, if I'm going to be public and all. (oo, scary.)
For now, until I figure out another way to do this, I'm just going to put this on the bottom.
now writing: "the gravedigger"
now reading: blindness - jose saramago
now listening: sake and the non-drinker [sake to geko] - tokyo jihen
i am at: my apartment, in the pjs
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