Many Thoughts, Little Time

Alas. I had hoped to be a more regular presence in my own space. In fact, I have a longish entry to this blog that has been sitting in draft for over a month now. I've been out of town. I've been working. I've been sick. Simultaneously. So, on my first weekend to actually rest up without the aid of heavy medication, I--- attempted a cento. A cento is a poem made up entirely of lines taken from other poems. A poet, Danielle Pafunda, got some very experienced poets to act as judges, and in celebration of National Poetry Month and the Academy of American Poets, launched a Cento Contest. She tweeted one line from seventy-five different poems/poets on April 21, and anyone who wished could make a cento of any length of them, with the contest ending today at noon. The rules were very generous, with any use of the line allowed: split, whole, differently punctuated, spliced to pieces, partially used or discarded. I don't know what got into me; I gave it a try. I can immediately see from the more experienced entries (or what I assume are more experienced writers), more control: they used fewer lines to more coherence and sharper effect. The last one in the gate (as of now, but I think they are finished posting), called "Dementia Canto" is one such. Another is called "The Mistress." Mine is next-to-last-in-the-gate, but I have put it in below, with a few changes I wish I'd made (the deletion of a line and an extra "the" that never should have been there). I own up to working on it with more than a little effort. I am mostly pleased, but, naturally, welcome anyone's thoughts. The original entry is here, and the lines writers were given to work with are all at the end of all of the entries, or directly here. Also, check out 30 Poems in 30 Days, also from the Academy of American Poets.

The beautiful and intriguing lines from the original poems have opened up many new voices to me. More reading awaits in the longer, warmer, and sunnier days to come, glass of wine in hand and feet up on the porch.

Humbly yours on this Easter weekend,

Cordelia


Were they pearls

Sleep-fallen, just jars of buttons spilled
recurring naked in your dark hair,
implicit with stars;
plunge me deep in love,
the whole cathedral,
put out paper sacks stuffed full of orange
weighing the harvest
when my eye nearly failed.

You have lived and lived on every kind of shortage,
little corners of a kind of ham;
count out sherry, and ripe plates crash at your back---
and the trick is the pungent oranges and
bright green wings to make it personal.
It was not really necessary to eat the food:
one could breath it, the mystery of
---now I hear the clock snap just ten---
that. I became
hard to lift: my own bags were full of salt

which made them shifty in our hearts.
Hoist their nets,
sleepily indifferent,
we’ll kiss a hundred times
kiss the kiss to open your tiny beak-mouth
each kiss other, consider:
what you’ve said that looks as if it would never open
the magnolias
and not April
the wild, protected, liminal woods
the naked man;

in the glaring white gap,
in a carousel-sweet dress
I’m drunk,
each one a treaty, each one a place
where, glisten’d with wet,
I stand on the porch,
the reflected gleams
myself conjectured.

Alternate last stanza, which does not play so precious with Emily Dickinson's line "Myself conjectured were they Pearls---:" and replaces the segment of the Dickinson line with part of one from Gerald Manley Hopkins. I wanted some kind of ring composition effect, I think, to begin and end with Dickinson, and to do it by reversing the line's halves, but don't know how much sense I made of it, whereas this seems more straightforward.

in the glaring white gap
in a carousel-sweet dress
I'm drunk,
each one a treaty, each one a place
where, glisten’d with wet,
I stand on the porch,
the reflected gleams,
were they pearls,
to rescue one.

i-madness

Remember this ? Where you put your ipod on shuffle and see what song titles come up to answer the questions ? I decided that this Saturday morning was time for a revisit. I've added, it seems, quite a bit of music since 2009. I admit as well to being an ipad 2 holdout: though ever fiber of my tech-loving being desired the ipad the minute rumors of it began to emerge, I have held fast to waiting for at least the second incarnation (this wait and my lack of patience helped by generous visits to the Apple store to play with the thing). Yes, if I had real patience, I would wait for 2.5 or 3.0, whatever one will emerge with the usb, the retina display, the sd card slot, or even the new Thunderbolt (usb, I gather, may not last much longer). So, yes, I confess, I have reached some personal limit, and I will foolishly purchase the transitional device: my techno-wonder, my gadget lust, can wait no longer. All this, I sigh, because my eyes are too old to enjoy the ipod touch, hence this little revived meme is brought to you via an ipod classic, you know, the kind with a hard drive and a click wheel. I admit, I admit, I have no issue with the ipad being, as some keep wailing "just a glorified ipod touch." I'm happy that the ipad is as big as a picture frame and that I can bluetooth a keyboard to it. My eyes are happy. My senses are stimulated. Okay, enough. Ironically, having planned now for a year (or since the original one came out) to stand in line for the ipad 2, I will be out of the country on the day it comes out. And I want a black one. So I will have to wait some more. I also had no patience, literally, to revisit all twenty-odd questions for a remix of this meme, so I picked the ones that were the most interesting last time or to which I got the least satisfactory answers on the first go. I still have the same fear that Christmas songs may overwhelm the mix. But we will see. If one pops up, I'll note it but go on to the next... Post-experiment notes: there were still too many Christmas songs; I noted them in some places, but the pile up was too long elsewhere, so I just moved on. The opener, "How do you feel today ?" is also fairly apt: I have a lot to do. So it's been nice to pause here and be a little silly. Contemplating this as an actual playlist, or even how it would have sounded it I'd let this all play, doesn't conjure up a soothing set of tunes or any kind of coherent experience. Still, I may cue it up and let it play while I'm doing some housework this morning. I'll let you know.

1. How do you feel today ? Situations (Jack Johnson)
2. How do your friends see you ? Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen): this is really funny, considering that I am in love...
3. What do you like in a girl/guy ? I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash)
4. Where will you get married ? And She Was (Talking Heads) Parse That Please. I would like to know
*When Will You Get Married ? (I added this): Life Effect (Stars) Disappointing answer !
5. If someone says, "Is this ok ?", you say: Georgia (Ray Charles)
6. What would best describe your personality ? Cycles (Rickie Lee Jones): Ooh. That could be true !
7. What is your life's purpose ? [Winter Wonderland, Eddie Higgins + 3 more Xmas Songs. Skip] You Belong To Me (Kate Rusby)
8. What is your motto ? 15 Step (Radiohead)
9. What do you think about often ? Rock, Salt, and Nails (Kate Wolf). Metaphorically, I think I can see this...
10. What is your life story ? Calendar Girl (Neil Sedaka). Deadlines, deadlines...
11. What do you think when you see a person you like ? Little Island (Randy Newman). Interesting
12. What will they play at your funeral ? Someone Else's Life (Josh Radin). Funny. Not as funny as last time (Belly: Feed the Tree)
13. What do you think of your friends ? Mercy of the Fallen (Dar Williams).
14. What is the one thing you regret ? Suit and Tie (Suzzy Roche) Oh him. Just kidding.
15.. What makes you laugh ? Ponytail (Panda Bear) eh.
16. What makes you cry ? Germs (Yeasayer): can't argue with that !
17. What's the worst that could happen ? Muengue Mwa Ndolo (Coco Mbassi) Can anyone translate this ? I would like to know.
The next song was "Grazed Knees" (Snow Patrol): I'd settle for that.

New Additions

Not the cups. I'm still feeling a little snarky about the whole collecting/curating "trend" I was talking about a few posts ago. I realized that leaving my blog, hmm... unattended for some time has been akin to leaving the house while on extended travels elsewhere. I have returned refreshed (if, let me confess, somewhat worn by little --metaphoric-- earthquakes at Greenhouse City and, well, something else, but we'll not go there), but my home here had gotten dusty: some broken links in my blog roll (fixed or removed), and because middle age has set in and I seem to need everything in one place, some additions of new items to my lists, some that I had mentioned in earlier posts but now do not want to back track to find, and others found via other blogs that I'd rather have right here. The others are Finnish. I am not, not an ounce, not a genome, anything Finnish: it is really more of an obsession with sound and winter: I love the sound of the language. I can count to twenty and say "hello" on a good day, and have memorized the word for cat, kissa, like our word "kiss" with "sah" (double consonants pronounced separately) because I love those creatures mightily, but that is all. And I do like a wintery landscape, as those who have been following since this post have likely noted. So in addition to Dave in Suomi and Daydreaming in Helsinki (sidebar) who have stopped writing (but who am I to judge ?), I've added a few that I've been reading (Finland for Thought and Life in Finland), as well as Hel-Looks, a blog that tracks what people are wearing on the streets of Helsinki. Aside from things Finnish, there is January Magazine (literary), sans everything (literature and Canadian politics-culture respectively), A Cat of Impossible Color by Andrea Eames, a Zimbabwean born writer who now lives in Austin, TX (I have no idea how I found that blog. I just like it). Under my "Good Things" Listings (I know, I know: I should think about recatagorizing these, but not yet), there is Read Free Books Online , a site that offers all kinds of books to read (not to download, usually). I have a hard time reading novels online; my eyes get tired enough from reading blogs and work, but there it is, and it is marvelous. Also Next American City, which thinks hard about living well and green and on bicycles and in what a city ought to be. As for "Opus is Gone," I checked. If you click on the "letter" that now pops up, explaining that Opus is napping, you will go to Berkeley Breathed's page, where you can find information on his other work as well as Bloom County and its sequel. I guess Flawed Dogs created some controversy, as it seems to be a children's book, but the cruelty that some people perpetrate on animals (dog fights) is described in details too disturbing for some. It's another post, how we've defanged fairy tales (literally) and taken out the scene where Bambi's mother is killed (see here, eg), etc., but thinking about Breathed's book brought this all to mind again. And then there is his art, which is, well, poignant and funny all at once. So that's the round up.

I could get all meta-narrative, meta-blog post about a post that is still riding on some snark about collections and then presents a collection of links, but we won't do that. I'm more in the mood to think about the egregious number of parentheses in this post, but it seems to suit: this post is a parenthesis of sorts, a nice pause to just sit down and look.

As for my 'art,' ahem, Corel Painter is really quite the thing, isn't it ?

Accidental Tableau

It just happened. I don't how they piled up or even how they ended up in the teacup. Morning, afternoon, evening, I realize as I stare quizzically and groggily at them: the cup and one spoon are from this morning's five am cappuccino. Another spoon from yogurt and honey I'd had as a snack when I got home this afternoon; the third... oh yes, I'd had tea after falling asleep on the couch mid evening. I'd used a different cup, and even rinsed it. But put the spoon in with the others. They are still there. Markers of an ordinary day and the whole of it evidence of an unplanned evening nap, and the peacefulness of a late evening where some things, cups and spoons and worries and work, must just be left to rest.

Perhaps I should also add, that in this peaceful evening, in fact, making a habit of having a little time for one each night, I have been reading, resting quiet and undisturbed under my covers as my spoons under water, Peter Høeg's The Quiet Girl, Den stille pige, and while missing dearly the snowy and still, suspended, landscape of Smilla's Sense of Snow, have been finding it a fascinating piece, virtuosic and odd, a page-turner and luringly suggestive of what various critical theories could make of it (and is up to it). I won't recount it here, only my deep surprise that it was not well received in Denmark (and who knows: maybe not here either), a fact I only discovered when I looked for information on its English language publication date (2007). It came out in Danish in 2006 and The Danish Literary Magazine has an article by the Norwegian author Kjaerstad on his own surprise at the novel's reception. It doesn't really give anything of the plot away, so feel free to read it here. Kjaerstad calls the novel, or one aspect of it, "high baroque," and I think this does capture the over all tone of the work, though it is all at once a detective story, science fiction, and more. More often than not, the scenes between characters recall to mind Isak Dinesen's stories and I wonder if anyone else has sensed this. Is there such a thing as a Danish-baroque sensibility ?

What We Live With

Dear Reader:

I promise to read something else. Rather, I promise to blog about something other than what I've read in the NYTimes, lest you begin to suspect that this is my only source of information/stimulation outside of the cappuccino and Excedrin combo to which I often also refer, and, alas, have resorted to again this morning as I also munched on toast and read the aforementioned publication in the predawn light (it turns out, apparently, that when one

habitually

gets up way too early on purpose, going to bed just a little earlier and hoping to sleep just a little later does not work. Wide awake at 5:40. Drat.).

Snowland

Late Winter Afternoon

The snow itself seeks

a roost in the trees' branches.

Inside: tea on, rest.

I am borrowing from Liz at Cassandra Pages (see sidebar), who as a disciplined and actual writer, did not abandon her blog, but wrote only short prose pieces and poems, haikus among them, for all of January. Determined not to become a once a year poster to my own blog, I sat down this evening too tired to really write anything, so decided to risk embarassment and take up haiku myself for one night to get started. I've been fussing over the last line, but what the heck. Too bad "the welcome arms of home" has six syllables is what I've been thinking, because that is much more the general idea.

It is wintery here, all right, today, and coming home this afternoon after some tense meetings at Greenhouse City and running errands finds me fairly wiped out. Now the oven is on and dinner is cooking, and I could really do with that cup of tea. I've saved it for myself for later, having fought off a pounding headache with an extra cappuccino this morning (so much catching up to do: I replaced my broken machine here with a Sirena machine bought on the cheap, in case you've been waiting for the end of that story...).

At the right is a picture of Snowland, not my snowy land, which has so far escaped the full force of the storm now in place, but the Snowland where my love lives and where we may make a home (complexities abound, but in middle age, all kinds of configurations seem possible that in younger years may not have appealed). So that's it, tonight: a post about snow and love, fatigue and possibility, and just about how the thought of a cup of tea can get one through the last hours of a long day.

And Now I Feel Guilty. And Hungry

I love marmalade, and this tempting photo in the NYTimes attached to a recipe for marmalade, somehow put me in the mood to blog again. Actually, that is overstating the magical powers of the photo or the substance. For all of the time I have spent "away from here" as John B puts it, I have spent not an insubstantial amount of that time thinking that I should be writing here. So, yesterday, I was poking around, both here and at Blog Meridian, Willo's, and the Cassandra Pages, Steph's, etc. really emjoying everyone else's ongoing blog world as if visiting another time and place, almost another life. In that sense, Cassandra (Elizabeth)'s post of a photo from some years ago in Vermont was very apropos. How does a life, one's own continuous life, seem to suddenly ---though it isn't sudden--- become a life so different from the life and self that one once knew ? As readers of this blog (hearty souls, for certain !) will know, I had an abrupt and quite unwanted break in that continuity before I'd begun this blog, once so forceful that I experienced it as exile. This is a much more happy circumstance, but has brought with it stresses all its own: I've gone from being quite single and contentedly so, to falling in love with a man with whom, we two agree, we'd like to make a life together. Complications and adventure abound: it is long distance, children are in the picture, job stress (Greenhouse City has turned Dickensian, but I am hanging in) and potential relocation issues lo---, well, no, they don't loom as much as they open up so many possibilities and uncertainties. About which I'm most likely to write very little, details being what they are, and this blog being unknown to him. It's kind of my place, my diary in the sock drawer, so I've been wondering about that, too: the blogs I've mentioned are openly tied to their writers' identities. I know there are other bloggers out there that do what I do (academics are notorious for it, as are doctors and therapists, privacy issues being what they are, or, in the case of academics, academia being what it is): any thoughts on the "sock drawer blog," so to speak ?

Ahem: back to my tale of getting back here. Either Willo really reads her sitemeter thoroughly or she mistook my last blog post for 2011 instead of 2010, but there it is, posted below, how nice to see me back. Yes, wouldn't it be, I thought. So here I am. I'll be coming around to visit you all more obviously. Thank you, Willo !

Wish I'd Thought of This & A Coffee Cri de Coeur

Via Seattle Coffee Gear (where I have spent a great deal of time of late, lusting over their machines and watching their fabulous "how to" You Tube Videos), I found Internet Cafe Hobo. Of course it's the BBC. Now, this is a fun way to see the world... Too tired tonight to say much more, except to say that my current espresso machine is broken, really, really broken.

And, people, how stiff do you like (or make) your cappuccino foam ? Are you a "micro" foamer, or do you prefer a stiffer foam ? One snooty professional style video insisted that "one never spoons the foam out of the pitcher." Uh-Oh. I intend to refine my technique, I think. As soon as I have a machine that actually has pressure in the steam wand again. Sigh. To the left is the image of one I lust for, though I'm not actually certain I'd buy something this expensive even if I could afford it. I'd like to play with it, though, let me tell you...

From what I've read and seen on the videos, there is clearly an anthropology dissertation (or two or three) to be written on espresso culture and rituals. I suppose I could get into a rant on consumerism and how we've been sold the idea about being "serious" equalling spending serious money on equipment and accessories ---and this seems true of almost any endeavor these days---, but I do love the techie beauty of these machines and the real knowledge that seems to go into a good number of morning coffee rituals out there in the world. I, on the other hand, am not exactly an amateur, but I have a plastic tamper, folks. Maybe it's the challenge...


*As usual, dear reader(s), I am following my passions here, and have no financial connections to SCG or the machine pictured.

The Year of Changes

It is amazing how I can just stop blogging. Log off one night, no intention of being gone, and then, zap ! eight months gone. Eight. Reader(s), I apologize. I don't know what got into me. Nothing is wrong or was wrong, though, I admit, as summer approached and my joy and relief at having finally secured a position in a place the likes of Greenhouse City took hold, I began, for the first time in about four or five years, to be able to rest, really rest, and to let my tension-filled body finally sink into bed, onto couch, in chair in the sun, the fatigue leaching out in a slow ebb that left me realizing how much, emotionally and intellectually, I'd kept a bay from myself during non-Greenhouse City years. The end of exile, sort of, but in a new place. Of course, post-exile, there is a lot to do. My new circumstances have been a return of the deepest magnitude, and (but ?) I began to realize that I felt, if not out of practice, unpracticed: having arrived, after the initial set-up and transition, there was a deeper kind of setting up to do, a re-establishing of myself in that world, and ---what I think I had not anticipated, at least in terms of its depth--- a re-establishing of myself in me: I have found myself returning to both projects unfinished and desires left unfulfilled; I've travelled more than I have in a good four years, professionally or personally, and the professional travel and projects that went with it at first left me feeling shakier than I'd like even to admit to myself self. Nostalgia rewritten: nostos means return; algia, pain/longing, so "nostalgia" is normally, of course, a longing to return; I have had a case of the pain of return (there does not seem to be a word for that, though I am mindful that the nostoi of the ancient Greeks, of which we really only have the Odyssey in its fullness, are very much about both, the heroes battling their way toward a home, they and it forever changed). On the first few trips out, my knees were weaker than I would have thought, even to myself. But all went well, even better than well.

I have come "home," to realize, what I thought I already knew: I am older, I am behind in terms of the things I would have liked to have accomplished by now: perhaps it is only middle age setting in in earnest, one of those factors I did keep at bay, either simply through my attitude toward life (my older relatives tend to be surprised that they are as old as they are and just keep going: I am much the same), or because I could not bear that time was passing and I was no longer in the world in the way I wanted to be. Even now, I tend not to think about it (Greenhouse City is, happily and remarkably, full of "returnees" and refugees of all sorts), until I meet friends from old or talk with colleagues during these aforementioned travels, who talk about their careers having peaked or retiring at sixty (the latter seems impossibly young to me to do that), and I think, or rethink: is life really that far along ? Is life really that close to.... what ? A limited number of choices ? I tend to reject that out of hand. I wonder, if my life had been the sort where I stayed in one place for quite some time, if I would have evolved into the kind of person who has, what I call for lack of a better understanding of it, a life plan, and one that cooked along accordingly, at that. I am at the point where peers talk about x number more of projects, then that's it, they'll stop, career done, move on. And I wonder how they view me: am I the flexible one, or the one without a plan in a way that is daunting to them, off-putting ? Perhaps, I also think, during exile years, I stopped making certain kinds of plans, so strong was my sense of disappointment and despair, so estranged my exile from the world that was my home.

Whatever the case, here I am: returned, now toughened back up a bit, back. And now, having arrived ---how did I know this would be the case ? because when life was good before, this is often what happened--- and now life is good again, so: other things have opened up, and these are the sorts of things that would entail tremendous life changes on my part. I greet these with enthusiasm on the one hand and, upon reflection, pause on the other, wondering if, deep down, this option, to which I am powerfully and emotionally drawn, is opening up a fuller existence, or might foreclose upon the very things, rooted and dormant in me for so long, that are now just again flowering in the light of this new day and place, so long sought and so hard won ?

In short, and, in keeping with the tenor of this blog, I apologize for its obliqueness when it comes to specifics, I am (and how can I be ?) so happy and so uncertain suddenly and all at once. I am, though, once again back to this blog. I thought about it often, but the energy it took to restart and reintegrate left me no extra time for more writing, and I have missed it. So hello again, out there, whoever has come and stopped by.

Ha. Another One

Some of you may recall that in the summer, inspired by Carbon Trace, I began to hunt (cyberly) Academics Who Bike. Got another today, by the usual method, aka, not looking. I was looking for information on Toronto and biking, and, lo ! Stylocycle came into view. She explains herself in this post. I'm adding her to my special category sidebar.
On another note, I've finished The Glister. Hmmm... still pondering.

Add to list of books not to forget about reading:
Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, Telegraph Days; Reread Lonesome Dove
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Jeanette Winterson, Weight
Steven Sherrill, The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break


I'm behind as far as The Road goes, I know. A lot going on these past few years.

The 2009 Pulitzers are out, but I am very underwhelmed at the moment. I hadn't been paying much attention, but in the fiction and poetry category at least, even the finalists seem weak. Not undeserving at all, but perhaps safe or too mainstream/ establishment (?). Elizabeth Strout's "novel in short stories," Olive Kitteridge won for fiction, and WS Merwin for poetry (The Shadow of Sirius). Worse, Drew Gilpin Faust's brilliant book on the civil war, This Republic of Suffering, was pitted against Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, to which it lost. Tough call. Both are extremely important works, and both so extremely deserving. I presume Pulitzers cannot "tie," but I haven't looked into this. Faust's is really the better book, though: better written, beautifully researched, intellectually captivating. I must be in a very contrarian mood, sitting here arguing with the Pulitzer committee in my head. 'Nite.

Lists

Steph, in a meme of some sort, posted a list on her site: a three year reading list of books that she wants to read, should read, never got to. Here's her explanation of the whole project and where she found it:

Project Fill-in-the-Gaps was created by Moonrat on her blog Editorial Ass: fill in the gaps in your reading lists of classics and contemporary fiction. Make a list of 100 titles, give yourself 5 years to complete reading the list, and give yourself 25% "accident forgiveness" - consider the task accomplished if you achieve 75 titles in the time span. I found this via some blog or other..."

I'm not big on those group lists like "the best 100 books" or projects like "the big read" --- not a communal reader, I'd guess, or not a book club sort. So my reaction to the project, understandably, was no reaction. Without getting into the specifics of my education, I've done my time with multi-year reading lists of inordinate length. Appeal of repeating this experience: zero. I do carry around lists like this in my head, but they change or emerge by happenstance, say, when I come across a title consciously forgotten but now on view in a bookstore or library, and then I remember that I've wanted to read it. And so I usually buy it/check it out on the spot. But I think we all have similar lists, of symphonies unheard, recipes untried, places to visit, etc. Will the naught decade be the decade of lists ? I blame that book, which seems still very popular among, hmm, I'll stretch it and say the 32 and under crowd, but I've mostly heard it mentioned by people in their twenties: One Hundred Things To Do Before You Die. It seems to have spurred a whole movement of "life lists," (or "Bucket Lists," based on the movie). The worst ? The writer of the original book, a travel book, died at the age of 47, list unfinished, not eaten by crocodiles or anything exotic, but from a head injury suffered in a fall at home. Enough to put one off the idea entirely. But it hasn't. The idea spawned (I mean this in the demonic sense) an entire industry ---and maybe a generation--- of people who see life as a hop from one bullet point to another (was this inevitable after Power Point ?). I wonder if their lives will pass them by while they are busy checking off events and experiences... On the other hand, like titles that I suddenly reapprehend as desirable reads, perhaps the lists are a way of holding up our true self(ves) to the mind's eye, so that it doesn't get lost in the daily routine that keeps offering up the "someday" that will be different. All of this is getting philosophical and far from my original purpose for my entry, which is not a three year reading list, but one formed in the now of the latest NYTimes Book Review today. The first three are not in it; it is that when I read the review, I remember them. Every week, I tuck it aside and later in the week, I recycle it, and only if I am very organized have glanced through it again to remind myself of what I might like to read. Dear Reader(s ?), though I mention this newspaper quite a bit, it is not my only source. I also feel, for example, that I need to listen to the Wrens, but this impulse did not come from the Times. Aside from any other books I may have mentioned, which I may or may not have read by now, these are the books on my mind:

• Current Read: A Meaningful Life, LJ Davis finished, 4/13
• Keep Forgetting, But Really Want to Read: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
• The Age of Shiva, Manil Suri
• More Jonathan Lethem (I loved Motherless Brooklyn)

In the Book Review this week (children's books caught my eye this time around, mostly, I notice):

• Amiri and Odette, Walter Dean Myers, illustr. Javaka Steptoe : "the legend of Swan Lake moves into the projects."
• The Yggyssey, Daniel Pinkwater, illustr. Caleb Brown (why hadn't I heard of Pinkwater before this ?). The main character is a girl named Yggdrasil Birnbaum, presumably after the great ash tree stretching from beneath the earth to the heavens in Norse mythology. I wonder how accidental the last name is: it means "pear tree" in German.
• The Graveyard Book, Blueberry Girl and Coraline, all by Neil Gaiman
• It would also be hard to pass on CAT, "written by Matthew van Fleet and photographed by Brian Stanton. All kinds of cats, in motion and rhyme." Why should the "2 and up" crowd have all the good cat books ?
• The Glister, John Burnside. (finished, 4/19) Scottish fiction, teenage boys vanish in the woods for years until another teenage boy begins to realize what is going on. Read the review. My potboiler plot description does not capture what intrigues me about it. The review does.

Well, off to listen to the Wrens, finally, via the link I created here. Happy Easter, for those of you who are celebrating today.

Image from "Amiri and Odette" lifted from NYTimes Book Review website.

"Call it a field..."

I've finished Dogs of Babel. While I write, I'm making a version of a recipe I saw in the newspaper today, a kind of breakfast-for-dinner meal, poached eggs atop peas. The peas should be sprinkled with bacon, but I don't have any in the house, so mine will be plainer: I have some cornbread, I'm thinking about sprinkling it with Parmesan cheese. I'm sure it's not supposed to be a full meal either, but eggs, peas, and cornbread sound fine to me.
Parkhurst's novel is written in stunningly beautiful prose, the tale of a man, told by that man, the husband of a woman who is found dead at the foot of an apple tree in their backyard, their Rhodesian Ridgeback nosing the body and yelping out the cries to neighbors, one of whom finally looks over the fence. In the UK, the book was more precisely titled Lorelei's Secret, since the dog, Lorelei, was the only witness to what happened. The words "elegiac" and "parable" have been frequently applied to this novel, and when it sustains that tone, which is most of the time, the novel shines, the prose is a glimmering field of love and grief, the ineffable and the unknowable. "Babel" is a reference to the husband's profession as a linguist, and his growing obsession, which he pursues in the name of research, of teaching the dog to talk, or at least to communicate, because he is convinced that Lorelie can make sense of what happened: why was his wife, Lexy (there are elements of allegory here), climbing a thirty foot tree in the first place ? Police forensics determine quickly that Lexy did not jump, but, Paul wonders, did she "let herself" fall ? [Fall. From an apple tree. Reference to Babel. Are these allusions clear enough ? Apparently the apple tree and the fall were not enough for the publishers who changed the title: the story of Babel is not mentioned in the book.] The novel retells the story of how Paul and Lexy, who owned Lorelei before she met Paul, met and married. Lexy is a mask maker, an artistry that takes a macabre turn when she is commissioned to make a modern day death mask of a teenage girl who has died of cancer. Contrary to what Paul expects, the mask, while limning the girl's features, is full of life: "She had painted the face white, a stark white background, with a field of bright flowers that stretched from cheek to cheek. The colors were vibrant --- no soft pastels, no pinks and baby blues. There were stems and leaves in bright, vivid greens, topped with blossoms of read and purple and yellow and teal, their petals touched with gold like a glint of sunglow. There were not the kind of flowers that would have been sent to the girl's funeral... These were wildflowers, windblown and growing every which way." It is one of several crucial moments in the novel where Paul is taken by surprise by Lexy's work, both by its nature and execution, and his inability to fully comprehend the artist in her and the mercurial emotions that reside behind her own mask of everyday self burn away, like a purifying flame, the glinting, sunlit elegy of his narrative of their romance. But there is no purifying flame: as do many in grief, Paul eats out of cereal boxes, lets the laundry and dirty dishes pile up, and pursues his project with Lorelei. In this world, which is like our own but is not, there is a "famous case" of a French talking dog from the sixteenth century, followed by another famous case, in Paul's own time, of a criminal who altered the anatomy of dogs until he succeeded, we're told, in getting it to talk. It is a criminal case, with the mad doctor now jailed, the dog having testified in his own words. When Paul finally does encounter the dog, we will find that it is not clear at all that the dog can talk, putting the idea that "everybody heard it" back into proper context. As his sane department chair and colleague remarks, "whole courtrooms in Salem were convinced they'd seen witchcraft performed." It is this off the cuff remark that leads to the oddest and least successful aspect of the book, a shame, I think, because the author uses it to create a very plotted climax that feels out of place. (For those of you as sensitive as I, nothing that horrendous happens to Lorelei.) Paul meets up with the followers of the criminal who altered jaw after jaw of dogs, cruelly, to create his talking marvel. Paul has contacted the man in prison, and is properly horrified by the sketches the man sends him, yet goes, when invited, to what might be termed a hell's den of hobbyists, all of whom are pursuing the same gruesome practices, and who have kidnapped the famous talking dog, Dog J[ob ? he started with "a" we're told, and had worked his way through eight other dogs, "A" through "I", hacking and sawing in his apartment until he "succeeded"]. It is in this underground den of the Cerberus Society that Paul realizes his friend may be right. To add angst and horror to the tale, it turns out that Lorelei, who had turned up at Lexy's door as a puppy, bleeding from the neck, had escaped from this society's kennels, and after a predictable police raid, Paul returns home to find Lorelei gone. So the reader must wait as the plot moves toward Paul's discovery of the truth, incomplete, until Lorelei is found, not outwardly maimed, but with her voice box removed ---an unnecessary bit of horror and overdetermined symbolism--- a truth it will not require Lorelei's "voice" to solve, merely and instead, Paul's simple recognition of the nature of a loyal animal. The weakness is not that the book shifts its mythologies from biblical to Greco-Roman (that trick has been easily managed in many a book), but that this section's desire to drive home the monstrousness of the project, the crime against nature, if you will, of physically altering the dogs, does not really reflect anything in Paul's yearning or his methods (he imitates sounds, tried to get Lorelei to nose at picture cards, has a symbolic computer keyboard built), and except for the fact that every epic journey requires the hero to descend to the underworld (and Parkhurst has this in mind. Paul narrates toward the beginning: If I could, I would begin the way poets used to do.... I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with a skin like velvet pushed the wrong way."), these moments in the basement and the authorial decision to maim Lorelei, feel contrived, are contrived, as is the odd scene where Lexy climbs atop Paul in bed wearing the one death mask that parents of a deceased child had rejected: a cherubically happy face painted atop the outlines of her actual features in death. You want to hold up a hand and say, we know, we know. No need to harm the dog, to set the mask scene in New Orleans: the grotesque and its surreal quality don't heel well [thought about it: sorry, "heel" is the right word here] to elegy and the clean lines of parable, it doesn't make it more complex; it pulls the plot too far in an unnecessary direction. It is part of a parallel in the narrative where both Paul and Lexy (Paul after Lexy's death) have engaged in different kinds of magical thinking, a thinking of which each is disabused by the intrusion of reality (if Paul's trip to Hell can be termed that), but taking the knife to Lorelei's throat [the surgery is not described, O Dog Lovers], only grinds away at an awareness that has already permeated the whole text, and by this point in the narrative, Paul's conscious and intellectual self as well. I wondered, half aloud while reading, if Parkhurst had become nervous about momentum, and hence, a last minute, toward-the-end-of-novel dognapping. The novel recovers well enough at the end: we see that we, along with Paul, were staring right at some clues we could have deciphered, and the one remaining mystery to Paul (why Lexy fed Lorelei a whole steak on the day she fell) is, I'd guess, already clear to the reader. The story of how we never really know each other, innocent before the Edenic Fall (when, a philosopher named Vasil ---who exists only in the novel--- supposed animals lost their ability to speak), and how we do, self consciously, carnally, and imperfectly after, how the climb up the apple tree mirrors the attempt to restore that perfection by building a tower to heaven, is all beautifully and subtly drawn. The dogs of Babel, to follow out the metaphor, are at as much of a loss as their tower-building masters. It is only when Paul is able to think like a dog, outside of speech, that he is able to solve the final piece of the puzzle by understanding ---and experiencing--- the instincts of Lorelei. It is a beautifully and originally imagined piece of work, one I hope no one passes up because of its flaws. Billy Collins once wrote these lines to describe poetry:
Call it a field where the animals
who were forgotten by the ark
come to graze under the evening clouds.
In the end, the novel is Lorelei's field, her space under the apple tree; she, forgotten by the human arks that were supposed to keep her safe while they, if only for a moment, but with irrevocable consequences, pursued their own rescues. Lorelei, the silent dog in the evening of her life, who, as instinct would allow and demand, ate a tempting morsel, oblivious to the loss that would follow, but finally, in the end, by sheer force of life and that same instinct, by being only a dog, and not Eve, keeps her master from falling too, and returns him to himself, to her, once again on solid ground.

Steampunk in Progress

Raw notes instead of a post. From a 2008 New York Times article:

"...steampunk, a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines."

Steampunk Cat pictured here, is sold by Citrus Tree on Etsy. What's funny is that, in general, in its literary manifestation and in all of those blog sites where young men are wearing bowler hats and vests, steampunk is not an aesthetic that appeals to me ---though I like the cat a lot--- and I'd guess that if I had to name the quality that limits its appeal, it would be weightiness: the encumbering gravity of the diving helmet, the Victorian petticoat and boots, the frocks (not all steampunk aficionados are into the dress up end of this). In the article, Jake von Slatt, the proprietor of something called The SteamPunk Workshop, says that steampunk "is the intersection of technology and romance," but this doesn't quite do it, because the Romantic aesthetic and the steampunk mise-en-scène do not quite coincide. But the connection to the victorian era is obvious: HG Wells, Verne, the steam engine, in short, the age of industrial marvels, beasts of machines that snorted, clanged, and and changed the view of the landscape forever (dirigibles, trains, and the diving bell all had profound effects on how one could experience the landscape, and so, one's sense of existence). There is an old book, part of a PBS series, Shock of the New (now revised), that talks about this, but it is about modernism, the antithesis (at least on the surface) of the aesthetic of steampunk. Not to overstate the obvious, but steam is the crucial element here, bespeaking all manner of archetypes of the elemental (fire and water), the transformational (the evaporation of water into hot steam), breath made visibile (and so, the life force of human and machine is linked), obscurity and loss/being lost (fogged mirrors, engine rooms, factory floors, all full of steam pouring out everywhere, mmm... Toni Morrison would have a field day with this, given what she wrote in her Nobel Lecture on whiteness and the literary imagination. Note to self: think about this, seems very fruitful). And of course, the beasts, black against their white breath, the iron horses of the rails, grey dirgibles with flame in their bellies. Most of the reading I've done seems to claim that steampunk rests on one contrafactual: the internal combustion engine is never invented; everything else, though, is fair game. (But does this really mean that we'd all still be in hobnail boots ? What of the women of steampunk ? Back to the corset and bustle ?) The answer, over at a blog I found while pursuing these musings, Daily Steampunk , is, to my despair, yes, if you take the corset pictured here to be typical, as also the unfortunate term "steampunkettes." So I need to do some serious research, that is, for any of you twenty-somethings and below reading, from real databases not found via Google, sources from vetted journals and articles, and see what's being written on this. To my mind, "steampunkettes" not withstanding, this seems to be a very male place to play, very rigid, very heavy. Maybe this is not being fair to the second half of the compound, the "punk," which is often an autopilot signal for subversive or counter-cultural, but it seems there is a lot of reinscribing of norms here. This is not polished thinking at all; writing late again, too late to read the book I bought when I thought I'd have time to read (sigh). Finally reading The Dogs of Babel. Seven pages in.
PS I like the cat because it is not Victorian. In fact, it has the feel of Newark, NJ, when you fly in over all those flaming and smoking oil refineries at twilight. It has that feel, a different one, to my mind, than corsets and pocketwatches. Is anyone still with me ?

An Extremely Short Bedtime Story

...Once upon a time, we all walked five miles to school, uphill in the snow, dodging the velociraptors while reciting the names of state capitals...
At my place of employment, now known as Greenhouse City (because it has one, not because I have anything to do with it), a young woman of twenty listens to some of us (with hyperbolic references to mastodons roaming the earth) reminisce about typewriters, carbon paper, etc. Jokingly, I say, only two 'fonts:' pica and elite. Yes, chimes in another colleague, until the IBM selectric ball. Then we got rid of the return, too. She looks at us, suddenly very serious. You know, she says, I've never seen a typewriter. I mean, I have, you know, in the movies and stuff, but, not an actual real one. [Silence. We all require coffee before speech returns.]
Let's leave it at that. I cannot bear to repeat the conversation she has a bit later with someone else on this same ancient implement, when she learned that hitting a key used to make type strike ink and paper. Perhaps if she were into steampunk ?
In fact, no typewriter could be located within the building for a show and tell. I have one, though, at home: my father's Remington, green, in a hard case. Does anyone remember that aroma when a typewriter case is opened ? The must of ink, eraser dust, metal ? I also have some things to say about steampunk, but that's another post.

Photo of modified mac via http://bifsniff.com/technology/steampunk-brazil-computer-i-want-one; other examples can be seen at "The Seventeen Hottest Steampunk Computer Creations"
A good list of Steampunk Books can be found here. It all really started with Gibson & Sterling's The Difference Engine, but, right, another time, another post.

Take A Cup, Drink It Up

...and let your neighbors in, I think the children's rhyme goes. Tonight's koan: when is your neighbor not your neighbor ? Answer: When his house has disappeared from Google Earth.

John Stewart's Interview with a Vampire (Cheney, in absentia).
My feelings exactly. I also just wanted to move on from my silly night of anagrams. Much to do at work these days. All good, but more than humanly possible, it feels. I'll be working the weekend, too, it seems, so enjoy this clip for now.

Video downloaded from Raw Story.

Enamelled Fin Hop

That four hours of sleep thing is not good. It was a busy day at Greenhouse City; I could not get out of there when I had planned to be long gone, and can't say tonight has been very productive. I drank coffee, not espresso, but coffee, at the office, which I never do, and my cup of tea is going to toddle me off to bed in a minute, just fine. So somehow, I think via following links out of Crooked Timber (sidebar), I found a site of "Anagram Poetry" (all the poems have titles that are anagrams of the poets' names, absolutely hysterical). Who knew that TS Eliot was "Toilets ?" Okay, I guess if I had ever gone to the trouble, it would be obvious. but the imitation is of high quality, which makes it even funnier:

Toilets
by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.

To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.

We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.

The take on "The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock" is pitch perfect. WC Williams becomes "Islamic Owls," and so on. So, I wondered, what could I do with the title of this blog ? I am too tired to think for myself (or for anyone else for that matter), so I turned it over to the brain of hive mind, an anagram generator found here. Some results are nonsensical, but others, such as "Enamelled Fin Hop," have a poetic appeal. I left out the definite article for the first try, and some other favorites are: "Leafed Helm Pinon;" "Flanneled Pie Ohm;" "Headline Men Flop;" and "Heaped Felon Limn." I added "the" and asked for the first 100 results (55,556 found, it claims). With punctuation added, some are even funnier: "A defilement ! Help, Hon !;" and "A Helped Feline Month; along with "A Hinted Phoneme Fell," seemed catchy. Well, I told you this was a silly post.

Very Lazy, Very Late Night Post

I haven't even just added her to my blogroll yet, but Chiara Kael's blog, Coffee Cycle Chic, lines up three things of which I am dearly fond, and basically in the order that they occur in my life (it is iffy as to whether the third element is ever achieved, but it is striven for. Not in a Manolo Blahnik kind of way, more in a "to thine own sense be chic" sort of ethic). But I can linger over her blog, clicking links, and with its beautiful graphics and caffeine-imbued sensibility, it serves as a kind of virtual café, complete with posters (links) for good causes lining the walls. So I've swapped in the graphics from her blog header in lieu of any thoughtful content but by way of sincere introduction. I'm already dreaming of the coffee... I have to be up in four hours. All my fault. Coffee has been seen around here before. 'Nite.

This Will Be A Home Study Course

Via the Where Blog , comes this post, "Introducing the New Urbanism," which aims to provide a basic reading list introducing the concept. I've copied below the top five here directly from the post, all, I think, good reads, though I don't know number two at all, and am only vaguely acquainted with number five. "Urbanism," of course, is a very restrictive concept, and [yet ?] I find myself wondering how the ideas in these books might intersect with the ideas from places like Complete Streets, the burgeoning discussion on Carbon Trace of what one means by "bike culture," and the idea of the "1 Mile Solution," also found there. Cities and towns tend to get conflated in discussions of urbanism, new and old, and suburbs and exurbs become really, really annoying places that many theorists would seek to banish, connect, or reconstruct (so that they are cities or towns). But I digress a tad. Let's say that I'm waiting for the New Oppidism (see why it will never catch on ? Because the Latin word for town, oppidum, does not make a pretty word), as distinct from the NU. There is a very thoughtful secondary list in this post that includes some interesting and/or classic picks, such as Mumford's The Culture of Cities (1938) which opened up the conceptual framework for many other writers, and Will Self's oddity, Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place (2007). I'll be working my way through the secondary list for some time to come. Three other books came to mind, though only one of them has to do with urbanism qua urbs: A Pattern Language (1977), by Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein, a book that has had a growing influence on, among other things, small (not micro) house design (see Susanka's The Not So Big House); the children's book, out just last month, beautiful graphics (I cannot bring myself to say "graphic children's book"), My First Book of Urban Planning," by CJ Hughes; and, for extremely un-thought out reasons, what we call a gut feeling, DeLillo's Underworld, whose barren landscapes strewn with the refuse of human existence (Fresh Kills landfill and the airplane grave yard ---"The Boneyard" in Tuscon, AZ are prominent) and sly cuff, with "under," at the "sub" of suburbia ought to haunt any new urbanist. Only the second is "about" urbanism, but it would be fun to add them to the list. For those whose interest in vehicle graveyards has now been piqued, try this post on Mental Floss.

Here, finally, is the list from The Where Blog:

The Top 5

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961). At about 450 pages, “concise” is probably not the most apt description of this book. But, as this is the single best written, most accessible, most compelling book I’ve ever read about cities, I’m willing to forsake the concision criterion even in my first recommendation. If you want to know what can make cities pleasant, safe and interesting places to live, read this book. If you want to read one of the best non-fiction prose stylists of our time, read this book. It’s a classic, and deservedly so. As one Where reader put it: “It’s a great book for explaining why we care about all of this.”

2. The Option of Urbanism by Christopher Leinberger (2007). While not as fun to read as The Death and Life of Great American Cities or The Geography of Nowhere (see below), this slender volume briskly highlights difference between drivable sub-urban development and walkable urban development, and does a good job of explaining the benefits of walkable city neighborhoods. It’s good primer on the basics of density, zoning and the hidden subsidies fueling drivable sub-urban development.

3. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler (1993). This book is an exploration—and excoriation—of the rise of suburbia and sprawl. It also explains how the more traditional patterns and places of city life and country life are superior to the “geography of nowhere.” Accessible and ferocious.

4. Cities Back from the Edge by Roberta Gratz, with Norman Mintz (1998). According to a Where reader, this book is “in the spirit of Jacobs” and discusses “how existing cities can be improved with citizen participation in contrast to destructive master plans.” The book is filled with lots of specific ideas about how to improve downtown areas, all of them lavishly illustrated with real life examples from successful efforts in dozens of cities.

5. How Cities Work by Alex Marshall (2000). Squarely aimed at the lay person, this book seeks to discover what forces shape places and cities—and finds that one of the most powerful forces is political choices, particularly those having to do with transportation policy. A Where reader gave this recommendation: “It’s not comprehensive, of course, but it’s a good snack, possibly the kind that could interest a person in a larger meal.”

Image taken from the review of My First Book of Urban Planning, from which the NYTimes reprinted the image. The NYTimes review is linked to the title above.

Lazy Sunday Afternoon Blogging, II

Reading about nutrition, food, limited budgets and what is good for us. Isn't it the same with books ? I do not mean that physical hunger is a metaphor, or ought to be made one, but I was reading this post from Unlimited Magazine about The Canada Food Guide (to compare it to the infamous US pyramid, if you must know what I was doing while about the blogosphere). But the mass marketed, over processed overpriced "bad food" seems akin to the mass marketed, over processed, overpriced forms of entertainment we indulge in, including all of that cable and gaming, etc., when a good book, a really good book, will set you back much less. Overpriced junk vs. truly fulfilling nourishment, for body and for soul. Since this is a lazy Sunday afternoon entry, no conclusions or analysis are on offer. Let's just think about it. Here is the post from Unlimited, which is all about food and poverty, not books:

About a decade ago, while I was wandering in and out of the shops in Provence, I noticed that the really crappy foods – the sodas and candy – were markedly expensive. The “good” food – you know, the dark leafy vegetables and other organic matter that forms the girth of the food pyramid – were, well, dirt cheap.Back home in Canada the inverse was, and is, still true: bad food = cheap; good food = expensive. In Avignon, I found a perch near a carousel in the town square to people watch. I saw a man walk by, ripping the knob off a baguette. Someone else passed by talking on two cellphones at the same time Michael Pollan, a consummate food writer and a kind of agro-activist through journalism, has pointed out the skewed value North Americans put on food in the Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and countless articles for the New York Times Magazine. Charge more for the crappy food and less for the good stuff, the reasoning goes, and we’ll consume more of the good stuff. Kind of like with gas: high prices force us, more than environmental conscientiousness, to re-consider our consumption habits.The issue is more complex than this – subsidized farming, for starters – but you get the point.The flip side is the person who can’t afford to pay more for crappy food, let alone an organic chicken breast served with 100-mile asparagus and potatoes you grew yourself. This is where two friends, Tracy Hyatt and Jennifer Windsor, came up with a social experiment: With agflation shooting up like mortgage rates, the pair wanted to see if they could each eat for $80 a month. And eat healthy. Thus was born the Working Poor Diet, which raises funds for the Edmonton Food Bank.You can follow their hunger pains and mood swings online. There are rules, including no free food, including handouts from friends and family. The Canada Food Guide is gospel—though oatmeal, rice and tea from the Dollar Store have become staples and a bounty of bruised apples from Save on Foods were a bargain.

For comparison, here is the US Food Pyramid.

Lazy Sunday Blogging

Since today is literally short of time, I thought I'd play at the meme that has been going around the net, but that no one has seen fit to tag me with. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. And, I didn't realize until I signed in this morning that my last post was my hundredth. Considering how long I've had the blog, this is nothing to be proud of, but still, I'm glad I'd put some effort into that one. Numbers have an irrational hold on us, and somehow, a hundredth post sounds as if one ought to do something to suit the occasion. So I'm glad I wrote about Gertrude, cats, and the Gerbil News. Okay, the meme:
Here are the instructions.
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn’t make sense. NO CHEATING!
I am worried in advance. I have a lot of Christmas music loaded onto my ipod. I really fear the worst. But let's give meaningful randomness, or accidental meaningfulness, a whirl:

The results are below. Eh. Not as funny as the "______ needs" Google search that was going around. Then again, that "shuffle" algorithm is an odd one. None of my my recently added music appeared, such as my Miranda Lee Richards album. Numbers 11,12, and 15 are, I suppose, the funniest to me because they seem apt (11 and 12), or just amusing (15), and I'm really glad that the answers to 13 and 18 did not appear as the answer to 19 ("How will you die ?"). It also seems that everyone's blog has a different set of questions. I'm looking for the definitive ten or twenty questions. Anyone ? Now, I suppose I should turn these into a playlist ---I'm skipping the Christmas songs--- to see how it all sounds, but the hours are burning away today. Back to laundry, lunch, and a little less randomness.

1. How do you feel today ? Secret O'Life (James Taylor)
2. Will you get far in life ? Breakdown (Jack Johnson)
3. How do your friends see you ? Blue Christmas (Elvis) I knew it...
4. Where will you get married ? Hoy No Quiero (Julieta Venegas)
5. What is my best friend's theme song? Between the Bars (Elliot Smith)
6. If someone says, "Is this ok ?", you say: Winter Wonderland (Aimee Mann)
7. What would best describe your personality ? These are the Days (10,000 Maniacs)
8. What do you like in a girl/guy ? Empty Frame (Eno and Cale) Funny.
9. What is your life's purpose ? Reckoner (Radiohead) Ooh. Hits very close to home.
10. What is your motto ? I Wish I Felt Nothing (Wallflowers)
11. What do you think about often ? Relax, Enjoy Yourself (Randy Newman) True
12. What is your life story ? Eisenhower Blues (Elvis Costello) Also true !
13. What do you want to be when you grow up ? Fiery Crash (Andrew Bird) Ouch.
14. What do you think when you see a person you like ? Soul Searchin' (Solomon Burke)
15. What will they play at your funeral ? Feed the Tree (Belly) Hysterical. I'll put it in my will.
16. What is your biggest secret ? Got a Feelin' for Ya (Kelly Willis)
17. What do you think of your friends ? The Living (Natalie Merchant)
18 What's the worst that could happen ? Set Yourself On Fire (Stars) That's pretty bad !
19. How will you die ? Beachcombing (Mark Knopfler & Emmy Lou Harris)
20 What is the one thing you regret ? The First Noel (Bing Crosby) Fail.
21. What makes you laugh ? Say Yes (Elliot Smith)
22. What makes you cry ? You Got Something (JJ Cale)
23. Who is your secret admirer ? Reunion (Stars)
24. If you could go back in time, what would you change ? The Eyes of My Beholder (Lucy Kaplansky) Sounds deep. What does it mean ?
25. What hurts right now ? Into My Arms (Nick Cave) No, no, no.