Softly, as in an Evening Moonrise

Sir Degare in Translation

2010-03-04T13:21:00.001-05:00

Degare leaves the hermit to seek his parents. He rescues an Earl from a dragon (with blows of his staff) and then gets a bevy of beauties paraded in front of him as he tries to find the woman whose hands will fit his gloves.

He knelede adoun al so swithe,
And thonked the ermite of his live,
And swor he nolde stinte no stounde
Til he his kinrede hadde ifounde.
For in the lettre was thous iwrite,
That bi the gloven he sscholde iwite
Wich were his moder and who,
Yhif that sche livede tho,
For on hire honden hii wolde,
And on non other hii nolde.
Half the florines he gaf the hermite,
And halvendel he tok him mide,
And nam his leve an wolde go.
"Nai," seide the hermite, "schaltu no!
To seche thi ken mightou nowt dure
Withouten hors and god armure."
"Nai," quad he, "bi Hevene Kyng,
Ich wil have first another thing!"
He hew adoun, bothe gret and grim,
To beren in his hond with him,
A god sapling of an ok;
Whan he tharwith gaf a strok,
Ne wer he never so strong a man
Ne so gode armes hadde upon,
That he ne scholde falle to grounde;
Swich a bourdon to him he founde.
Tho thenne God he him bitawt,
And aither fram other wepyng rawt.
Child Degarre wente his wai
Thourgh the forest al that dai.
No man he ne herd, ne non he segh,
Til hit was non ipassed hegh;
Thanne he herde a noise kete
In o valai, an dintes grete.
Blive thider he gan to te:
What hit ware he wolde ise.
An Herl of the countré, stout and fers,
With a knight and four squiers,
Hadde ihonted a der other two,
And al here houndes weren ago.
Than was thar a dragon grim,
Ful of filth and of venim,
With wide throte and teth grete,
And wynges bitere with to bete.
As a lyoun he hadde fet,
And his tail was long and gret.
The smoke com of his nose awai
Ase fer out of a chimenai.
The knyght and squiers he had torent,
Man and hors to dethe chent.
The dragon the Erl assaile gan,
And he defended him as a man,
And stoutliche leid on with his swerd,
And stronge strokes on him gerd;
Ac alle his dentes ne greved him nowt:
His hide was hard so iren wrout.
Therl flei fram tre to tre -
Fein he wolde fram him be -
And the dragon him gan asail;
The doughti Erl in that batail
Ofsegh this child Degarre;
"Ha! help!" he seide, "par charité!"
The dragoun seth the child com;
He laft the Erl and to him nom
Blowinde and yeniend also
Als he him wolde swolewe tho.
Ac Degarre was ful strong;
He tok his bat, gret and long,
And in the forehefd he him batereth
That al the forehefd he tospatereth.
He fil adoun anon right,
And frapte his tail with gret might
Upon Degarres side,
That up-so-doun he gan to glide;
Ac he stert up ase a man
And with his bat leide upan,
And al tofrusst him ech a bon,
That he lai ded, stille as a ston.
Therl knelede adoun bilive
And thonked the child of his live,
And maked him with him gon
To his castel right anon,
And wel at hese he him made,
And proferd him al that he hade,
Rentes, tresor, an eke lond,
For to holden in his hond.
Thanne answerede Degarre,
"Lat come ferst bifor me
Thi levedi and other wimmen bold,
Maidenes and widues, yonge and olde,
And other damoiseles swete.
Yif mine gloven beth to hem mete
For to done upon here honde,
Thanne ich wil take thi londe;
And yif thai ben nowt so,
Iich wille take me leve and go."
Alle wimman were forht ibrowt
In wide cuntries and forth isowt:
Ech the gloven assaie bigan,
Ac non ne mighte don hem on.
He tok his gloven and up hem dede,
And nam his leve in that stede.
The Erl was gentil man of blod,
And gaf him a stede ful god
And noble armure, riche and fin,
When he wolde armen him therin,
And a palefrai to riden an,
And a knave to ben his man,
And yaf him a swerd bright,
And dubbed him ther to knyght,
And swor bi God Almighti
That he was better worthi
To usen hors and armes also
Than with his bat aboute to go

In gratitude he did kneel
And thanked the hermit for his weal,
Swearing to search far aground
Until his father and mother were found.
For in the letter was written thus
That by the gloves know he must
His mother's true identity.
If she were alive he would see
That her hands those gloves would fit,
And on none other's could they sit.
He gave the hermit half his wealth
The remainder he kept for his health
And took his leave with his lot.
"No," said the hermit, "you shall not!
Your quest for kin would go off course
Without good armor, without a horse."
"No," he replied, "by Heaven's King,
I'll start out with a simple thing!"
He cut down, gnarled and great
To carry as he sought his fate,
A good sapling of an oak;
With this weapon, such a stroke
He gave that even the strongest man
With good arms could not withstand
The blow and crumbled to the ground;
Such a pilgrim's staff he found.
Then the hermit blessed the boy
And he departed in sorrow, not joy.
Young Degare made his way
Through the forest all that day.
No one was present with him to commune,
Until the hour was well past noon;
Then he heard in a valley below
The awful noise of a great blow.
Toward the sound he rode eagerly:
Wondering what there was to see.
An earl of that land, aggressive and strong,
And the nobles who had ridden along,
Had hunted deer at some cost:
For all their hunting dogs were lost.
There stood a dragon most ugly
Filled with venom, a creature unholy,
Of wide throat and fangs so great,
His long tail was a fearsome trait.
Bitterly his wings did beat
As he trampled with lion's feet.
His nostrils blew smoke to the skies
As from a chimney fires rise.
The noblemen he had torn apart
Both men and horse felt death's dart.
The dragon began to attack the Earl
Who defended himself, and fought to hurl
Stiff strong strokes with his sword:
On dragon-hide, these were scored.
But every blow came to nought:
The dragon's skin was as iron wrought.
The Earl scrambled from tree to tree
Hoping that he could run free—
And that dragon challenged the mettle
Of the Earl in that battle.
All this young Degare did see;
He said, "I'll help, for charity!"
Seeing Degare's approach,
The dragon left the Earl to broach
Great yawns and a rumbling bellow
As if he would Degare swallow.
But Degare was so strong
That with his staff, great and long,
That monstrous forehead he battered:
And every forehead bone was shattered.
In an instant the dragon fell down
But by whipping his tail around
He struck with a blow so fleet,
That it swept Degare off his feet;
But Degare quickly rose again
And with his cudgel blows did rain
On the fiend, smashing each bone,
Till the dragon lay dead, still as stone.
On humble knees the Earl now gave
Thanks to him who had fought to save
His life. Degare followed this lord
Back to his castle for his reward.
The Earl made Degare his guest,
Offering him all he possessed,
Rents, treasure and even lands,
Were placed into Degare's hands.
To this answered Degare
"If you will, put on display
This land's ladies for me to behold
Maidens and widows, young and old,
And other noble damsels sweet.
If these gloves happen to meet
The lady whose hands they will fit
I'll take your lands and my quest quit;
But if an exact fit is not found
Then I'll leave and not stay around."
Before him were many women brought
From far-flung countries they were sought:
Each one tried the gloves to don
But none was able to put them on.
Retrieving the gloves, Degare
Prepared to continue on his way.
The Earl did what a nobleman should
And gave Degare a steed that was good
And noble armor, of rich design
Which Degare wore and looked fine,
And a palfrey for to ride
And a servant to take his side,
And gave to him a sword most bright,
And dubbing him made him a knight,
Swearing by Almighty God
That Degare should be a lord,
Worthy to employ arms and horse
Instead of using his staff's crude force.

Videos for College Admission

2010-02-22T17:45:00.000-05:00

So Tufts is now allowing applicants to supplement their applications with short YouTube videos. I watched most of these and they're pretty painful, though there were one or two clever ones. Too much song and dance to get into the school of one's choice or great alternative to standardized testing? Here are two of the better ones ... but more links (if you want to watch more shameless self-promotion) here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/22/education/tufts.html

Then there's that hilarious sequence in Legally Blonde where Elle Woods' admissions video for Harvard Law is assessed by a stuffy admissions committee (starts at 4:59):

More Sir Degare in Translation

2010-02-07T18:20:00.001-05:00

The hermit takes Degare to be fostered by his sister in the city for the more nurturing environment but takes him back after ten years to provide him ten years of solid grounding in unmarketable knowledge. Degare, in the meantime, has grown up into a comely young lad who is strong of arm. All is revealed to Degare about his past.

The heremite held up bothe his honde
An thonked God of al His sonde,
And bar that child in to his chapel,
And for joie he rong his bel.
He dede up the gloven and the tresour
And cristned the child with gret honour:
In the name of the Trinité,
He hit nemnede Degarre,
Degarre nowt elles ne is
But thing that not never what hit is,
Other thing that is neggh forlorn also;
Forthi the schild he nemnede thous tho.
The heremite that was holi of lif
Hadde a soster that was a wif;
A riche marchaunt of that countré
Hadde hire ispoused into that cité.
To hire that schild he sente tho
Bi his knave, and the silver also,
And bad here take gode hede
Hit to foster and to fede,
And yif God Almighti wolde
Ten yer his lif holde,
Ayen to him hi scholde hit wise:
He hit wolde tech of clergise.
The litel child Degarre
Was ibrout into that cité.
The wif and hire loverd ifere
Kept his ase hit here owen were.
Bi that hit was ten yer old,
Hit was a fair child and a bold,
Wel inorissched, god and hende;
Was non betere in al that ende.
He wende wel that the gode man
Had ben his fader that him wan,
And the wif his moder also,
And the hermite his unkel bo;
And whan the ten yer was ispent,
To the hermitage he was sent,
And he was glad him to se,
He was so feir and so fre.
He taughte him of clerkes lore
Other ten wynter other more;
And when he was of twenti yer,
Staleworth he was, of swich pouer
That ther ne wan man in that lond
That o breid him might astond.
Tho the hermite seth, withouten les,
Man for himself that he wes,
Staleworht to don ech werk,
And of his elde so god a clerk,
He tok him his florines and his gloves
That he had kept to hise bihoves.
Ac the ten pound of starlings
Were ispended in his fostrings.
He tok him the letter to rede,
And biheld al the dede.
"O leve hem, par charité,
Was this letter mad for me?"
Ye, bi oure Lord, us helpe sschal!
Thus hit was," and told him al.

Both his hands he did raise
The hermit, thanking God with praise,
Into the chapel bore the boy,
And rang the holy bells for joy.
Putting the gloves and treasure away,
He christened with child without delay:
In the name of the Three-in-One
"Degare" he named this son,
For "Degare," this name of his,
Means "One who knows not who he is"
Or "Something that was almost lost";
Thus, with this name the child was crossed.
A holy life the hermit led.
He had a sister who was wed
To a merchant and they did dwell
In a city where they lived quite well.
Shortly the child to her was sent
With the silver that was meant
To care for it. He told her there
To feed and raise the child with care,
And if God the child allowed
Ten years of life, the hermit vowed
That he himself the child would raise,
Instructing him in holy ways.
Brought into the city with care
Degare now grew up there.
The hermit's sister with her loved one
Brought him up as their own son.
By the time he was ten-years old,
He was a child fair and bold,
Courteous, kind, and nourished well;
The best that did in that region dwell.
He well believed, that his father
Was the merchant and his mother
The merchant's wife, the hermit too
He assumed to be his uncle true.
For ten years he with them sojourned,
Then to the hermit's house returned,
Who received the child with joy,
For fair and noble was the boy.
As ten more winters passed them by,
The hermit taught him doctrine high;
And when the boy reached twenty years
Stronger he was than all his peers,
Indeed, no one in all the land,
Against his blows could make a stand.
Then the hermit, the truth did speak
That the boy might his fortune seek:
For strong of arm and a sage
Scholar he was for his age.
The hermit returned the gloves and gold
That he had guarded in his household
Except for the sum of ten pounds sterling
Which had been spent on the fostering.
The letter he gave the boy to read
And thus he found out all, indeed.
"For the sake of charity,
Dear uncle, was this letter for me?"
"Yes, by our Lord, who helps us so!"
All he told so the boy would know.

Slow Progress on Degare

2010-01-29T22:16:00.002-05:00

The child is left at a hermit's door. The hermit finds the child.

The maiden tok the child here mide,
Stille awai in aven tide,
Alle the winteres longe night.
The weder was cler, the mone light;
Than warhth she war anon
Of an hermitage in a ston:
An holi man had ther his woniyng.
Thider she wente on heying,
An sette the cradel at his dore,
And durste abide no lengore,
And passede forth anon right.
Hom she com in that other night,
And fond the levedi al drupni,
Sore wepinde, and was sori,
And tolde hire al togeder ther
Hou she had iben and wher.
The hermite aros erliche tho,
And his knave was uppe also,
An seide ifere here matines,
And servede God and Hise seins.
The litel child thai herde crie,
And clepede after help on hie;
The holi man his dore undede,
And fond the cradel in the stede;
He tok up the clothes anon
And biheld the litel grom;
He tok the letter and radde wel sone
That tolde him that he scholde done.

The maiden took the child away
Stealing into the evening gray,
Long she journeyed through wintry night.
The weather turned with morning light
Then soon she was made aware
Of a hermit's house of stone and there
A holy man his dwelling made.
With great haste, the lad she laid
In his cradle at this door,
And staying not a moment more,
Toward home she took flight.
Arriving back the next night,
She found her mistress in spirits low,
Weeping and crying, filled with woe,
And told her all there was to share
Of how she had proceeded and where.
The hermit rose to morning's glow
And up with him his servant also,
Together, then, Matins they prayed:
To God and his saints, honor they made.
Then they heard a baby's yelp
The child, it seemed, cried for help.
The holy man unlocked the door
And found the cradle on the floor;
Stripping all the cloths away
He looked upon the boy that day.
The letter's instructions he carefully read
Taking note of all that was said.

Anthropomorphism

2010-01-28T10:41:00.002-05:00

So, in yesterday's lesson, we read three short articles from a reader put out by the Great Ape Project. My favorite of the three was Douglas Adams' piece on encounter a mountain gorilla. Apart from being the science-fiction writer that he was, Adams was also a keen activist for conservation, and his legacy is continued by his friend, the ever-present polymath, Stephen Fry.

I thought we had a decent discussion on the value and problems with anthropomorphism and that worked nicely with the way anthropomorphism is essentially a rhetorical strategy, one that shapes the world in our image through language. My favorite bit comes at the end of Adams's piece, when he re-thinks the encounter with the gorilla:

I began to see how patronising it was of us to presume to judge their intelligence, as if ours was any kind of standard by which to measure. I tried to imagine instead how he saw us but of course that's almost impossible to do, because the assumptions you end up making as you try to bridge the imaginative gap are, of course, your own,and the most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.... And then I pictured myself beside him festooned with the apparatus of my intelligence--my Gore-Tex caguole, my pen and paper, my autofocus matrix-metering Nikon F-4, and my inability to comprehend any of the life we had left behind us in the forest. But somewhere in the genetic history that we carry with us in every cell of our body was a deep connection with this creature, as inaccessible as last year's dreams, but like last year's dreams always invisibly and unfathomably present.

Degare is Born

2010-01-24T15:21:00.003-05:00

More Degare. The child is born and left to Fortune's whims.

On a dai, as hi wepende set,
On of hire maidenes hit underyet.
"Madame," she seide, "par charité,
Whi wepe ye now, telleth hit me."
"A! gentil maiden, kinde icoren,
Help me, other ich am forloren!
Ich have ever yete ben meke and milde:
Lo, now ich am with quike schilde!
Yif ani man hit underyete,
Men wolde sai bi sti and strete
That mi fader the King hit wan
And I ne was never aqueint with man!
And yif he hit himselve wite,
Swich sorewe schal to him smite
That never blithe schal he be,
For al his joie is in me,"
And tolde here al togeder ther
Hou hit was bigete and wher.
"Madame," quad the maide, "ne care thou nowt:
Stille awai hit sschal be browt.
No man schal wite in Godes riche
Whar hit bicometh, but thou and iche."
Her time come, she was unbounde,
And delivred al mid sounde;
A knaveschild ther was ibore:
Glad was the moder tharfore.
The maiden servede here at wille,
Wond that child in clothes stille,
And laid hit in a cradel anon,
And was al prest tharwith to gon.
Yhit is moder was him hold:
Four pound she tok of gold,
And ten of selver also;
Under his fote she laid hit tho, -
For swich thing hit mighte hove;
And seththen she tok a paire glove
That here lemman here sente of fairi londe,
That nolde on no manne honde,
Ne on child ne on womman yhe nolde,
But on hire selve wel yhe wolde.
Tho gloven she put under his hade,
And siththen a letter she wrot and made,
And knit hit with a selkene thred
Aboute his nekke wel god sped
That who hit founde sscholde iwite.
Than was in the lettre thous iwrite:
"Par charité, yif ani god man
This helples child finde can,
Lat cristen hit with prestes honde,
And bringgen hit to live in londe,
For hit is comen of gentil blod.
Helpeth hit with his owen god,
With tresor that under his fet lis;
And ten yer eld whan that he his,
Taketh him this ilke gloven two,
And biddeth him, wharevere he go,
That he ne lovie no womman in londe
But this gloves willen on hire honde;
For siker on honde nelle thai nere
But on his moder that him bere."

Upon a day as she sat weeping
One of her ladies, this perceiving,
Said, "For the sake of charity,
Why do you cry, please tell me?"
"Ah! Gentle maid, chosen one,
Help me or my life is done!
Ever I have been meek and mild:
But look, now I'm quick with child!
If this news to any man leaks,
Tongues will wag in the streets:
They'll say it's fathered by my father
For I've been close to no other!
And if my father this rumor hears,
He'll be wrecked by grief and tears
And happy again he'll never be,
For all his joy resides in me."
Thus she did her story trace,
How she got pregnant and in what place.
"Fear not, Madam," her lady did say,
"In secret the child will be brought away,
And no one else will have a clue
Of its origins, but me and you."
When her time had come around,
She delivered the child safe and sound;
A boy it was and at his birth
She was filled with joy and mirth.
The lady, who the secret kept,
In swaddling clothes, the child wrapped
And laid it in a cradle low,
Making ready at once to go.
Yet his mother, faithful to him,
Carefully placed under his limbs
Four pounds of gold, of silver ten,
She hid into the cradle then,
That it of aid might one day be;
A pair of gloves then took she
Which from Fairyland were sent,
By her lover and were meant
On no one else's hands to sit:
Her's alone would they fit.
These gloves she put under his head.
A letter she'd written she did thread
Around his neck with silken strands:
Thus she carried out her plans.
Whoever found the child would read
These lines with which she did plead:
"For charity's sake if you find
This helpless child, be of good mind
And have him christened by a priest,
And care for him ten years at least.
From noble blood he descends
So aid him at his own expense:
Under his feet there's silver and gold.
And when he is ten-years old,
Make sure to give him these gloves two
And tell him that wherever he's due
No single woman must he love
Unless her hands fit the glove;
In truth, these gloves may none wear,
Except the mother that him did bear."

Buzzards

2010-01-24T11:10:00.000-05:00

Continuing with the "Animal Encounters" section of the course, we're reading a longish article, "Buzzards" by Lee Zacharias. Zacharias actually used to teach at UNCG but she's retired now. Anyway, this is a wonderful piece: the most moving thing you'll read about ugly birds.

Thoughts on "Buzzards"

Quiz 5 mins

I was attracted to this piece because it employs "non-fiction" writing about buzzards in a very unique way, by placing these factual / experiential paragraphs that go into the entire scientific description of vultures as well as how these birds have been regarded by culture / human history, next to the author's meditations / remembrances of her deceased father.

Structurally – there are three "time" frames going on. 1. Zacharias is in an empty parking lot in the Everglades 2. There are the scientific / cultural / literary : encyclopedic references to the vultures 3. Memories of her father.

Overall interpretation: (5 mins)

Why does Zacharias do this? Why "pair" her exploration of vultures with father?

Stylistic analysis (15 mins)

Group discussion [Assign passage pairs]
Each passage contains a paragraph dealing with the vulture (from some perspective) and then with her father.
How are the passages on the vultures stylistically different from the parts describing the father? In terms of content, do they connect or not connect? Are they simply placed randomly next to each other or can you discern a pattern in the structure? Do they reinforce or challenge each other in terms of meaning?
As they share findings (15 min), introduce some of the vocabulary for discussion from the rhetorical reading: such as DICTION / SYNTAX / METAPHOR / SYMBOL. Read closely at the sentence level for examples.

Final paragraph (5 mins) – becoming-vulture: studying the vulture becomes a way of expressing herself / of engaging her feelings toward her father. [Transitional object]

Tell them that this piece should be a model for assignment one.

For next lesson: we will practice more 30 sec words.

Sir Degare in Drips

2010-01-21T22:15:00.000-05:00

A short passage that took a lot of time.

Thi knight passede as he cam.
Al wepende the swerd she nam,
And com hom sore sikend,
And fond here maidenes al slepend.
The swerd she hidde als she mighte,
And awaked hem in highte,
And doht hem to horse anon,
And gonne to ride everichon.
Thanne seghen hi ate last
Tweie squiers come prikend fast.
Fram the Kyng thai weren isent,
To white whider his doughter went.
Thai browt hire into the righte wai
And comen faire to the abbay,
And doth the servise in alle thingges,
Mani masse and riche offringes;
And whanne the servise was al idone
And ipassed over the none,
The Kyng to his castel gan ride;
His doughter rod bi his side.
And he yemeth his kyngdom overal
Stoutliche, as a god king sschal.
Ac whan ech man was glad an blithe,
His doughter siked an sorewed swithe;
Here wombe greted more and more;
Therwhile she mighte, se hidde here sore

The fairy knight then disappeared.
She headed back, much afeard,
With sword in hand, still she wept,
Returning to where her ladies slept.
The sword she hid as she thought best
And woke the ladies from their rest.
Each was ordered on her horse
And away they rode as a matter of course.
Then two squires they saw at last
Sent from the King, riding fast,
Whose charge it was to find out
His precious daughter's whereabouts.
Led by them, back rode she
Till safe she arrived at the abbey,
And there performed the required rites,
Offering masses into the night,
Rituals well-ordered from first to last.
After the appointed time had passed,
Back to the castle the King did ride
With his daughter by his side.
He ruled the land as any king should:
With boldness and courage his reign stood.
Although all men were blithe and glad,
This daughter sickened, was gravely sad,
As her womb grew day by day:
With heart most sore she hid away.

Thoughts on the Feast of Tongues

2010-01-21T16:43:00.002-05:00

Structure of the Fable – repetitive in two parts.
Seems to be a fool – but really ends up using the occasion to engineer a clever rhetorical discourse: Theme – appearance / reality / foolishness – deeper wisdom
So – using the strangeness of the tongues- Aesop – a slave – gains a "voice" in a community where he wouldn't otherwise have the power or right to speak. In this sense, the animal tongues, dead and prepared – afford him a voice.

The communion of the meal – a gathering that isn't as "formal" as a philosophical discourse or a scholarly gathering (like class). The meal symbolizes hospitality / communion / fellowship / the opportunity for Exantus to show his wealth – and thus, Exantus is able to dictate the terms of the feast – first order the "best meat" and then the "worst meat". Yet this gathering turns into a philosophical discourse- where questions of value "what is good" and who gets to evaluate – a slave in this case – comes to the fore. So food, is used, as the site for discussion about abstract values: and indeed, we often evaluate food and build systems of value around food.

Yet what of the animals? In all this speaking, the most prominent symbol – the disembodied tonges that are themselves mute symbols that are interpreted BY Aesop (to his own gain), that cannot speak because they are dead, that cannot be EXPECTED to speak because they are "animal" force their way into the tale. They are the strange centerpiece of a fable that features animal (parts) without giving the animal voice. And in this tale about speech, and how speech is itself slippery and creative, the silent animal tongues appear to be mute witnesses to the cleverness of human speech. In speaking about the tongues, does Aesop speak on behalf of animals? For it is HUMAN nobility and mischief that he speaks about. How can an animal tongue, sold as meat in the market represent the human tongue, which is, in Aesop's own speech so demonstrably different from the mute tongue that IS meat. Indeed, Aesop never "bites his tongue" while presenting these animal tongues for food (the scholars commend or condemn the tongues but do they eat it?) – the occasion to consume meat allows him to transform these animal tongues into metaphors for human tongues.

LOGOS – Aesop's "cleverness" – his "logic" on display.
ETHOS – the "fable" – does it show us a deeper moral truth? Does it refer to something culturally identifiable and significant?
PATHOS – do we find it in how Aesop the slave, becomes the protagonist? Or can we find it in the disembodied tongues of silent animals – does that move us?

Some post lesson thoughts: While most students seemed to understand the main thrust of the fable, very few were willing to venture thoughts about how animal tongues feature in complicated ways in the passage. I had to do some heavy-handed explication given this unwillingness, although my leading questions did, on a few occasions open up the text a little for the kids. It occurred to me that while we often speak about food from a "human" perspective - ie does this taste good etc, or if you're Guy Fieri, "This is money!" - the "Feast of Tongues" suggests how food can become the basis for philosophical speculation, without departing too far from the embodied presence of the dead animal parts in front of you. Anyway, while I'm not sure what the intellectual impact of all this was, they kids certainly were enthusiastic about the speaking activity.

Sir Degare Goes On

2010-01-19T16:28:00.003-05:00

Then a fairy knight, a rape, and a prophecy.

Than segh hi swich a sight:
Toward hire comen a knight,
Gentil, yong, and jolif man;
A robe of scarlet he hadde upon;
His visage was feir, his bodi ech weies;
Of countenaunce right curteis;
Wel farende legges, fot, and honde:
Ther nas non in al the Kynges londe
More apert man than was he.
"Damaisele, welcome mote thou be!
Be thou afered of none wihghte:
Iich am comen here a fairi knyghte;
Mi kynde is armes for to were,
On horse to ride with scheld and spere;
Forthi afered be thou nowt:
I ne have nowt but mi swerd ibrout.
Iich have iloved the mani a yer,
And now we beth us selve her,
Thou best mi lemman ar thou go,
Wether the liketh wel or wo."
Tho nothing ne coude do she
But wep and criede and wolde fle;
And he anon gan hire at holde,
And dide his wille, what he wolde.
He binam hire here maidenhod,
And seththen up toforen hire stod.
"Lemman," he seide, "gent and fre,
Mid schilde I wot that thou schalt be;
Siker ich wot hit worht a knave;
Forthi mi swerd thou sschalt have,
And whenne that he is of elde
That he mai himself biwelde,
Tak him the swerd, and bidde him fonde
To sechen his fader in eche londe.
The swerd his god and avenaunt:
Lo, as I faugt with a geaunt,
I brak the point in his hed;
And siththen, when that he was ded,
I tok hit out and have hit er,
Redi in min aumener.
Yit paraventure time bith
That mi sone mete me with:
Be mi swerd I mai him kenne.
Have god dai! I mot gon henne."

Then she saw such a sight:
Coming toward her was a knight,
A young man, noble and comely;
A scarlet robe upon his body;
Fair were his form and face;
He appeared with such charm and grace;
With well-shaped legs, feet and hands:
There was no other in the King's lands
More attractive than was he.
"Damsel, welcome you must be!
Be not afraid of any of us:
As a fairy knight, I've come thus:
It's in my nature with arms to appear
To ride a horse with shield and spear.
Therefore, be you not afraid
No weapon have I but sword displayed.
I have loved you many a year
And now alone I find you here,
We will make love before you go,
Whether it brings you joy or woe."
Then, nothing could she have done
But weep and scream and try to run;
Her body, at once, he began to seize,
And did his will just as he pleased.
Thus he snatched her of maidenhood,
And afterwards above her stood.
"Beloved," he said, "gentle and mild,
I know that you will be with child;
Indeed, you will give birth to a boy;
So take my sword in your employ.
When he's all grown and has the might
To wield it: Give it as his right,
So that he with sword in hand
May seek his father in every land.
The sword is good and well-wrought
Once, when I a giant fought,
I broke the point in his head;
And later, after he was dead,
I took it out—and so I vouch—
I have it here in my pouch.
Perhaps in the future there will be
A moment when my son meets me:
By my sword, him I'll know.
Have a good day! I now must go."

More Degare

2010-01-18T20:52:00.000-05:00

Here's more from Sir Degare, bringing us up to line 88:

That ryche Kynge every yere wolde
A solempne feste make and holde
On hys wyvys mynnyng day,
That was beryed in an abbay
In a foreste there besyde.
With grete meyné he wolde ryde,
Hire dirige do, and masse bothe,
Poure men fede, and naked clothe,
Offring brenge, gret plenté,
And fede the covent with gret daynté.
Toward the abbai als he com ride,
And mani knyghtes bi his side,
His doughter also bi him rod.
Amidde the forest hii abod.
Here chaumberleyn she clepede hire to
And other dammaiseles two
And seide that hii moste alighte
To don here nedes and hire righte;
Thai alight adoun alle thre,
Tweie damaiseles and ssche,
And longe while ther abiden,
Til al the folk was forht iriden.
Thai wolden up and after wolde,
And couthen nowt here way holde.
The wode was rough and thikke, iwis,
And thai token the wai amys.
Thai moste souht and riden west
Into the thikke of the forest.
Into a launde hii ben icome,
And habbeth wel undernome
That thai were amis igon.
Thai light adoun everichon
And cleped and criede al ifere,
Ac no man aright hem ihere.
Thai nist what hem was best to don;
The weder was hot bifor the non;
Hii leien hem doun upon a grene,
Under a chastein tre, ich wene,
And fillen aslepe everichone
Bote the damaisele alone.
She wente aboute and gaderede floures,
And herknede song of wilde foules.
So fer in the launde she goht, iwis,
That she ne wot nevere whare se is.
To hire maidenes she wolde anon.
Ac hi ne wiste never wat wei to gon.
Whenne hi wende best to hem terne,
Aweiward than hi goth wel yerne.
"Allas!" hi seide, "that I was boren!
Nou ich wot ich am forloren!
Wilde bestes me willeth togrinde
Or ani man me sschulle finde!

Every year the wealthy King
Would hold a ritual gathering,
To remember his wife's loss
Who buried in an abbey was
That stood by a forest side.
With a great host he would ride,
To sing dirges and masses both,
Poor men to feed, the naked to clothe,
Offerings were brought in great store,
And monks were endowed with food and more.
Toward the abbey he did ride
With many knights by his side,
His daughter also with him rode:
They made the forest their abode.
Then to her ladies the maiden cried
And ordered that they there abide.
For to answer nature's call,
She the journey had to stall.
From her horse alighted she,
With two damsels for company,
She dallied there far too long
For forth had ridden all the throng.
They would have up and followed so
But did not know which way to go.
Indeed, the wood was rough and thick
And every path seemed to trick
They headed south instead of west:
And in upon them the trees pressed.
Into a land now they crossed
Knowing well the way was lost.
From their steeds they came down
And began to cry on strange ground
Wailing together, they shouted out,
But their cries brought none about.
Since it was hot before midday;
Upon the green, down they lay
In the shade of a chestnut tree
For they knew not what was to be.
Both ladies in waiting fell asleep,
Leaving their mistress the watch to keep.
This lady went gathering flowers
Listening to birds sing for hours
So far from them wandered she
That she got lost eventually.
For her maids she did yearn
But did not know how to return.
A return she hoped to trace and tread
But farther off she wandered instead
"Alas!" she said, "that I was born!
Now I know I am forlorn!
Beastly teeth my bones will grind
Before any man should me find!"

Translating Degare

2010-01-18T10:20:00.007-05:00

So, I meant to work on Sir Degare as one of the three romances that I'll talk about in a book chapter (which I'm adding to the thesis in lieu of my Malory chapter). But I got caught up with the possibility of teaching the poem in the future and not being able to find a modernized version of it. So, I've set out to modernize the romance, with a lot of help from the glosses in the TEAMS text edition, the MED, and with inspiration from Nevill Coghill.

Lysteneth, lordinges, gente and fre,
Ich wille you telle of Sire Degarre:
Knightes that were sometyme in londe
Ferli fele wolde fonde
And sechen aventures bi night and dai,
Hou thai mighte here strengthe asai;
So dede a knyght, Sire Degarree:
Ich wille you telle wat man was he.
In Litel Bretaygne was a kyng
Of gret poer in all thing,
Stif in armes under sscheld,
And mochel idouted in the feld.
Ther nas no man, verraiment,
That mighte in werre ne in tornament,
Ne in justes for no thing,
Him out of his sadel bring,
Ne out of his stirop bringe his fot,
So strong he was of bon and blod.
This Kyng he hadde none hair
But a maidenchild, fre and fair;
Here gentiresse and here beauté
Was moche renound in ich countré.
This maiden he loved als his lif,
Of hire was ded the Quene his wif:
In travailing here lif she les.
And tho the maiden of age wes
Kynges sones to him speke,
Emperours and Dukes eke,
To haven his doughter in mariage,
For love of here heritage;
Ac the Kyng answered ever
That no man sschal here halden ever
But yif he mai in turneying
Him out of his sadel bring,
And maken him lesen hise stiropes bayne.
Many assayed and myght not gayne.

Listen, Lords, noble and free,
As I tell of Sir Degare:
Once there were knights in the land
Great numbers were on hand
Who sought adventure by day and night,
In order that they should prove their might;
And this too was Sir Degare's cause:
I now will tell what man he was.
In Brittany there was a king
Who wielded power over everything
Staunchly he carried sword and shield
And many feared him in the field.
Truly, in battle, or tournament,
In jousts arranged for amusement
There was no one, who had the mettle,
To move him an inch in his saddle,
Or fling him down from mount to mud,
So strong he was of bone and blood.
This King, he was without heir
Except for a maid, noble and fair:
Her gentleness and great beauty
Were famed throughout each country.
This daughter he loved as his own life:
In bearing her, the Queen his wife
Had, in birth pangs, her life lost.
And when the maid her childhood crossed
Royal sons let him know,
Emperors too and Dukes also,
That they desired her to wed:
For her inheritance they were mad.
To these suits the King would reply
That no man should with his daughter lie
Unless he might in a joust
Himself from his saddle oust,
And from the stirrups loosen his feet:
Many tried and left in defeat.

More if I make progress this term!

Speaking of Tongues

2010-01-16T09:39:00.001-05:00

In the fluctuating world of adjunct teaching, I may get a class cut in the Spring semester. Classes start on Tuesday and I'll only know on Monday whether or not the class is on. Of course, this really is no big deal as I'm teaching several sections of the class, so it's not as if I've spent the past months prepping in vain. But in lieu of that class, here begins the blog version of "Arguing with Animals."

I decided to begin the first lesson (after laying out the syllabus in the first first lesson) of my Animals course with this little excerpt. It's a (free) translation of a late fifteenth C. English "Life of Aesop" that was printed by Thomas Caxton. It's about Aesop being smart alecky, serving tongues when his master asks for him to buy the "best" meat and cleverly explaining why, and then serving tongues (again) when his master tells him to go out for the worst meat, and justifying himself. I came across this piece during a medieval retreat where this passage was explicated in brilliant terms by Peter Travis. It inspired me to see whether freshmen would have interesting things to say about this odd little fable that demonstrates how philosophical argument and the embodiedness of meat come together in a most unexpected way.

Arguing with Animals

2010-01-14T09:24:00.001-05:00

I'm teaching a second level composition class this semester and I've designed the course to focus on animals in rhetoric. It's a speaking intensive class (which means students get to practice speaking ... a lot) so I thought it'd be interesting to call it: "Arguing with Animals." Over the next semester, I intend to post here about the texts and lessons, since teaching these courses are such all-consuming endeavors. I've scanned .pdf copies of most of the texts and I'll put links to copies: people who want to read along and comment, are most welcome to do so.

Here's my course description:

"Animals utter different voices; none can speak—for this is the characteristic of man, for all that have a language have a voice, but not all that have a voice have also a language." (Aristotle, The History of Animals)

This speaking-intensive composition course focuses on animals and "animal-issues." Over the course of the semester, we will read diverse texts that feature animals in a range of rhetorical contexts. The first section of the course, "Animal Encounters," invites you to think about how various authors use language to describe encounters with all manner of non-human animal life. Next, in "Animal Rights," we will examine how rhetoric has been used to petition on behalf of and against animal welfare. The third section of the course, "Topical Animals," will allow us to practice using animals in argument in a series of debates. Finally, we will think about how animal depictions have often been used to govern the boundaries of what we call "the Human." Through informal speaking activities, debates, formal presentations, and writing projects, we will speak and write about what it means to interpret animal voice and silence through human language.

New Light

2010-01-09T03:49:00.007-05:00

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden. (Louis MacNeice)

She glitters in the light. Half-awake, almost freed from the clasp of forgotten dreams, I catch a moment of beauty: streaks of gold, copper, pale-brown, and off-white fuse in an illuminated tapestry woven by the morning sun. Lit and shadowed, she is a cubist matrix of uneven shapes, the softness of her form broken in an uneven jigsaw. The light probes her from sleep. She rises unsteadily from the warm cushion, stretching out into the new day before padding from her bed and clattering off on the hardwood floor. I try to drift back to sleep, hoping for comforting dreams that I'll recall and narrate in detail, but her noises intrude. Toenails strike the floor, sharp short staccatos as she circles the room. Then the low whimpers and whines begin; she noses me. She wants to be let out. She needs to pee.

When Sourdough was a puppy, our wakings were rigidly routine. Then she slept, crated, in the kitchen of our student-slum apartment and the first thing I'd do in the morning would be to leash her and take her down two-flights of stairs into the Lansing cold to pee. Half-awake, we'd crawl back up and I'd put on the coffee. Then, for about fifteen minutes, we'd do drills: basic obedience commands rewarded with rich bits of dehydrated liver and compacted meat, a sequence of maneuvers that culminated in long "sit-stay" exercises. I spoke an abbreviated dialect of "obedience"—single words punctuated by imprecise hand gestures—and she replied with fluid movements. We repeated the exchanges ad nauseum, as inanely as one repeats niceties in bleary-eyed early morning conversation. Filled with coffee and the hope of a common grammar, we'd then take a mile-long walk, the first of three we took daily. Back in the apartment, she'd settle in after a bowlful of kibble as I'd start working on the dissertation: she would sniff around the apartment, bounce in and out of her crate, and usually end up curling up at my feet.

In the loneliness of long days without human contact, as I wrote an obscure monument to psychoanalysis and medieval romance, Sourdough was a constant companion. With Edna away at MSU most of the day, and us away from New York, even further away from Singapore, my only communion with human life was electronic: the unfathomable mysteries of computer mediated communication, masked by the façade of humanizing interfaces—Facebook, gmail, blogs—were my link to the world. But the desire for another world—for the silent warmth of touch, for speechless breathing, and the quiet murmur of a beating heart—bound by the same physical space persisted. Only Sourdough kept this world a constant reality. We shared space and the contact between with fur and skin, has produced a bond between us. In Corporal Compassion, Ralph Acompora describes "symphysis," the "sense of sharing with somebody else a somaesthetic nexus experienced through a direct or systemic (inter)relationship," as a term for sympathy of a "more densely physical orientation." Snared by with troublesome words, untangling difficult meanings and attempting to ground the abstractions of improbable connections in concrete prose, I found a much-needed world in the symphysical throbbing of muscular life at my feet.

Research and writing is an isolating, hermetical activity with which I hide from the world. The gregarious confidence of sharing ideas, of speaking vague premonition into sharp insight has always been absent in my experience of exploring this world of words. Shyness, insecurity, fear of judgment and embarrassment knot together, paralyzing when the occasion to speak about ideas arises. This has occurred several times in my fledgling (but already floundering) academic career. I've found myself blanking out during my Oral exams ("I'm sorry, I can't go on"), caught tongue-tied in an academic retreat ("can't think on my feet"), snatching at quick-receding thoughts when unexpected questions arise on panels ("another faux pas").

Words, however, come easily with Sourdough. Speaking to myself on our walks, mostly under my breath but quite often out loud, I mutter to the golden retriever pacing by my side. To my uncomprehending audience of one, I am relaxed enough to extemporize ideas and review arguments. And when inter-species tension arises from the impossibility of speech, dog speechlessness is more comforting. Just a slight tilt of my head to the side, and a careful glance at Sourdough, and all is well again in the world. Faced with belligerent questions during a conference talk, I imagine I am becoming-dog by holding my head in a side tilt and hope that the same primal instinct that drives intellectual aggression will be defused by an even more ancient bodily response.

I lie awake at night, after having to visit the bathroom, thinking about the prospect of joblessness with an English PhD. Unable to go back to sleep, I grasp at desperate scenarios: being unemployed, another year adjuncting, teaching middle-school in Greensboro, returning to what we left behind in Singapore. Sometimes, I sit at my computer and type out non-academic sentences such as these, hoping to find another way into the world. And when I do sneak back under the covers, it is Sourdough's heavy breathing and occasional gurgles that lull me, finally, back to sleep and uncertain dreams.

But there are certainties that come with the morning: the pattering of paws on hardwood floor and the hope for a glimpse of beauty glittering in new light.

Going Behind the Scenes

2010-01-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

We watched Me and Orson Welles yesterday and I enjoyed it thoroughly (Yes, there's a High School Musical connection in Zac Efron and there were giggling teenage girls in the row behind us who were probably there for Zac: but our desire for Shakespeare and Orson Welles works through circuitous routes, so ...). Anyone who has spent some time with Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or sat through Orson Welles' cinematic work (both as director and actor) would appreciate this film, because it examines how staging Shakespeare as an anti-Fascist political tract was really revolutionary in the 1930s, how Welles' megalomania often overshadowed his art, and how his stubbornness drove his creative vision.

It led me to think about some things that I've watched recently and how they deploy the "movie about the play" trope quite differently. My big generalization: More recent representations of a "behind the scenes" sensibility are more willing to think about the creative process as fraught with risks that place the production in some kind of jeopardy whereas older films about the "show biz" tend to keep the creative process in the sphere of rarefied perfection.

So, some of the things that I've been watching (Me and Orson Welles, Nine, A Midwinter's Tale, Slings and Arrows, and if one thinks about a sports event as a kind of orchestrated performance, Invictus) use our fascination with the "behind-the-scenes" production of a film / play to create the suspense and tension. With numerous hiccups in the production process, the question "Will the play go on?" lingers over these films.

On the other hand, there are the Fred Astair-Ginger Rodgers films that we've been watching. We've watched three so far -- Top Hat, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. We started watching them because we were intrigued with Astair's dance virtuosity and the original dramatic contexts of songs that have become staples in this household. But a constant in each of these films is Fred Astair's role as a performer, usually (and predictably) as a talented singer-dancer who stars in some Broadway / West End extravaganza. The song and dance numbers that are "staged" within the film thus sit awkwardly as show-pieces that have little impact on the plot (much like how "feature artist" numbers in Bollywood films work). Unlike the newer movies that dramatize the creative process as fraught with anxiety (will the show go on?) and tension (conflicts between directors-admin / actors-directors / actors-other actors), Astair's movies always show him gliding through his role as a performer; instead, the dramatic tensions lie in comedic complications that arise outside the creative process.

[On another note: My love affair with "Cheek to Cheek" has another filmic connection: that wonderful scene in the English Patient where the denizens of the villa take the dying, stretchered Count Almasy out for a romp around the house and into the rain ... can't find a quick vid of it though ... ]

So, having made the observation, I recognize that I don't really have an explanation for this difference. I guess historical distance allows movies about productions to be more cynical and savvy about the creative process. Perhaps societies that are post-industrial (and thus somewhat divorced from the processes of "making") are more interested in the psychic dramas that haunt the making of films and that this is best presented by exploring what can go wrong in the production process. Or, as Edna suggests, no longer is it taboo in valorize the angst involved in the creativity in an "everyone needs a shrink" culture. Surely there are also socio-political realities that influence this mode of fictionalizing the creative process: though I'm too ill-informed to even suggest these. At any rate, the 1952 musical, "Singing in the Rain" is now something that I've got to watch (apart from catching short segments on TV, it's never held my attention) as it's about movie making and promises to be more cynical than the Astair films.

Movie Binge

2009-12-30T10:51:00.003-05:00

Edna and I have been going to the movies quite a lot. Since the 23rd, we've gone to the cinemas and watched four films--Sherlock Holmes, An Education, It's Complicated, and Nine--which is pretty heavy movie watching traffic for us since we also watch stuff on DVD at home (which involved two Fred Astair films, The Name of the Rose, The Holiday - more Edna than me -, Purab Aur Pacham (me) and some episodes of The Gilmore Girls).

1. Sherlock Holmes: I really liked the gray gray landscape and the grandiose cinematography. The plot was terrible (when we got home I promptly insisted that we watch The Name of the Rose because it's so much better as a "mystery" movie even if that's the least of its concerns). Showing Holmes' mental processes in slow-mo before he acts was a nice touch but then re-playing everything (perfectly) in "real time" after encapsulated how predictable this movie is.

2. It's Complicated. We actually tried to watch this on Sunday but it was sold out. I can't imagine the hordes of teenage girls (yes, they were with their parents, but still ...) wanting to watch this. I didn't even really want to watch it. Still, when we returned on Monday, there was a sizeable crowd and lots of people were really enjoying themselves laughing at the romantic knots that old people tie themselves into. I suppose the fantasy about getting back with one's ex (especially around the Holiday season) after the kids have grown up is pretty powerful.

3. Nine. Because It's Complicated was sold out on Sunday, we watched Nine, which I really wanted to see anyway since I like Fellini films. I thought that the musical about the paralyzing, neurotic creative process (or elegant procrastination) was very nicely done. I have a thing for films where nothing much happens and Nine certainly fit the bill. I think the audience didn't really like it. A lady sitting to our right left during a Penelope Cruz number, never to return. Maybe watching voluptuous women touching themselves in time to music isn't something you're supposed to do on a Sunday in the South.
Still, I appreciated the whole meta-cinematic feel of Nine, especially how the "set" that gets taken down at the end without having actually been used to make a film IS the space where every musical number (save one) happens. It's just that kind of momentary recognition in a film that gestures to its status as a clever construct that I enjoy.

Fantasizing the A-levels

2009-12-26T09:30:00.003-05:00

Having taught ill-prepared college freshmen this semester, I've been thinking a bit about how the A-levels were possibly the hardest and most stressful exams that I've ever had to do. Even though I took them with almost no pressure to do well (I was headed for NUS to do an Arts degree: four Cs would have sufficed; though, in accordance to the grim and deterministic laws of mugging, I ended up with much better grades), the sheer scope and intensity of the thing was quite staggering.

So it was with much interest that I watched An Education this week, where the A-level year of our protagonist, Jenny, played by a be-witching Carey Mulligan, takes an interesting turn as she becomes involved in a romantic tryst with a much older man. Like many a smart, independent minded female protagonist before her, she offers English as an A-level subject (with aspirations to read English at Oxford) and there are nice references to Jane Eyre in the film. A week before, as I struggled with final grading, A.S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden was a constant companion. That book also features a precocious 17-year-old on the cusp of an Oxbridge career. Frederica Potter, whose devastating intellect (and grating attempts to demonstrate it) is only matched by her adventurous cavorting with older men ends the book losing her virginity (as does Jenny) under the most unromantic of circumstances.

I'm wondering how the A-level year, when it isn't filled with anxious mugging, does represent a way into adulthood that "senior year" in an American High School doesn't. Are there American films and books that don't infantilize 12th graders and deal with girls on the cusp of becoming women at the same level of sophistication as An Education and The Virgin in the Garden? I've rehearsed a version of this argument on these pages (in a desperate attempt to rationalize my fascination with the High School Musical franchise) but the characters of Twilight series, Fast-times at Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused, and the Gilmore Girls, and even Dead Poets' Society don't come close to capturing the aspiring sophistication of Jenny and Frederica.

Given that both works are set in the 50s and 60s, and that both Jenny and Frederica contemplate NOT going on to University--one to be married and the other with hopes of pursuing a career on the stage--I suppose the A-levels is much more the symbol of a final academic hurdle than senior year in High school will ever be. I'm sure there are interesting literary and filmic representations of precocious 12th graders but I think that given the cultural imaginary, "senior year" in High School can't ever take on the symbolic weight of the momentousness that is enshrined in taking the A-levels.

The Sidneys

2009-12-26T08:43:00.003-05:00

David Brooks's pick of the best in long form journalism for 2009. Definitely much more "serious" in subject matter than what has appeared in previous years, but I guess I'll give them a crack.

Keeping Warm

2009-12-25T08:38:00.002-05:00

You'd think that having transplanted to the South from the perpetual cold of Michigan, we'd be in much better shape. We got our gas bill yesterday -- $ 168 -- it said. All that for keeping this house only moderately comfortable (at 60 F). Shocked into penury, I've turned down the thermo to 50 F. We never kept our apartment in Lansing much higher than 50 F, and I guess we thought the warmer weather here would afford us the luxury of ten more degrees of warmth. Ah well, it's going to be a cold Jan and Feb. At least I don't have to chip ice off the windows.
So it's out with my trusty indoor gloves (with cutaway fingers for typing and reading) and my gigantic 18-year-old Canterbury fleece that has was first worn when the USSR was still the USSR and my beanie hat. And of course, my indoor boots: the hardwood floor's nice but it chills the toes. All this for indoor warmth in a cold house.

So

2009-12-24T11:11:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting the North Carolinian sun on a cold winter's morning, working on an essay about horses, exchange, and being human. Just so that I make another post to this blog before the year is out - it has been a dismal year for blogging, I write these lines.

Thesis!

2009-02-26T14:33:00.006-05:00

I've just sent off my thesis to my readers, after an exhausting re-read and revision process. Just for fun, here are .pdfs of the thing. For the faint of heart, here's the Contents page, which should give a good idea of what the thing is about. For the quick low-down, here's an eleven page introduction. And of course, here's the monster - all 455 pages of it!

72 Hours in San Francisco

2009-01-01T15:57:00.005-05:00

Dec 27
Noon. Coming into the city after flying across two thousand miles and three time zones, I think about leaving winter behind in all that landscape that has passed below me. 23-F wasn't a particularly comfortable window seat and I had to go to the loo three times during the flight, which might have irritated the big white men who were in my row (though they ended up taking my toilet going as opportunities to go themselves).
This was definitely the MLA flight. No one was ready "Home and Living" or "Vogue," and there was a big party of academics who were obviously from the same school (U of M?). Already getting nervous about the interviews because there are also some really smart (and confident) looking people who are obviously grad students on the job search as well.

Noon plus. The BART is fantastic. It's clear, clean, carpeted and quick. My phone rings and it's the chair of one of the departments I'm interviewing with. It's noisy on the train but I scramble for a pen and paper because I don't want to have to call her back. The interview location has changed to another hotel.

25 minutes later. Getting off a Powell street and emerging I feel as if I've been here before. This is the touristy heart of the city and I guess the deja vu might be connected to how I used to come out on 34th street and Broadway and get caught in a web of tourists. I wish I were on holiday.

15 minutes later. I'm puffing up Mason street with two bags. This is one steep hill. I later learn that it's THE steep hill of the city. This is probably why the hotel I'm staying at is the cheapest of the conference hotels even though it's really swanky. And this probably explains why one of the interview locations got changed—the committee members probably didn't want to have to make this climb.

5 minutes more. I check in and the guy runs through the motions of telling me about the award winning dining facilities and making reservations for Sunday Brunch because the hotel's full up. I just nod and perspire. I get up into the room and become the ultimate suaku. Four years of staying in cheap hotels has primed me to be shocked by the opulence of the room. The minibar (and food drawer) are stocked with really interesting snacks and a walk-in closet that's larger than the one at home. I get a great view, being perched on Nob Hill, of the Bay. I immediately recognize the fact that I'm also overlooking Chinatown. But it's really expensive to be here. Internet service is 13.95 a day and even local calls are charged on the phone. I determine to hunt for free Internet in the city.

2 plus. I call Steve who has just checked into the city and has kindly agreed to meet with me to talk about tomorrow's interviews. I take a quick shower (the long luxurious bath will have to wait) and head back down Mason street and bump into Steven and Glenn at an intersection. Their hotel room isn't ready, so we sit in an alcove in the lobby. Steve is really great and reassuring about the interviews. He gives specific tips about what to expect and primes me to think of myself as competent and smart. Glenn chimes too, and I leave feeling a little less nervous and a little more hopeful.

3 plus. The New Shoes Bought for the Interview are beginning to take their toil on my feet. My right foot's got a bad abrasion and there's a blood stain on brown leather. Walgreens and bandages help. I walk back up the hill and decide that I should make a go at getting something to eat in Chinatown. Not having Internet access is a bummer because I don't really know where to look for good eats. I walk down Stockton street looking for a non-dim sum place that doesn't have any ang mohs eating in it. From across the street I spot a BBQ noodle shop and head across. It doesn't look good but the shop next door is promising. It's pseudo vietnamese-chinese and I don't mind a nice beef pho. The shop has the ubiquitous "Singapore Noodles" (which I understand is an Australian invention) but it also has great stuff like a stir-fried bitter gourd dish. I end up with a big bowl of pho with tripe, beef balls, and meat, which is perfect. They have a flat screen monitor that runs pictures of the food on the menu and that keeps me company.

The rest of the day and night. I stay in the hotel room doing more prep, taking a long shower, and trying not to get too nervous. I'm tempted to explore the city a bit or attend a night session but decide not to; I consciously decide to avoid the mock interview demo that apparently draws huge crowds of jobseekers. I'm tired from the time zone changes and from getting to the airport at five so I decide to sleep early. Which of course doesn't work very well and I doze and wake up repeatedly and run through my notes for the interviews over and over, talking through my responses aloud. I note that I'm getting obsessive as I run though different versions of the answers as if I'm making a record and these are different takes from which I'll assemble a great track, so I stop. I don't try to go back to sleep and I work a little on the dissertation chapter, and hope that the adrenaline pumping through my system will keep me alert during the interviews.

Dec 28.
6 in the morning. I'm hungry despite yesterday's huge bowl of pho so I head for the Pinewood Diner, a place that I noticed on my walk up the hill yesterday. There are three other MLA types (ie, white balding caucasian men in tweed jackets) already there, reading the newspapers and lingering over breakfast. I get some corned beef hash, over medium eggs, rye toast, and I eat hungrily. I think to myself that I should have brought my note-cards but decide that forgetting was a sign that I've had enough. Heading back up to the hotel I'm passed by runners who obviously make running up this impossible steepness part of their masochistic routine.

8ish. I get ready for interview one. It's at nine in the morning at a hotel down the street. I'm a little relieved that the two schools I'm interviewing with are conducting the session in hotel rooms rather than the huge job areas in the hotels where you speak with the search committee separated from other interviews by flimsy curtains. I reach the interview hotel early, head up, and notice that my hand is trembling while I knock on the door.

9.45. I step out of my first MLA interview. It went really smoothly. I'm surprised at how well it went and how relaxed and enthusiastic the search committee was. There was no grilling and they seemed genuinely interested in what I would bring to the department. It ended up being a great conversation, mainly about teaching and courses I'd be able to develop. I start thinking that I might have a shot at this.

11ish. I attend a session that on marriage in the Canterbury Tales that Glenn is presiding over. There are some heavy hitters presenting papers in this one. I talk to Steve a little about how well the interview went and he shows me his new iphone. I see the room populated with medievalist faces that I recognize from other conferences, which is a nice thing even if I don't know them personally, in a big conference like the MLA.

Two. My second and final interview. At first, I was a little deflated about not making the interview round for more schools, but I know that there are a lot of really accomplished people out there and all I need is one offer. Both the schools that I'm interviewing at will be excellent 'fits' for me anyway, I think, as they serve a diverse student population who haven't had the most academically privileged preparation. I make it to the hotel on time and head up to the room, except that room 644 doesn't appear to be accessible from the elevator I took. I quickly figure out that I need to find a connecting bridge on a lower level—shades of the maze leading to the Scriptorium in the Name of the Rose, which I take as a good sign—and make it to the room on time. Three quick knocks and the head of the search committee answers the door and apologizing, asks me to wait outside for a while. Have I walked in on someone else's interview? At least I'll get to see the competition. I get invited into the room but no one comes out. Hmmm. Maybe they flush you down the toilet if they don't like you. Ah no they were trying to adjust the temperature in the room.

2.45. I'm done with the interview. It was another pleasant one, if not as spontaneous as the first. There was more discussion of my research (a nice thing) after which they placed at list of courses in front of me—a list of about 10—and asked me how I might teach some of them. Good thing I came prepared with a good stack of sample syllabi, which I promptly hand out and start talking about. They ask me about teaching Old English and since I've practiced my responses, I manage to give what appears to be a convincing (at least to me) reply. There are a few strange questions that follow my discussion of teaching, which I feel are probably questions that the university rather than the department wants responses to. (Is anyone going to say "NO!" to a question on being involved in study abroad programs? Am I supposed to make the groundless offer of becoming a liaison for exchange programs to Singapore universities ...?) I blather a little while buying some time on one of them but I manage to draw on some personal experiences to cobble together what I think is (from the nodding head and encouraging smiles) a coherent a response.

3 plus. I head to the Grad Center Suite that is conveniently located one floor above my room at the Fairmont. I talk to Steve about how well the interview went and we discuss next steps. He also tells me about his own MLA interviewing experiences, twenty years ago ("to the day") as well as how the job market has changed drastically ("in 1988 there were probably more jobs than people applying ... "). More people come to the Suite (inauspiciously named "Dresden") and the wine is broken out. I see lots of familiar faces but no one that I really know very well. I end up talking to a few fellow jobseekers and realize that I've actually come out very well on my applied to / interview granted ratio (Apparently 1 out of 20 is much more common than my 1 out of 6). I figure this: it's a discontinuous distribution. Most of us will get low ratios and a very small, select number of future academic superstars have 1:1 application to interview offers. I don't think I'll be the first choice on anyone's list but my best bet would to be a finalist and have the top candidates reject the offer for a job in a more high-powered department.

6 plus. I leave the reception and head out for dinner. I intend a reward myself for the day's modest but momentous accomplishments. Even if I don't make a job this year, I'm definitely more prepared for next year's job search, and I know what I'll have to do to make myself a more viable candidate: the job search is the final initiation rite into the profession. I go to Straits, a swanky Singaporean-fusion restaurant. I glance over the menu at the door and decide that fourteen bucks for Char Kway Teow is an indulgence that I'm willing to pay for today. It's a hip up scale joint, with very classy interiors and furniture. It's noisy too as there's a bar area. There's an obviously Singaporean couple with their young child sitting near to me, and I spend the rest of the meal eavesdropping. I figure that the husband works (or studies) in California or some part of the U.S.—probably works and rakes in big bucks or they wouldn't be ordering what they do—and that they're visiting San Francisco. He has trouble conveying to the waiter that he doesn't want white meat in his Chicken Rice, his request—"without chili"—is flagrantly ignored, and the chicken comes drenched in chili sauce (which is a strange way to serve chicken rice, but then again, what kind of Singporean eats chicken rice without chili sauce... ). He ends up dipping the pieces of chicken in his glass of water: The indignities we are willing to put up with in response to the white man's incomprehension are innumerable. I feel like suggesting that he should just send it back; after all, he's paying 15 bucks for a plate of chicken rice and he should get it any way he wants. His wife makes the same suggestion but he says "Never mind," (exactly what I would do ... thankfully I love my chili ...), continues dipping the chicken in his glass of water, and ends up ordering another plate of overpriced, over-chilied (but this time he gets his order through someone higher up on the wait-staff hierarchy after a confused Latino busboy conveys his request ... ) chicken rice. I finish my own plate of over priced Char Kway Teow (I do a better job even without a Prima pack ... there was too much garlic in this one, and not enough Kechup Manis) and leave before witnessing what comes of my fellow Singaporean's quest for "chicken rice with the drumstick only without chili." I should have stuck with the Chinatown shop.

Dec 29
8.30. I intend to be a good conference participant and attend lots of sessions today. I get into an early one on immigrant lit and I'm pleasantly surprised that one of the presenters is talking about Junot Diaz's Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I loved Drown (and I put it on one of my sample syllabi) and I'd been intending to read Oscar Wao: perhaps I'll pick up an overpriced copy from the airport bookstore and have something less Lacanian for the flight back. The two papers ("One of our presenters can't be at the MLA because of departmental budget cuts ... ") are good but there's the typical member of the audience who makes a comment to show off their knowledge by pretending to ask a question.

More of the morning. I end up hanging around the hotel lobby, and finally get free internet access. This hotel allows 24 hours without charge, so I quickly log in, check my email (which consists of just deleting junk mail, so much for pretending that email matters ....) and quickly google a map of Berkeley. I've decided to head out across the bay and do my pilgrimage to the Mecca of English Lit after the afternoon sessions. I also want to check out Amoeba Music and a local microbrewery.

Rest of the day. I attend a few more sessions. One of them is a Chaucer session on beasts in Chaucer, which ends up being a panel made up solely of grad students writing theses (ie "The Competition"). They're really smart sounding, come from brand-name schools, and I could easily see them in a job ahead of me. In typical grad student fashion, the papers are extremely writerly and somewhat hard to follow, with long citations from other critics. A strange dynamic emerges in the question and answer because the leading critic in the field is present and she points out things about the papers that she liked and didn't like, but she's nice about it and gracious in her comments. I momentarily panic because I'll be doing a paper on Bevis's horse, Arundel, in May: hopefully she isn't in the room when that happens. Maybe it'll be an impetus to work hard at making sure I write a good paper. I pick up useful tips on how to answer questions when you don't know the answer without sounding too defensive or utterly incompetent (i.e. acknowledge how smart the question is and say "that's certainly something I'd like to look into"). The last session I attend is one where Steve gives a talk about surveillance in medieval accounts of Jewish conversions to Christianity, which is an elaboration ("I had underestimated the implications of surveillance in my earlier work ... ") of his work.

Evening. I head out to Berkeley, a trip that takes me longer than I expect because of train delays. I only end up having dinner and downing a couple of pints at the microbrewery that I later learn is the oldest one still in operation in the U.S. Cool. I don't bother with going to Amoeba records since I'm sure that I won't be buying anything anyway and it'll be nice to have something to do the next time that I'm in San Francisco. I'm definitely not one of the those sorts who makes full use of a trip in a foreign city, though San Francisco has certainly been more inviting than other places where I've been stuck at for conferences.

"Love Actually" is about the Impossible Desire of the Other

2008-11-30T17:08:00.014-05:00

This being the start of the holiday season (not that it means we have less work to do), we watched "Love Actually" for the 521st time, after friends that we lent the DVD to returned it to us. ("It's just gotten back, why don't we watch it ....)

I've always had a vague notion about the racist constructions of desire in the film, but this watching crystallized my ideas. And since the film plays ad nauseam during the holiday seasons, here's to ruining everyone's favorite romantic comedy.

My analysis begins with Salvoj Žižek. Not an idea, but a Youtube video where he magically uncovers "The Sound of Music" as an unexpected space where Fascist fantasies live and thrive. Žižek's argument is simple. And while its extremely reductive, it's fun if you don't take it too seriously. (But how many of us DO take The Sound of Music and Love Actually much too seriously ...?) He argues that the Austrians, the Von Trapps included I assume, even though representing the anti-Fascist Austrian resistance, are figured along the lines of Fascist ideals: the children in uniform, marching, hierarchized according to age, all disciplined to sing and display their talent. (Of course for the sake for argument he conveniently omits the inconsistencies of this generalization.) On the other hand, the Fascist elements within the film are represented as sophisticated genteel, glove wearing, cigarette holder smoking figures, or as Žižek puts it, by displaced stereotypes of Jewish decadence. So, he says that The Sound of Music appeals because it is able to represent an official ideological construction that we have all been taught to embrace—anti-Fascism—while indulging our secret fantasies for Fascism.

So, Love Actually is about the impossible desire of the Other, simultaneously constructing a politically correct film depicting race as irrelevant to relationships but still nurturing racist attitudes unconsciously. Its constructions of black/brownness appear to embrace a post-racial cosmopolitan sexuality, where skin color is no boundary to love. But in its representations of inter-racial couples, especially of the black figures in the film, it indulges our secret racist fantasies while preserving the specter of miscegenation.

"No Surprises?"

The interracial marriage between Mark and Juliet (pictured above left) that opens the movie is the clearest example of this doubled construction of race. Even though Mark's best-friend, Peter (lurking in the background), is infatuated with Juliet, no love triagle ensues. Instead, Peter's repressed desire finally gets communicated to Juliet, first against his will when she watches the video he makes of the wedding, and later when he does his silent card messages. We're left to wonder about what might have happened between Juliet and Peter, and yet that possibility never becomes threatening because Juliet and Peter are both faithful and loyal as wife and friend to Mark. Yet it is precisely [a favorite word of Žižek's, often imprecisely used] because no love-triangle develops that we see how the racial construction proceeds. Even though Peter and Juliet never go beyond a kiss, their story arc is presented as the one that we should be interested in. Untainted by physicality, their (non)relationship becomes the distillation of what 'true love' is. Juliet shares intimate moments with Peter, realizing that he loves her when she watches the video, pretending that its "just carolers" so that he can 'speak' her of his desire. Desire can be kept covert but also be expressed because the mediation of art and technology makes Peter's desire, and Juliet's assent, non-threatening. Even so, the film's representation of these stolen moments constructs their relationship as the 'true' one. Mark, husband and black man, is cuckolded, even though 'nothing happens.'

"You'll Come Back a Broken Man"

Another story line: this time, the black man is marginalized and his status as desiring subject degraded. This story line features John and Judy, who are shy, reserved, but decent individuals even though they work as actor stand-ins in the explicit film industry. Their director, Tony, is black, and nameless until the end of the film.(1) He issues instructions for them to mimic physical intimacy, and he instructs them to perform smutty acts as he watches. He is the black man on the margins, the voyeur whose perverse pleasure is in watching, who can never become fully human in the way John and Judy do through the mundane conversations that develops between them despite their line of work.

Tony is also involved in the film's farcical plot, involving Colin Frisell's fantasies about American women. Believing that gorgeous babes will swoon over his cute British accent, he hatches a hare-brained scheme to go to some bar in America and work his charm. His Tony is the voice of reason, constantly telling Colin that he's totally out of his mind. Colin's crazy scheme actually works, and he beds a bevy of beauties on his first night in America. The black man, as movie director and Colin's friend, remains outside the orbit of desire. Even this farcical British swipe at America is constructed with a clear eye towards the racial taboos that police desire. Consider this: Is not a reversal of roles unimaginable? What if Colin the Brit were also Colin the black man, landing in Milwaukee and trying to pick up white women in a bar in Wisconsin with his cute British accent ... ?

"And they call it Puppy Love ..."

Finally, the possibility of the desires of the Other being taken seriously is undermined by the depiction of prepubescent love. Sam and Joanna's fledgling attraction for each other may be cute, but it's not to be taken seriously. Of course, there is the distinct barrier of geography with Joanna's return to America the very night that Sam expresses his interest in her, but this is merely a convenient 'out' for the film. In a movie where even the 'serious' adult relationships are somewhat suspicious fantasies about the possibilities of love bridging class and personality barriers, the novelty of the interracial union is made even more pronounced by this coupling. What is interesting is the fact that Joanna's black identity is withheld from the audience throughout the movie. Only at the end of the film do we learn that she is black, not only physically but culturally as she wows the crowd with her soulful Mariah Carey number even though Sam has agonized about her throughout. Her blackness, which appears momentarily, and then disappears on a jet-plane, is a key strategy by which the paradoxical racist–politically correct ideological fantasies of the film are sustained.

"All You Need is Love"

Does the film offer any possibilities of serious interracial relationships? One possibility is the romance between Jaime and Aurelia (above left). Even though Jaime is thoroughly English and Aurelia begins the film as a non-English speaking Portuguese immigrant working in France, they do end up together at the end of the film. Their attraction for each other, which blossoms despite their inability to speak to each other in the same language, seems to suggest an aspect of love that manages to transcend the barriers of culture and race.(2) Interestingly, Jaime's (and Aurelia's) sincerity is figured by their willingness to learn the other person's language, and the triumphal scene where Jaime proposes to Aurelia in ungrammatical Portuguese suggests that love can dismantle cultural and racial barriers. But, suspending for the moment the question of social class, is Aurelia all that other? She isn't caucasian, but she is not black either. Perhaps she represents a kind of limit, an acceptable difference that can be overcome through language classes on tape ....

By now, it should be obvious why I've put up the picture on the right, which is a snapshot of the movie's other triumphant relationship. Blackness is acceptable in positions of political achievement, but a romance between the Prime Minister and his tea-girl is much more acceptable as fantasy ....

In sum, I think it's possible to argue that while Love Actually promotes a politically correct view of interracial relationships, its success also depends on the way that it constructs an underlying racist fantasy that upholds the belief that 'true love' can only be found within the boundaries that govern Whiteness.

(1) - He only becomes "Tony" when one of the American babes Colin brings back, a cameo by Denise Richards, names him. He gains nominal identity only as part of the fantastical construct of American female desire.

(2) Another possible trans-racial coupling that I considered was the one between the characters played by Laura Linney and Brazilian superbod Rodrigo Santoro. But on consultation with the resident Love Actually expert (Edna), we agreed that the film doesn't really construct Karl as non-White.

Cold's Coming

2008-11-16T09:21:00.007-05:00

Cold's coming marks the
Distance between the places
I call "home" on my body,
As if miles could be etched
By falling degrees.
My body, encapsulated in layered
Warmth, is sedimented geography.

I always wear a Land's End sweater—
Strictly American, catalog shopped—
A Singaporean gift before I
Returned it to the land
Of its merchandising,
Label so faded, its sweatshop past
In another clime unfathomable.

On top of that, an orange hoodie—
"Wild Rivers, Tasmania"—
A tourist buy against
The unexpected cold
At the world's other end.

Or, if my nose doesn't itch,
A black Canterbury
Fleece, that recalls
Another pilgrimage
Medieval souls undertook,
First worn eighteen years ago
When as elite high school
Students we made a study trip
To the Soviet Empire in
Its winter,
Shivering beneath uniform
Black sweaters.

Then, a gray discount
Down overcoat, larger than
It's warm,
And red quilted gloves,
Women's, the only pair from
The remainder bin fitting
My Asian hands.
Bogg boots and knitted
Beanie cap accent
My uncoordination.

Frayed cuffs, torn seams,
Loose elastic, rickety zippers:
Over-worn.
I don't toss them out,
These maps of peregrination.

Unlike our forebears in
Climate controlled Eden,
We wear the fig-leaves
Of our wandering.

How to Lose Your Accent in 28 Days

2008-11-01T10:34:00.003-04:00

Concerned about how
My half-breed
Post-colonial tongue
Sounded to non
Non-White ears,
Tired of people inquiring
If I'd come from
Jamaica,
And provoked by
The bemusement caused
When I asked the Home
Depot Guy where
The sink augers were,

I embraced the insult
To identity, searched
Online, and found
"The Accent Reduction
Institute of
Ann Arbor."

"People are going to laugh,"
Edna said, "at an English
Ph.D., going for speech
Classes. All you have
To do is pretend to
Be uppity when you
Speak."

But I didn't want
To sound British or
Posh. I wanted
Words ending
In curled Rs,
Sentences blended
With softened Ts,
Nasalized vowels
On my breath.

I wanted speech to
Defy skin.

Eight hours
Of intensive work to
Straighten out the
Kinks of my tongue,
Would set me back
575 bucks and
I wondered if
I could write a check
Against the white
Man's debt to my people.

I went cheap and put in
A request at the Public
Library for a book
And CD that promised
"952 Ways to
Lose Your Accent
In 28 Days."

The next day, I received
The message:
"Your request is canceled
Because the owning
Library cannot fulfill it."

Instead of turning my
Tongue, perhaps I should
Work on getting it
Canceled.

For Friends Recently Wronged

2008-10-29T09:08:00.002-04:00

People who turn to words
Remain indifferent to how
Hypocrites misuse them—
Like decorative party
Wrap around empty boxes,
Or ornamental bows on
Thoughtless trinkets—
By dismissing
The weight, gravity, resistance
Brought by words.

People who stand on words
Can't help but be bemused
When bureaucrats manipulate them—
Like future profit
On short sold shares,
Or bonds
Endlessly derived—
By exaggerating
The hope, power, promise
Contained in words.

People who rest in words
Die a little each time
Hurtful words are spoken—
Like daggers in the back
Suddenly stuck
Or a booby trap's
Deceitful death—
By those who never feel
The peace, healing, wholeness
Secured by words.

Job Searching

2008-10-24T14:05:00.002-04:00

I've been rather busy the past month or so getting all my job search materials ready and sending them out. I've sent out the bulk of my applications and still have a few more to go. The challenge of finding places to teach where both Edna and I can work (and live in the same house) has been quite great. I've been on googlemaps a lot, and at this point in the game, I think it's really down to whether we get simultaneously lucky, or whether my strategy of applying to every place where I have even the remotest chance of qualifying will work out.

Here's the list of the places that I'm applying to, divided up by geographical area:

There's the NIE, SIngapore of course. Not in my field of expertise but there are possibilities for both of us here.

Southern California: UC Irvine (most research oriented school in my list), Claremont McKenna College (most selective school on my list - and the most selective liberal arts college in the U.S.), and Cal State, Long Beach (I think I have a fair shot there, and it's by the beach ... )

Bay Area, Californa: Cal State Sacramento. It seems like a nice place to work, but due to California 's uncertainty with the state budget, the position nearby (ok within 100 miles) that Edna was going to apply for is now in limbo!

Wisconsin: Marian U of Fond du Lac, U of Wisconsin Colleges: Baraboo/Sauk & Waukesha (2 year colleges). None of these positions are for medievalists. But they want people who are generalists and who can teach composition, so I'm giving these a shot. Edna's top choice is for a position at Wisconsin-Madison, so these would be near enough.

Chicago: St Xavier University. A medieval position that would be nice. Possibly drivable to Wisconsin Mad - but we'd have to live in-between and still drive A LOT.

Texas: U of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. (Another non-Medievalist position - but there's an opening at UT Austin for Edna).

Pennsylvania / Maryland: Franklin and Marshall College. Another highly selective liberal arts college that would be nice to teach at. Cecil College - a two-year college that wants a generalist.

U of New Hampshire: this is the latest posting on the job list. It's an ideal medieval position for me, but I'm sure competition will be very tough since it's in the heart of New England!

Some (possibly irrelevant) things that I've learnt: 1. Texas is a really really big state. I clicked on every Community College website in the state of Texas looking for jobs near Austin. No luck: the closet I came was for a position in the Spring of next year, and another that wanted someone to teach English and Journalism 2. It's easier to find a "Job Opportunities" link on a 2-year college website (in contrast to four year schools). 3. the U of Wisconsin has the most organized and attractive 2-year college websites ...

Why this Blog is "locked"

2008-10-24T10:08:00.002-04:00

This is just a brief post to let readers that I've invited know why the blog requires a log in. I'm applying for jobs both in the U.S. and back home, and I'd rather not have prospective employers snooping around the internet and forming skewed impressions. I'm pretty sure that googling a job applicant is a practice that is extremely common now, even though I really doubt the value of a google search unless an individual is extremely prominent. Coupled with incidents where individuals have been threatened by their employers or dropped from a job search because of the their online personas, I think it's a wise move on my part to just password protect the blog.

Conference Time

2008-09-10T21:05:00.005-04:00

It's that time of the year where I desperately send out paper proposals for medieval conference presentations. Here are two of my latest offerings that I've submitted. Hopefully they'll be accepted!

A paper proposal for a panel on Kings and Kingship in the Middle Ages. I hope this one gets accepted so that I get to go to Boston.

All the King's Bodies: Embodying Authority in Havelok the Dane and King Horn

The Middle English romances Havelok the Dane and King Horn both feature protagonists whose right to rule is stolen early on in the romance. In this paper, I suggest that both protagonists learn that the manipulation of their own bodies is key to regaining royal authority. Even though the thrones of Denmark and Suddene are theirs by birth, Havelok and Horn must allow their bodies to mature and be transformed in order to regain what is theirs. Havelok's exceptional physical appetites and strength becomes subordinated to a more symbolic and rhetorical conception of his body. From being trapped by a body that only experiences the immediacy of hunger and cold, Havelok re-conceptualizes his body as a symbol of the nation before the marks of kingship on his body can be publicly identified and rallied around. Similarly, Horn's unmatched physical attractiveness is disguised both literally and through his careful speech en route to the throne. Instead of thinking of the protagonist as the solitary hero who proves himself worthy of the throne, locating their right to rule in the body considers the various forces of association and nurture that come into play. Specifically, Havelok's and Horn's bodies are shaped by their contact with a host of surrogate fathers who take the place of their dead fathers. These older male figures protect and guide the protagonists on their quests and enable the protagonists to adopt conceptions of the body that are more readily used for political ends than the abstract ideals of kingship represented by their dead fathers. I end the paper by suggesting how these romances connect with Ernst Kantorowicz's work on the genesis and development of the notion of the "King's Two Bodies" and argue that the presentation of the malleable body in both romances respond to the challenges to the king's position in the body politic that occurred in thirteenth-century England.

... and here's another one. I'm trying something slightly different from my 'usual' work. It's for a panel on Animals and Ethics at Kalamazoo! (I owe the title to a memory of Al Pacino 'dying' in "Looking for Richard")

"A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdom for a Horse!": Valuing Arondel in Bevis of Hampton

The Middle English Bevis of Hampton does not conclude with Bevis ruling England or Armenia, the principal kingdoms of the romance. Curiously, Bevis ends up ruling over Mombraunt, a kingdom with a relatively minor role in the narrative. To explain this state of affairs, I turn to Bevis's relationship with his horse, Arondel. In this paper, I attempt to describe Bevis's special relationship with Arondel, arguing that this relationship cannot really be equated to anthropocentric concepts such as "friendship" or "loyalty". Inspired by Donna Haraway's exploration of the dense networks of biocapital and commodification that connect people and animals "in the naturecultures of lively capital," the paper traces how the narrative struggles and fails to find a fixed value for Arondel. Like the dogs that Donna Haraway writes about, Arondel is variously treated as a commodity, labor, as well as a consumer through his connections with Bevis and other humans. At the same time, the people that come into contact with Arondel have their identities as stable human subjects challenged and the multi-faceted nature of these bonds make it impossible to reduce the description of Arondel to that of the 'loyal beast'. Unlike other animal companions of romance, whose only reward for loyalty is human companionship, Arondel receives much more: fame, a castle, Bevis's willingness to go into exile, and prayers said on his behalf. In a romance in which the protagonist's own worth is challenged by his biological and surrogate human families, in which he needs to prove himself by battling non-human creatures, Bevis responds to something in Arondel that lies outside the rubric of social estimations of animal worth: Perhaps Bevis does give up kingdoms in exchange for an existence with a horse.

"A horse, a horse ..."

Too Many Errors

2008-08-23T13:21:00.002-04:00

I managed to cause this screen to pop up yesterday on the latest chapter of my dissertation. It's the first time that I've seen this error message. It came up on page 76 at the 21 659 word mark. I guess this chapter DOES have lots of strangely spelled early Middle English words!

On Reading

2008-07-29T15:26:00.016-04:00

Given that I spend much of the day reading, this recent article on reading in the NYT caught my eye. It's rather long but well worth the time. Of course, I was also rather interested in it because it deals with whether or not the Internet has had a negative impact on the ability of children and adults to think. Reading, of course, is the site of contention in all this. The tussle is over whether interacting with non-traditional texts via the Internet is compromising our ability to store and analyze information. I guess that a high level of competence in traditional literacies has always been a gold-standard of sorts when it comes with academic and intellectual success, and whether being literate in the new media of the Internet promotes a similar form of intellectual growth, retards our ability to think, or complements a more traditional view of literacy and intelligence, is really an interesting debate. Of course, it smacks of the "Is TV Bad For You?" debate, but just as the cloning controversy is a more interesting variation of the abortion debate, the Internet offers more complicated options than TV.

From a personal perspective, I could easily see myself as a proponent of either camp. Given that I've plowed through my fair share of heavy going novels, it would serve my sense of moral indignation to condemn YouTube, Facebook, and yes, blogs. And I think a certain amount of this is clear from the article. Those who speak in defense of more traditional literacies seem motivated to hold off what they see as a decay civilization, as they've defined it of course. I suppose there's a bit of a conservative streak in me that suggests that everyone should avail themselves to the same modes of suffering (as well as pleasure) that I've associated with reading. I get the sense that it's more than "academic outcomes" or "intellectual achievement" that's at stake: It's also about how we define our cultural technologies and who manages to dictate how subjectivities are formed (and controlled) vis a vis these.

I also do my fair share of "new media" perusing. I haven't read a traditional newspaper in years, love YouTube, and when the mood strikes me, could be up there with the most fanatical of users of chat programs (Ok, the last claim is probably untrue, and unlike a real savvy Internet multi-tasker, I really can't do much else except chat when I chat). I often think about how I'd probably wouldn't have done well in the O- and A- Levels or University exams if I had had the Internet access which we all now take for granted. Even now, I get endlessly interrupted (ok, distracted) with all the measureless and meandering paths to procrastination that the Internet has to offer. Surely the time and pleasure one spends surfing has to count for some expansion of one's intellectual powers? So I get it when the hordes of academics cited by the NYT article put up a doughty defense for the new literacies that are so different from traditional reading that new measures and definitions of literacy are called for. At the same time, I wonder if a lot of this has to do with make a big ballyhoo out of very little. I'm really cynical about endless academic claims in support of Internet literacies because they really does come off as cultivating niche areas of research that don't really tell us anything profound about how we think or process information. (I should be honest about this and state that I did write a Masters thesis on how Electronic Message Boards promote critical literacy and empower students .... Hah!) Still, if an academic wins acclaim (and tenure, promotion, and the good life) by defending web-surfing habits, more power to him (and her).

In one sense, the conflict over reading literacy and Internet literacy recalls medieval debates over the growth of writing. With the growth of writing as a technology of the mind, medieval thinkers were afraid that people would lose the arts of memory, and eventually lose both knowledge and the ability to reason because they'd become to dependent on marks on a page. The way that the Internet is becoming everybody's prosthetic memory (and perhaps brain) parallels this medieval anxiety about the loss of knowledge. This article that is in the Atlantic (which the NYT article refers to) discusses the issue quite nicely. I've never really had a good memory (and no, just because I'm a Lit student does not mean I can quote from the Western canon at will, though if I could it would be really cool ...), so I can't really tell if the Internet has made me dumber. I will, however, say that accumulating information does give one the sense that one has processed and thought about the stuff. So, clicking through links and quickly browsing Wikipedia does often cause me to think that I'm learning stuff that I'm probably not. But this isn't new. I remember how we (while in JC and Uni) would photocopy reams of articles from journals and books and feel as if we'd done a whole lot of studying. It's a good thing that photocopying is so expensive here, it forces me to sit in the library and take notes by hand, and I think I tend to process the information more diligently than if I were to mindlessly underline sections and merely make marginal comments.

I return to this post after a bit of a break.

A book that I finished about a week ago, and had begun when I first started out this post, deals with the relationship between knowing stuff and being smart, and the relevance of factoids in life, involving issues, I guess, that are tangentially touched upon by the articles I refer to above. It's by A.J. Jacobs, who is quite a character (in a preppy, nerdy, "everyone-graduated-from-Harvard-or-Yale, I-only-went-to-Brown" kind of way), and it's called "The Know It All". It's really quite an intriguing feat that he undertakes. Jacobs decides to read the entire Encycleopedia Britannica. Yup, from A to Z. It's pretty amazing that he manages to do it, all 44 million words within a year, WHILE keeping his day job as an editor at Esquire. It's an easy and entertaining read (Jacobs's book, I mean) but his chatty writing style doesn't obscure the greatness of his achievement or the his enthusiasm for knowledge. Another more recently published book by Ammon Shea, recounts his experience reading the entire OED.

So what do these epic reading enterprises, undertaken in an age of media proliferation tell us about how knowledge is valued in a world where technology appears to be muscling out traditional literacies? I guess reading has become, from a certain perspective, a vast undertaking. There is now a certain novelty attached to reading, and reading what appears to be dry as dust material for pleasure is an oddity of sorts. I also think that the participatory effect of reading, which is still valued at a really young age, is somehow pushed aside by the richness of the new media. No one reads out loud nowadays, at least it takes a conscious effort to do so; and, people don't read that much to each other anymore. The private experience of reading has been made an even more exclusive and exclusionary practice, since the ease with which one can respond through writing or performing on new media texts makes the performance of the traditional text laborious and time-consuming.

I know all this sounds nostalgic for a past where we spent a little more time feeling the rustle of pages between our fingers, and spending entire days with books rather than blogs, and it is, in part. But I'm just not exactly ready to trumpet the wholesale triumph of the new media over my books, if only because books still look great all lined up on the shelf.

Blurbs From a Blogger

2008-07-26T09:47:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me this morning, as I was walking Sourdough, that I have every right to call myself a "Blogger". It came as a bit of a surprise, as most revelations of the obvious do, and it caused me to see myself quite differently. Now, I realize that "real" Bloggers, whether full-time or not, celebrated or reviled, actually get more than 3 page views a day (I think that's my average, if I count my own visits to the blog ...), write about important matters (like "Obama needs a New Hairdo and so do You"), generate lots of publicity, and contribute to the general course of human affairs, from behind (or is it in front of ... ?) the near-anonymity of a computer terminal.

But, as you, dear Reader, have no doubt noticed, there IS a new look to this blog. And moving away from the classic blog platform (goodbye outmoded javascript slideshow ...) to Blogger's WordPress-Wannabe Widget Filled Universe has prompted me to cast a retrospective glance at my early output. I'm in the process of cleaning up the interface as well as re-visiting some of my earlier posts. Reading some of the stuff that I wrote way back – especially from 2001-4 – for instance, I'm struck by how prolific I was in those days. Of course, prolific doesn't mean the writing is good or even thoughtful. But there was just a lot of stuff. In "those" heady days, I used a really cheesy platform called "Free Open Diary". Then it was just words – no pictures, no music, no video – just words, a lot of them. And it was great fun then, as there was a relative large and vibrant community of Open Diarists in the school where I taught. There were inevitable attempts by the more daring or cheeky of my students to make overt references to each diary entry whenever I stepped into class, but I managed to keep those worlds somewhat separate, though inextricably bound as my entries were often commentaries on what was going on in school and in the classroom. In retrospect, I think writing on the thing shaped the kind of teacher (and possibly person) I became in those years and created all sorts of opportunities for interaction with students that my official school persona may not have afforded. I'm sure that blogging is now taken for granted by teachers as a means of communicating certain "unmentionables" to students, but I'm glad I was involved in it at a time when not that many people (at least people I knew) wrote on blogs.

So, patiently, with much perseverance, I'm going back to these old entries and straightening them out, correcting grammar and spelling where I find errors, and putting them onto their proper blog page. (In switching platforms, I plonked whole months into a single entry and haven't really sieved through them properly). In the meantime, I've created a "Blast From the Past" link on my new blog interface (using the nice link widget) where I'll put entries that strike a chord with me in this re-vamping exercise. And of course, I'll continue to feel happy about calling myself a Blogger.

Now back to the Dissertation.

Strange Culture

2008-07-25T17:17:00.006-04:00

Sometime in 2005, I attended a talk by Steve Kurtz, an Art professor, who was in the midst of being persecuted by post-Sep 11 paranoia. Just a few days ago, browsing the shelves of the public library, I came across this cool documentary, Strange Culture, that was made in 2006/7, which was about his case. It not only traces the tragedy with enormous sympathy and precision, it also employs a clever blend of dramatization (Tilda Swinton plays his wife, whose tragic death was the genesis of the entire bizarre affair). Even more remarkable is that fact that at the time that they were making the doc, Kurtz's case was still unresolved, and he was still facing the prospect of many years in jail. The film is not only a sensitive rendering of the entire affair, but also fleshes out the broader implications of the case for basic human and academic freedom.

In brief, here's what happened. Kurtz was, and still is, a critical artist. So his stuff is radical art that questions the relationship between art and science. In the talk I attended, he said that his mission has always been to try to use art to put science in the hands of the people, because the general population has been alienated from science by big corporate interests. Anyway, he was working on a project that involved the critique of bio-warfare when his wife died of a heart attack in her sleep. He called 911, and when responders came, they noticed that he had a lot of science equipment at home. And so, the FBI and the bioterrorism task force was notified, and he was eventually taken away (illegally) on the suspicion that he was a bioterrorist. Despite repeated attempts by him and his colleagues to explain to the FBI that "this is what he does, and has been doing all along ...", the government was set on charging him with something. In the end, because there was no way that the bioterrorism charges could be filed (all the stuff he had was legal, harmless, and could be bought over the Internet), they decided to charge him with "wire fraud" and "mail fraud".* In essence, the government, riding on post Sep 11 paranoia, was using its expanded powers to silence voices of dissent by concocting scenarios that are best described as Kafkaesque.

The good news is that he was cleared of everything in April this year, and I found this interview from June where he recounts the entire ordeal, being able to speak openly about the facts of the case for the first time. His interview with Amy Goodman begins at 35:35.

* As I understand it, the prosecution's attempt to charge Kurtz with mail and wire fraud stood on the fact that he'd gotten his research collaborator to buy the reagents that he needed for his work from a supplier who does not sell to individuals, but only to institutional accounts that are registered with them. It's as if I bought a second hand book from Amazon.com on behalf of someone in Singapore because Amazon.com second hand book sellers won't ship internationally. Because I bought the books with the intent of circumventing this system, I (as well as the person receiving the books) am guilty of mail fraud along the lines of the crime that the govt was trying to charge Kurtz with.

Pecan Pie

2008-07-23T08:47:00.002-04:00

Pecan pie happens to be one of my favorite deserts - after carrot cake, of course. I made my first one yesterday. Lots of recipes call for corn syrup, which apart from being really bad for you, is also the poster child for everything wrong with the food industry, so I made one with honey instead!

Chomksy At Google

2008-07-20T12:52:00.002-04:00

Here's a good Chomsky talk. Interesting because it's wide-ranging and pitched at a broad audience rather than the endless (and damning) slew of facts and figures that Chomksy usually broadsides American policy with.

Berry Good Pie

2008-07-19T13:45:00.006-04:00

Two pies! Above - the raspberry-strawberry-rhubarb pie that I made last week. It was runny and I had to resort to desperate measures that involved performing extensive drainage operations. But, I'm pleased to say that this is the first pie where I'm happy with the crust. The key to good crust (for me): vodka. (What I lack in skill I make up for in exotic ingredients but there's a nice scientific explanation for using vodka - it evaporates quickly!) Having rhubarb in a pie was something I had to do having read about rhubarb and heard about it all my life. Turned out to be a nicely tart combination. Below - I made this 'largely blueberry pie' today with the berries we had left in the fridge and freezer. To circumvent the runny insides, I used a corn-starch filler recipe, and for double insurance, made a crumb top so that the juices could evaporate.

You, Who Hear My Singing

2008-07-14T09:34:00.004-04:00

I've been working on putting together (yet another) new blog, one that documents my attempts to make music. It started with an interest in figuring out how to put one of those audio players on a blog page and then took a life its own. Anyway, if you're interested in hearing me sing badly, play the guitar (and banjo) in a variety of styles, see what I've been up to musically, and perhaps even sing along ... it's here:

http://youwhohearmysinging.blogspot.com/

Great Nader Lecture

2008-07-10T17:24:00.002-04:00

Given the terrible and widespread public misperception that Ralph Nader "cost" Al Gore the election in 2000, I doubt that many people are interested in hearing what the man has to say. Even so, here's Nader in his own words. He's fantastic and if I were pressed to say who I supported in this U.S. election, I'd pick Nader. What is great about this lecture is the fact that he very fondly includes anecdotes about how his time at Princeton shaped his desire to change things. I've put all parts in a play list and playing them one after another should be quite intuitive!

Midnight's Sighs

2008-07-10T08:46:00.003-04:00

I like Salman Rushdie! Along with Umberto Eco and Thomas Pynchon (and perhaps Don Delillo and let's not forget Jhumpa Lahiri, S.R. Delany and Ursula Le Guin, and Ian McEwan ... ok this list might go on a bit ... ), he's probably one of the few living writers that I'm quite keen about. I'm actually reading The Moor's Last Sigh right now and it's fabulous. My Salman Rushdie moments include 1. explaining why I liked Midnight's Children to a tutor during NUS who liked to grill students about what they were reading "outside" the curriculum. 2. Finding a copy of the Satanic Verses in the French section of Kino. I guess it's ok to read banned books in French. and 3. actually liking The Ground Beneath Her Feet (as well as the U2 song of the same name that Rushdie penned) very much. 4. Of course, I've never had the chance to meet the man, though a friend who has managed to get in a question about his favorite book (if I remember the anecdote correctly) - which happens to be Haroun. I guess if one wanted to see what the whole fuss was about either Midnight's Children or The Moor's Last Sigh would be great representatives of Rushdie's strange blend of poetry, wit, wordplay, irreverence and abiding respect for history. For a fun read, there's Haroun. For a sense of how clever Rushdie can be with myths and intertextual referencing, there's The Ground Beneath Her Feet as well as Fury. There's lots of Rushdie that I haven't read - including his two most recent books - so there's lots for me to enjoy!

Anyway, despite the silliness of lists like these, I will say that I like some of the other people on the "Best of the Booker" shortlist. There was a time that I was really into Peter Carey, and I liked Pat Baker's WWI trilogy immensely. News like this always causes me to go hunt for stuff by these authors I haven't read! Another wonderful distraction!

LONDON (Reuters) - British author Salman Rushdie won the "Best of the Booker" prize on Thursday to mark the 40th anniversary of one of the world's most prestigious literary awards.

"Midnight's Children" won the Booker Prize in 1981, and the Indian-born writer was hot favorite to take the award decided by the public from a shortlist of six in an online poll.

The 61-year-old, whose 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" outraged many Muslims and prompted death threats against him, also won the 25th anniversary Booker prize in 1993.

"I think it was an extraordinary shortlist and it was an honor to be on it," Rushdie said in a recorded message from the United States, where he is on a book tour.

His sons, Zafar and Milan, accepted a trophy in London on his behalf, and the author said it was apt that "my real children (are) accepting a prize for my imaginary children."

Milan, the youngest, added: "I'm really looking forward to reading it when I'm older. Well done Dad."

Victoria Glendinning, chair of the panel who drew up a shortlist, said the entries were dominated by themes of the end of empire and two world wars.

"These are the nettles we have been compelled to try and grasp," she told reporters.

But there was some criticism of the award, partly because the choice was narrowed to just six nominees.

"It's an artificial exercise, simply because the general public only got to pick from six of the previous winners," said Jonathan Ruppin, promotions manager at Foyles bookshop.

"Readers have not been able to vote for some of their most enduring favorites," he added, mentioning, among others, Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" and Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day."

ONLINE POLL

Around 8,000 people from around the world took part in the online poll, and Midnight's Children won 36 percent of votes.

At least half the voters were under 35, and the largest age group was 25-34, "a reflection of the ongoing interest in quality fiction amongst readers of all ages," organizers said.

Midnight's Children, an example of Rushdie's magical realist style, follows Saleem Sinai who is born on the stroke of midnight on the day of India's independence in 1947 and whose life loosely parallels the fortunes of his nascent country.

Some critics believe it is Rushdie's finest work, eclipsing subsequent novels including The Satanic Verses, for which he remains best known.

What was perceived to be the questioning of the tenets of Islam in The Satanic Verses led to book burnings and riots across the Muslim world culminating in a death edict against Rushdie by Iran's supreme religious leader.

The author was forced into hiding for nine years.

The other nominees included Nobel Prize winners J.M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer, both born in South Africa.

The full list comprised Rushdie, Pat Barker (The Ghost Road), Peter Carey (Oscar and Lucinda), Coetzee (Disgrace), J.G. Farrell (The Siege of Krishnapur) and Gordimer (The Conservationist).

Both Coetzee and Carey have won the Booker Prize twice.

The Booker rewards the best novel each year by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.

Recent Kitchen Exploits

2008-07-02T17:07:00.003-04:00

Just messing around with the slideshow function in Picassa. So 1. I made quiche just so I could experiment more with pie-crusts. Making good pie crust has become the Holy Grail of my baking endeavors. This attempt wasn't great - too crumbly. 2. That's almost entirely homemade bruschetta. The bread was sliced and toasted from a homemade baguette, the basil and tomatoes were from the plants we've been nurturing since May. Now if only I could get a cow to fit on the balcony then we'd have homemade cheese as well ... but this was excellent smoked cheddar from the MSU Diary Store. 3. More bread - focus on the pan, not my strange "I'm-trying-to-look-pleased-with-my-efforts" semi-grin. Crusty dinner rolls this time, superb with any kind of stew!

"They're GREEN ... but chewy ..."

2008-06-26T08:46:00.007-04:00

So, I decided to do something different after the moderate success of the fruit tart (which is still sitting in the fridge, tempting me to pack on the calories every time I open it ...) Edna likes chewy oatmeal raisin cookies, and I figured that to increase my chances of making something that she would find palatable (and thus not end up eating everything myself), I'd make those.
To add to the interest value of the project, I decided that I'd substitute butter with avocado. As every avid reader of SHAPE magazine knows, avocado is supposed to be a great substitute for butter -- and Edna reminded me. However, we didn't remember which issue actually had a recipe, and instead of flipping through a year's worth of magazine's, I decided, totally arbitrarily, that

1 Avocado = 1 stick of butter

So, the first instruction was something like "whip butter until creamed ..." and I'm like, ok, how does one do that with two somewhat mushy avocados? I ended up cutting them into small bits with my now trusty pastry cutter, and stirring them vigorously. Despite having religiously done bicep curls and miscellaneous arm moves for a while now, my forearms were getting tired with the whisk I was using (Someone should work out the Cook's Work Out). An amazing thing happened, however, after I added sugar and continued stirring vigorously: the mixture actually did become a little fluffy! Which was the very moment when I realized that I'd forgotten to buy the OATS from Meijer ... Thankfully, oats ARE a low-cost convenience food and I managed to walk out to a nearby gas-station and get a tub of good old Quaker Oats (who says gas-stations only stock junk food ....)

Anyway, the cookies are great, even if their odd shape illustrates how aesthetically challenged I am. As Edna put it, some of them are monstrously large - but at least now I can eat just one cookie and say that it was satisfying ... They don't taste too rich, because there isn't any butter in them and they're extremely moist and chewy. Of course, they are really quite green!

Getting Flaky?

2008-06-24T18:21:00.007-04:00

Having recently finished a chapter of the dissertation, I decided to do something different for the next few days before starting up again. I ended up making a fruit tart today. I was pretty keyed up to do this - I even went out and got a pastry cutter to make sure that I wouldn't smear the butter. It turned out quite nicely, except that my inexperience with pie crusts meant that it definitely could have been much more flaky - I think I added too much water in trying to get the dough to "come together" cause I don't think I worked it too hard. But I've done my homework (by watching videos on crust making technique - though it's pretty unbelievable how these people get the dough to stay together with the tiny amounts of water they use ... ) and I'm going to try this again ... soon! And I'll make sure I do fancy edges the next time! Still, the tart IS really yummy - at least Edna thinks so!

The Riddle Song

2008-06-17T21:08:00.001-04:00

Here's a great song that I've been singing for about a year. I first heard a Doc Watson version of the song and then a wonderful duet which featured Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. The simplicity and the riddle, question, and answer structure of the song makes it really charming. I guess it's also somewhat appropriate for me since 1. we're now living in Cherry Abundant Michigan and 2. my life's work is wrapped up in stories that normally have endings - if not always satisfactory ones - so it's nice to sing a song that turns that expectation on its head ...

I gave my love a cherry, that had no stone
I gave my love a chicken, that had no bone
I told my love a story, that had no end
And I gave my love a baby, with no crying.

How can there be a cherry, that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming, it has no stone.
A chicken when it's pipping, it has no bone.
The story of my love, it has no end.
And a baby when it's sleeping, there's no crying.

The Road To Boston

2008-06-13T09:37:00.005-04:00

Here's a little tune called "On the Road to Boston", somewhat appropriate given the Celtics' remarkable come back last night. And yes, that's me and my banjo playing efforts.

"My" Guitar

2008-06-12T10:30:00.004-04:00

Being fortunate enough to live in the hometown of Eldery Instruments, I've been paying regular visits to the store. I've fallen in love with a particular guitar and I now call it "my" guitar, even though there's not the slightest chance of me ever owning this particular gem.

It's a little parlor guitar made by two luthiers who are based in Vermont. Their company -- Froggy Bottom -- makes acoustic guitars that have won awards and are consistently heralded with much acclaim. This one's no exception.

What I really love about this guitar is how responsive it is in the bass and mid ranges for a small guitar. Playing a bigger body Taylor after trying out this guitar makes the Taylor sound thin and stiff in the lower range (and this was a decent 814). It's got an amazing resonance of bass for something of its size. I'm guessing it has to do with the fact that the guitar has a walnut body. Plus there are some cool (some people might think them cheesy) ornamental details on the instrument.

I've played this guitar about 4-5 times, and every time I go to Elderly to try out more guitars, this is the first and last one that I play. I even felt a little jealous yesterday when someone else had clearly played the guitar recently (tuned it to dropped D ... might be the same guy whose been playing all the Collings guitars which were all tuned to dropped D ... ) If there's one thing that is a 'shortcoming' on this particular guitar is that the neck meets the body at the 12th fret, which makes playing up the neck a little difficult.

This particular guy is on consignment at Elderly and I'll keep playing him until someone decides to take him home. I'll never have the moolah to buy him, even though at 5 000 bucks, it's about 2 000 dollars cheaper than placing an order with the Froggy Bottom guys.

Left: Cool biplane painting design on the heel cap. Froggy Bottom gets an artist to do individualized designs for each of their guitars.

Right: And the neat Froggy Bottom logo!

Colonialism, alive and well in Singapore

2008-06-11T08:19:00.004-04:00

Our little island home in the sun doesn't get mentioned much in the NYT (and unless terrorist suspects escape with greater frequency, I doubt there'll be another mention soon). But tucked away in the Home and Lifestyle section, here's an article. I've put points of interest in red, and my brief rant follows the article.

In Singapore, a House Steeped in Tradition
By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
SINGAPORE

As they planned their family’s move to Singapore from Rowayton, Conn., Jill and Andrew Pickering imagined living in one of the island’s traditional colonial-era homes, with their distinctive black-and-white exteriors and sprawling gardens.

“It is really a quintessential Singapore experience to live in one of those grand old houses surrounded by nature,” Mrs. Pickering said. “You can live in a condominium anywhere, but these houses are really unique.”

Wanting to “get the lay of the land” in this city-state, which has a population of 4.5 million, the couple started out in a centrally located condominium. But after five years, they thought it was time to begin the search for their dream home.

They had been looking for five months when Mr. Pickering, a senior executive at an international shipping company, was biking in one of the historic areas and noticed that renovations had just started on what looked like a long-abandoned house. He immediately called for an appointment to view it, and the family moved in two years ago.

“The house had been empty for six years and the first time we saw it, it was like ‘Jumanji,’ ” Mrs. Pickering recalled, referring to the Robin Williams film about jungle creatures running riot. “There were bats everywhere, all sorts of overgrown lichen and monitor lizards. It was all jungle.”

Despite the rent of 17,000 Singapore dollars ($12,470) a month, recently increased to 22,000 dollars ($16,140), the Pickerings were taken by the size of the living space: 7,200 square feet spread over a two-story main house and a small cottage. The couple and their two girls, Olivia, 18, and Lucy 14, sleep in the house, while their 15-year-old son Harry uses the cottage, which originally served as staff quarters.

Ku Swee Young, a real estate agent with Savills, says rental prices for high-end properties in Singapore have been increasing by an average of 20 percent a year in the last couple of years. Depending on location, a three- to five-bedroom luxury condominium unit rents for 16,000 dollars to 30,000 dollars ($11,730 to $21,990) a month, while houses can range from 7,000 dollars ($5,130) a month, for a two-story terrace house, to 45,000 dollars ($33,000), for a bungalow on a large lot.

The family’s main house, which dates from the early 1910s and sits on top of a small hill, is reached by a long private driveway that ends under a porte-cochère. The house, which is only one room deep, was designed along a linear plan, with rooms opening into one another through tall, graceful archways.

“These houses were designed so that direct sunlight would not come into the house to heat it up,” Mrs. Pickering said. “But because it’s only one room deep with windows on both sides, they’re actually quite bright. They’re very nicely designed and are ideal for entertaining.”

After a small entrance hall, visitors step into a 13-by-25-foot reception room that then leads to the living room, dining room, breakfast room and kitchen. At the end of the house, two smaller rooms serve as a studio for Mrs. Pickering, who is a decorative artist, and a bedroom for their live-in housekeeper.

While the wood floors and high ceilings are typical features of black-and-white houses, the Pickerings’ home includes some unusual features, like exposed red brickwork on the house’s upper facade and tall arched windows on the ground floor that open onto a large terrace with a swimming pool.

Upstairs, a large landing area serves as a family room; each of the three large bedrooms has a balcony, walk-in closet and bathroom. “Black-and-white houses usually have huge bedrooms, but they don’t have many,” Mrs. Pickering said. “I’d love to rebuild this house in another country, because I love its proportions and how it flows. But I would definitely reconfigure the upstairs to have more rooms.”

Mold and bugs are probably the house’s two biggest problems; there is a need to be vigilant about termites and cleaning up after the geckos, she said. “There’s also always something breaking. Because the lightening protection is not sufficient for the number of direct hits we get, we’ve gone through two computers, a hard drive and two TVs.”

The Pickerings’ is one of 33 black-and-white houses around the Mount Pleasant area; there are similar pockets elsewhere in the city. The houses are magnets for expatriates but unloved by Singaporeans, for whom they have sinister associations. “Some of the more senior taxi drivers don’t like to come here at night,” Mrs. Pickering said. “These houses were taken over by the high command of the Japanese military during the Second World War, and some Singaporeans believe they’re haunted.”

Family members have not felt any ghostly presence, but they have had plenty of encounters with unusual creatures: fruit bats, hungry monkeys looking for food in the kitchen, cobras slithering around the garden and even the occasional meterlong monitor lizard.

“When we first moved in, the gardener killed a snake as it was in the process of eating another one; it was, ‘Geez, two in one go, great!’ ” Mrs. Pickering said with a laugh, adding that her neighbor recently found a 4.5-meter (15-foot) python in her garden that took five men to get rid of.

Not all of the garden creatures are threatening, though. The sprawling 130,000-square-foot area, which is full of mature Tembusu and Albasia trees protected by a local heritage designation, is host to some beautiful birds. “We get exquisite kingfisher birds of the most gorgeous turquoise blue that come sitting on the railing of the swimming pool every single day,” Mrs. Pickering said.

“Singaporeans usually don’t like this type of home. They don’t like the jungle, the dark and the bugs. But at some point, I believe they will realize having nature like this is the ultimate luxury in this world.” [End of Story]

Classic colonial discourse: natives / locals don't value what is 'theirs', or are too caught up in superstition and fear to explore the wonders of their own home (CF Passage to India). But the piece obscures the fact that 1. Singaporeans aren't "into" colonial houses because they're just too damn expensive (22 000 bucks!) for any Singaporean to even get near! With a median household income of less than 4000 bucks, and a huge income gap causing more than 90% of Singaporean households to be below the 'average' income (see this), surely the material fact of the matter shouldn't be mystified by exotic stories about low-wage earning taxi drivers being afraid of the ghosts of Japanese soldiers and the people they murdered ...

, and 2. that the Pickerings are merely replicating colonial structures of economic oppression -- I'm assuming that they're in Singapore being paid big bucks for a job ("senior executive at an international shipping company") that a Singaporean could do, and probably does, for much less ...

Still, for a chance to see the interior of a house you'll never otherwise see --
click here

Higgledy Piggledy

2008-05-13T14:46:00.005-04:00

Owing to a discussion early this morning about metrical forms, I was just perusing various wikipedia entries on the subject and came upon this: the "higgledy piggledy". It's an invented verse-form involving double dactyls. (A dactyl is simply a foot of verse that has one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones). Here are the conditions:

1. There are two stanzas. Each stanza is made up of four lines. Each of the first three lines must be double dactyls. The fourth line is a dactyl plus a single accented syllable.

2. The first line must be repetitive nonsense.

3. The second line of the poem MUST introduce the subject via a proper name.

4. One of the lines of the second stanza must contain a single word that is a double dactyl.

5. The final words of each stanza must rhyme.

Of course, I couldn't resist ... So here's my "higgledy piggledy" to my recent obsession: banjo playing ... (with fully annotated commentary of course ...)

Bum-ditty, Bum-ditty*
Gary the Quick-Fingered#
Frailed on his banjo all
Throughout the night.

Edna who loved him but
Hating the twinging twang
Unceremoniously*
Turned off the light.#

*The "bum-ditty" stroke is the basic stroke in clawhammer style banjo -- which is what I'm currently trying to play!
# I wish ...
* That's actually one of Edna's favorite words!
# Nothing of the sort has happened. Edna's been really supportive of my banjo playing!

I live near morons ...

2008-04-07T08:15:00.002-04:00

One of the things I take pleasure doing is calling the police on my unruly neighbors. But I guess the police are always on top of things here in the land of stupid white kids partying when they should be studying. True to the reputation of MSU undergrads (Go State!) as moronic party freaks, there was a big party that turned into a riot over the weekend. The partying began at an apartment complex just off campus and the crowed swelled to about 4000.

Here's some video:

Luck of the Draw

2008-02-29T08:43:00.002-05:00

Having never won anything in a lucky draw, raffle or even a table prize in one of those staff dinners, I was most irritated to receive the following this morning and thus have embellished it with my petty comments:

Dear Sir,

VERIFICATION OF OVERSEAS STATUS

1. On your application, an electronic Exit Permit (eEP) no. IAT 6863, valid from 02/08/2007 to 01/08/2010 for the purpose of your overseas study in USA ["for study in the USA" would be clearer as it gets around the passive construction and still sounds bureaucratic], was issued to you.

2. We are conducting a routine random verification exercise [never win lucky draw can get picked for this kind of thing ...] and you have been selected [as one of 2 lucky winners of an all expense paid trip to climb Peng Kang hill ... ] by our system to furnish documentary proof of your current overseas status [again, "proof that you are currently overseas" would be less clumsy].

3. Please let us have an updated documentary proof ["an" is wrong] certifying the purpose of your overseas stay [Re-write as: "Please let us have a document explaining why you are overseas". I should think that "certification" can't refer to a "purpose" but to the legality of my current status, something which the system already has, since it approved my permit] such as a company letter stating the duration of overseas employment [I think they should have more than one form letter for this, since point one already acknowledges that I applied for the permit "for the purpose of my overseas study in the USA"] with the name and designation of the signatory or a properly endorsed school letter stating the level and full duration of your course. You may email or fax the relevant document(s) to us at 63733173, within 1 month from the date of this letter. [of course, this being MINDEF, there isn't a date on the letter] Thank you.

4. Should you require clarification, please contact the Exit Permit Office at 63733136/38/39 or the MINDEF eServices Centre at +65 65676767, if you are calling from overseas [from "a location overseas" would be more correct, though I will concede that in Singaporean English "overseas" has become a proper noun, in the same way that outremer was the shorthand reference to the Crusader Kingdoms in Medieval Europe] , or [a semi-colon would correct the run-on: "overseas; or,"] 1800-3676767 (1800-eNSNSNS), if you are calling in Singapore.

Yours faithfully, [I'm glad you're still faithful ...]

Susan Woo (Mdm)
NS Registration & Enlistment Centre (NSREC)
Tel : 6373 3139
Fax : 6373 3173

Given that Susan Woo (Mdm) probably didn't write the standard letter and NS
clerks did, it really isn't her fault ...

Sounds and Sweet Airs

2008-02-14T08:54:00.008-05:00

I've been listening, quite obsessively, to the British hymn "I Vow to Thee My Country". I've mentioned the hymn in connection to a fabulous movie ("Another Country") on the blog some time back but I've most recently revived an interest in the hymn because it moves me in ways that make me suspicious and worried about who (or what) I am.
Ok, this basically means that listening to the hymn makes me teary. Earlier this week, as I listened to it on YouTube, I was just downright weepy. Here's the version that moved this hard heart as well as the lyrics:

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,

Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;

The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,

That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;

The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,

Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;

We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;

Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;

And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,

And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Now, what intrigues as well as irritates me, is how such a nationalistic hymn of jingoism that subordinates choice and freedom to that old lie and masks imperial ambition as obedience to a higher call moves me to tears. Even if the imperial ambitions of the hymn are outmoded the comments on the YouTube video attest to the fact that the hymn stirs lots of feelings of patriotism. (I even saw a comment on another video of the hymn that said "we will have the empire again ... "). An old verse that is now no longer included in hymnal versions of the song underscores the virulent and violent nationalist sentiment that the existing verses make very little effort of concealing:

I heard my country calling, away across the sea,

Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.

Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,

And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.

I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns,

I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.

The use of the hymn in the film Another Country is smart precisely because it questions the values of sacrifice in the name of imperial expansion. Yet I also found myself emotionally stirred when the hymn's melody (from Holst's "Jupiter" and also known as "Thaxted") was used at key points of the blatantly propagandistic film Roaring Across the Horizon, a Chinese film about China's superhuman and successful attempts to develop the 原子弹 (do I have that right?) In that film, Holst's theme swells in the background every time the Chinese manage something amazing -- like flattening the uneven, sandy ground of the Gobi desert with huge rollers driven only by raw manpower, calculating with abacuses what the Americans and Soviets could work out only with the aid of computers, and, of course, firing off the bombs.

Adding another dimension to this question of why I am so strangely moved is the fact that Holst's uplifting and majestic theme really comes in the middle of a very different piece of music. The "Jupiter" movement of Holst's The Planets is also subtitled "The Bringer of Jollity" and its opening strides, as well as the rest of the movement really do create a rather light-hearted atmosphere with its quick tempo and playful call-response accents of the woodwinds and brass: some of it sounds like incidental music for an old Western. Placing the sweeping grandeur of this middle section against the frivolity of the rest of the movement conveys a message that is quite different from the hymn's rather straightforward appropriation of the stirring melody. Especially interesting in thinking about the musical context of the Thaxted theme is the way it returns with the low brass toward the end of the movement, gets taken up by the trumpets but then gets shuffled, unresolved, into the rest of the movement's final seconds.(Here's a video of the entire movement).

So, my question revolves around how someone whose developed so many defenses against nationalistic feeling goes to pieces at something so flagrantly 'patriotic'. Worse, it isn't even 'my own country' that we're talking about here but a wholly irrational response to some vague (but nonetheless dangerous) feeling of .... I don't even know what to call it. Perhaps the idea of sacrifice just gets me. I'd be interested to know if anyone else is strangely moved by the hymn and if they can put a finger on why.

Paella!

2008-02-11T12:12:00.000-05:00

I finally took the plunge and tried cooking paella last night. I'd been fascinated by the dish since my first encounter with it in a Cuban restaurant in mid-town Manhattan. It was really a slice of heaven -- great tasting rice with sausage and seafood on top, all served in a huge platter. I was further intrigued by the fact that saffron is required to make it, saffron being that really expensive spice. Anyway, the paella I made ended up okay ... not spectacularly flavorful or anything but still something I was pretty pleased with. (And by the way, that glass of pink juice in the background, is grapefruit. It's our drink of choice now since we can get 18 pound bags -- about 20 + grapefruit -- for five bucks ....)

Those burnt bits of rice from the bottom of the pan are supposed to be highly prized .... Given that connection, I now tend to think of paella as a Spanish version of claypot chicken rice. I guess that's one way to navigate around a world of food ....

There we have it -- the world's most expensive spice. I managed to get this one gram jar for about 5 bucks. Which means an ounce of the stuff costs well over 100 dollars ...!

Books Most Unread Meme

2008-02-05T12:19:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting meme. The list of books below are books that have been most tagged "unread" on LibraryThing. So, go through the list and tag see if you've read them!

In bold = You've read it
In red = Started but didn't finish
In blue= It's still sitting on your shelf untouched
No formatting = don't own, haven't read

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (239)
2. The complete fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob Grimm (20)
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (200)
4. One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (179)
5. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (140)
6. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155)
7. Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (167)
8. Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (110)
9. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (129)
10. Ulysses by James Joyce (129)
11. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (128)
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (159) *
13. The complete short stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway (13)
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (160)
15. The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (126)
16. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (106)
17. A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (123)
18. The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (124) *
19. The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (113)
20. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (97)
21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (92)
22. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (117)*
23. Emma by Jane Austen (123)*
24. The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (81)
25. Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco (100)
26. The Odyssey by Homer (130)
27. The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding (66)
28. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (96)
29. The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (69)
30. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (64)
31. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (92)
32. Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (97)
33. The Iliad by Homer (113)
34. The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon (96)
35. Dracula by Bram Stoker (101)
36. The book thief by Markus Zusak (72)
37. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (127)
38. The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (96)*
39. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (103)
40. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (58)
41. The house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (61)
42. The once and future king by T. H. White (82)
43. Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence (72)
44. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (98)
45. Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood (79)
46. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (127)
47. The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake (50)
48. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (80)
49. The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (78)
50. Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift (83)
51. The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (85)
52. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (54)
53. Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (121)
54. The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (87)
55. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (75)
56. The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99)*
57. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (93)
58. A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce (93)
59. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (94)
60. The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (82)
61. The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger (113)
62. The known world by Edward P. Jones (57)
63. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (83)
64. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (77)
65. Swann's way by Marcel Proust (61)
66. Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (62)
67. The bonesetter's daughter by Amy Tan (60)
68. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (101)
69. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (61)
70. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (99)
71. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (70)
72. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (59)
73. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (56)
74. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (77)
75. To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (76)
76. The mill on the Floss by George Eliot (56)
77. Persuasion by Jane Austen (85)
78. Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (64)
79. Baudolino by Umberto Eco (58)
80. The divine comedy by Dante Alighieri (60)
81. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (53)*
82. Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (79)
83. Underworld by Don DeLillo (59)
84. Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (64)*
85. The island of the day before by Umberto Eco (54)
86. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (83)
87. The man in the iron mask by Alexandre Dumas (42)
88. The English patient by Michael Ondaatje (64)
89. In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its… by Truman Capote (78)
90. Bleak House by Charles Dickens (62)
91. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (79)
92. Les misérables by Victor Hugo (72)
93. The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (86)
94. A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess (83)
95. The portrait of a lady by Henry James (59)
96. The phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (55)
97. Silas Marner by George Eliot (54)
98. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (46)*
99. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (61)
100. One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (78)
101. Infinite jest : a novel by David Foster Wallace (53)
102. The inferno by Dante Alighieri (78)
103. The ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke (39)
104. Cat's eye by Margaret Atwood (58)
105. Anansi boys : a novel by Neil Gaiman (81)
106. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West… by Gregory Maguire (91)
107. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (59)
108. Twenty thousand leagues under the sea by Jules Verne (57)
109. Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro (68)
110. As I lay dying by William Faulkner (64)
111. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (74)
112. Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (58)
113. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (78)
114. The age of innocence by Edith Wharton (59)
115. Cold mountain by Charles Frazier (66)
116. Snow falling on cedars by David Guterson (63)
117. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (90)
118. Dubliners by James Joyce (74)
119. The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and… by Brian Greene (56)
120. Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen (87)
121. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (48)
122. American gods : a novel by Neil Gaiman (94)
123. Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt (65)
124. A princess of Roumania by Paul Park (24)
125. The last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (51)
126. The Dante Club : a novel by Matthew Pearl (52)
127. The confusion by Neal Stephenson (56)
128. Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (60)
129. Uncle Tom's cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (56)
130. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (67)
131. The thirteenth tale : a novel by Diane Setterfield (59)
132. Tropic of cancer by Henry Miller (51)
133. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (54)
134. Cloud atlas : a novel by David Mitchell (58)
135. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (64)
136. Vellum by Hal Duncan (27)
137. Freedom & necessity by Steven Brust (27)
138. The good earth by Pearl S. Buck (56)
139. A people's history of the United States : 1492-present by Howard Zinn (61)
140. Walden by Henry David Thoreau (55)
141. White Teeth: A Novel by Zadie Smith (64)
142. Son of a witch : a novel by Gregory Maguire (48)
143. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (51)
144. The return of the native by Thomas Hardy (47)
145. Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie (58)
146. Northanger abbey by Jane Austen (63)
147. Angela's ashes : a memoir by Frank McCourt (73)
148. Villette by Charlotte Bronte (46)
149. The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (66)
150. Dune by Frank Herbert (85)
151. The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (79)
152. Everything is illuminated : a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer (64)
153. The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman by Laurence Sterne (46)
154. Naked lunch by William S. Burroughs (56)
155. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (47)
156. Sophie's world : a novel about the history of philosophy by Jostein Gaarder (68)
157. Brave new world by Aldous Huxley (95)
158. The system of the world by Neal Stephenson (48)
159. A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (66)
160. Utopia by Thomas More (52)
161. The Aeneid by Virgil (66)
162. Pattern recognition by William Gibson (55)
163. Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen (109)
164. Prodigal summer : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (52)
165. The mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy (47)
166. The mysterious flame of Queen Loana : an illustrated novel by Umberto Eco (42)
167. The plague by Albert Camus (63)
168. The woman in white by Wilkie Collins (49)
169. Watership Down by Richard Adams (71)
170. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (65)
171. Empire falls by Richard Russo (51)
172. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (72)
173. The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (71)
174. The Eyre affair by Jasper Fforde (65)
175. The inheritance of loss by Kiran Desai (43)
176. Far from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy (48)
177. Of human bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (44)
178. The idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (56)
179. Light in August by William Faulkner (47)
180. The golden compass by Philip Pullman (81)
181. The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (60)
182. Suite française by Irene Nemirovsky (47)
183. A passage to India by E.M. Forster (53)
184. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into… by Robert M. Pirsig (66)
185. Fragile things : short fictions and wonders by Neil Gaiman (48)
186. The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (28)
187. The Bhagavad Gita by Anonymous (43)
188. The road by Cormac McCarthy (60)
189. Beowulf : a new verse translation by Anonymous (69)
190. The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro (54)
191. The moonstone by Wilkie Collins (45)
192. On beauty : a novel by Zadie Smith (52)
193. Women in love by D.H. Lawrence (42)
194. Midnight in the garden of good and evil : a Savannah story by John Berendt (55)
195. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (87)
196. The night watch by Sarah Waters (35)
197. A room with a view by E.M. Forster (47)
198. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956; an experiment in literary… by Aleksander Solzenitsyn (41)
199. The plot against America by Philip Roth (49)
200. Eldest by Christopher Paolini (55)

Suþest off Tatarie

2008-01-30T14:24:00.000-05:00

Sin þe tyme off mi laste poste, wher Y shared þe deliʒts off "Chai Dou Gwei", þe Marquis off Est Launcinge has ofered mi, Gareþ Peregrinius, hys patronage too wryte aboute mi travailles inne þe londes Suþest off Tatarie. Mi journeyinges wil bi writ an prynted bi Wynkyn de Wyrde atte hys moost magyckal WyrdePress: http://southeastoftartarie.wordpress.com.

Soo, gentil rederes, com rede off mi travailles!

se cayk þe heþen in lond Est of Tartarie namen ...

2008-01-27T11:37:00.000-05:00

Fyrst, takke se cayk of turnepe, cold as ise, an place ilke cayk withinne þe gynn off fyre þat hit mai þauen.

Next after, wyþ kichene kniʒf sharpe, sklice cayk inne pieces sclendre.

Forsoþ, whan þilke cayk preparated ys, place hit wiþ grese ouer fyre to fryen.

Eek lift hit not to leit ons otheir sie, ne allouen hit ybrent be.

Frie se cayk til-unto hit ben crisp, þan tourne hit ouer.

Nou, fful hastyli, unto se crisp cayk ffrerely poure egges twein, liʒtli ibeten.

Lik-wise, kest ishiled praines unto se cayk, an continuen foþ to frien þe mete fful welle.

Wiþ sause off fish, and wiþ peper off good colour, and wiþ salt a Jeue mai eten, finish þe mete.

Þan verrayly þou shelte habben se cayk þe heþen in lond Suþ-Est of Tartarie namen "Chai Dou Gwei."

Strange Tales

2008-01-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

Here are two snippets that are somewhat related (as analogues) to one of the romances that I'm working on now. I tried my hand at translating the Latin, so that I could get a clearer sense of how these analogues compare to the work that I'm working on. The Latin excerpts are from a relatively dated article (written in the 1940s) and yes, in those days, articles would quote in a 'foreign' language at length without translation or even setting up the context properly, assuming that anyone bothering to read the article would be fluent in a range of languages.

From Gilles Le Muisit's Chronique et Annales, recording an event of 1337:
Miraculum autem tale fuit: rex predictus habebat plures concubinas; fuit autem inter eas una, quam rex pre aliis diligebat, que erat christinana; dictus autem rex plries precibus, minis et terroribus requisivit ut christianitatem abnegaret et legi, quam tenebat, se subderet; illa autem semper restitit et fidem christianam obsevavit. Accidit vero quod rex eam cognovit et illa, concipiens puerum, edidit masculinum; fuit autem illa creatura a latere dextro alba et a sinistro latere nigra nimis; et rex, hoc cognito et visa creatura, fecit expellere, precipiens ut nunquam compareret; mater autem per interpositas personas rogavit regem ut de infante suam posset facere voluntatem; habita autem super hoc a rege licentia, fecit illum baptizari et incontinenti post baptima nulla nigredo comparuit. Rex autem, ut audivit et vidit miraculum, citius quam potuit fecit se baptizare.

My clumsy translation:
Moreover, such a great miracle occurred: the aforementioned King had many concubines; however, it happened that one among these, whom the King esteemed above the others, was a Christian. While the King commanded with many requests, threats, terrors, and laws, which she was placed under, seeking that she give up Christianity, this concubine always stood firm and observed the Christian faith. In truth, it came to pass that the King came to know [in the Biblical sense ...] her and she conceived a child and gave birth to a boy; however, it happened that that creature was white on its right side and exceedingly dark on its left flank. When the King became aware of this and saw the creature, he disowned it, and warned that at no time should it come into his sight; however, the mother intervened and asked the King that she be allowed to make a good wish regarding the infant. During the time which the King thought over the matter, she had the child baptized and after the baptism no blackness was in sight. Meanwhile, the King, on hearing and seeing the miracle, had himself baptized as quickly as he could.

And here's another similar tale ...

Miraculum de flilio cujusdam Tarari
Eodem anno, Rex Tartarorum ab urbe Ierosolomitana expulit Sarracenos. Frater hujus Regis Tartarorem ex filia Regis Armeniæ genuit filim hispidum et pilosum; quem cum pater cremari juberet, mater sibi dari infantem petiit; quem fecit illico a presbyteris baptizari. Quo baptizato, cecidit statim tota villositas, et puer ille apparuit levis et pulcher. Quod miraculum cum pater vidisset, credidit ipse, et domus ejus tota.

Again, my translation ...
A miracle concerning the child of one of the Tartars
In the same year [supposedly 1299], the King of the Tartars expelled the Saracens from the city of Jerusalem. The brother of this King of the Tatars and the daughter of the King of Armenia gave birth to a hairy and shaggy son; who the father, on seeing it, commanded it to be burnt, but the mother herself begged to dedicate the child, and immediately brought it to a priest to be baptized. Being baptized, all the tufts of hair immediately fell from the child, and that boy appeared smooth and beautiful. As soon as the father saw this miracle, he himself believed, and so did all their household.

With all that recent food blogging, I figured I had to raise the cultural dignity of this blog by a teeny bit. I guess miracles of translation fit the bill ...

Level Zero - 1/10/2002

2008-01-10T18:39:00.000-05:00

I am a vegetable. Turning toward the sun hurts my eyes cause I'm so used to looking inside myself. I wonder about the properties of liquid nitrogen when desiring that my kin are preserved in something more exotic than salt water - I am a vegetable.

I am a mother seal. Looking for her pup to suckle. I swim in the salt seawater with the mackeral and fast silver fish. I open my mouth as a dish to net what I'll serve upon a plate for dinner. I am a mother seal.

I am a CD case - I was misplaced by the Grandfather who felt his children's children were being cheeky and were ignoring him. He chucked me behind the old Peranakan style wardrobe with the awful hard brown carvings. They've searched all over for me, but dare not go near Gong Gong's dangerous wardrobe with its jewel eyed monsters making strange procession over frame and handle. I am a CD case.

I am the dance. When music runs about the heels and turns still beings into motion mills, I plan and strategise the next surmise of movement. When I come down, the ladies frown a curtsy and the men hurry to meet me. The names used to greet me - Fadango, Salsa, Ballet, Jazz - I come to own, muscle and bone become fluid with me. I am the dance.

I am the sound of squishy toes. After they ran through the garden mud on the pretext of hosing down their feet, they decided to linger on the garden swing, fleecing time with rhythmic ups and downs. Toes mingled with mud, playing footsie with other toes. I am the sound of squishy toes.

I am the baby made. After passion and naked tenderness, what is left? I am the baby made.

I am the photo frame that was given. I was first given as a gaudy sea shelled gift on a birthday as remote as the exotic exoskeletons that line my border. Through a succession of "Oh No"s and "It's horrible"s, I passed from birth to death, from wedding to anniversary, from the altar to the garage heap. I am the photo frame that was given.

I am the word that was written. Before I appeared in blue black or multicoloured ink, perhaps I lingered at the corner of his mind. Perhaps I snickered when I danced away as he grappled furiously to pin me down. I gaffawed as when stars burst as his typing fingers failed to stroke me into existence. I skipped like pebbles dancing upon the wave lined surf. Then, sank onto the page. I am the word that was written.

Shoulder to Shoulder

2008-01-04T21:41:00.001-05:00

So -- with John here for just a few more days, I couldn't resist the opportunity to cook more meat. A recent entry in the NYT column "The Minimalist" showed how easy it is to roast a whole shoulder of pork. So that's what we set out to do.

The first problem was finding a whole shoulder of pork. I did locate one but it was the day before we'd decided to commence with the roasting. So I let that go. And by the next day, we weren't able to locate a whole shoulder at the two supermarts that we got to. We ended up picking out a portion of shoulder that still had a substantial amount of bone in it and some skin on top. It ended up being a fortunate thing -- the cut we got was about 6 and a half pounds, substantially smaller than the original shoulder I located and we're still eating it after three days. The shoulder was actually amazingly affordable -- at a dollar a pound, it only cost us $6.50!

So -- the seasoning. We pureed half a large white onion and a red pepper. And just threw in some garlic, five-spice powder, salt and pepper, smeared it all over the meat, and just left the roast in the oven set at 300 F and let the low heat work its magic.

So the shoulder goes in at 3.10 pm.

And here's what it looks like after two hours. We took it out for its first watering and turning over.

And at about 6.15, we take it out again for another turn and watering. It's getting nice and brown now.

The final deal. We take it out at about 8 pm and let it rest a bit before slicing into it. The caramelized colors are just wonderful to look at.

We cut into it and serve it up with roasting new potatoes and carrots.

John and I ate significant portions (with snow chilled bottles of Heineken).

Edna, of course, didn't touch any of it, and ate fish sticks instead.

Sinfully Singaporean

2008-01-01T10:44:00.000-05:00

This blog has seen just about everything: the blues, attempts at literary and cultural criticism, frustrated rants, ecstatic verbal experiments, nasty comments, and even ruder rebuttals, flurries of readership, no readership, strange ideas, funky pictures, and even songs about dogs. But nothing will prepare you for what is about to be unveiled.

Since John is visiting from Chapel Hill, where he hasn't had much of an opportunity to eat Singaporean food (and faces half a year more of meal-plan fare when he goes back), I became obsessed with the idea that we should make something sinfully Singaporean. While he's been here, we've done Hainanese Chicken Rice, regular Chinese stir fry stuff, Assam fish curry, herbal chicken soup, and a range of different noodles .... So it only seemed natural that we cook the ultimate male-Singaporean fantasy: Kong Bak Pau.

The run up to the Kong Bak Pau. Under Edna's directions (and a phone call home to her mom), I decided to stew the thing overnight. So the Kong Bak project became strangely tied into the Bak Kut Teh he had the night before. I cooked both simultaneously, but the photos really concentrate on the Kong Bak.

The Bak Kut Teh:
Easy and yumy. Just tossed in lots of garlic with the packaged mixes and spare ribs. We tossed in chicken (for Edna, who was thoroughly disgusted with all the pork being processed for consumption ...)and some taupok squares. We managed to find Yu Teow (which were packaged as "chinese doughnuts") at the Oriental Mart and though they were a little dense, they worked nicely with the Bak Kut Teh.

The Kong Bak.
So, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves. I had a great time cooking it, especially grossing everyone out with how much fat there is on belly pork. I managed to hew away quite chunk, and also scooped away lots of fat that coagulated on the stew. The seasoning was easy -- some dark soy sauce, cloves of garlic, two cinnamon sticks, and a splash of five-space powder. And the thing just stewed ...

Preparing the sum jium bak. And soaking the dried mushrooms.
Sourdough swooning over the possibilities ...

The Kong Bak after several hours of stewing and refrigeration. The white stuff is all coagulated lard that needed scooping up. I think it looks like Chai Dao Kway.

Scraping away yet more fat. John getting ready to dig in -- or is it really a look of apprehension and fear of clogged arteries? Kong Bak Pau!

Songs from the Sourdough

2008-01-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Here's another installment of "Songs from the Sourdough". Listen to it and you'll get a pretty good idea of the kinds of mischief Sourdough gets up to daily.

Rusty Tongue

My dog's got a rusty tongue
My dog's got a rusty tongue
My dog's got a rusty tongue
She's gone and licked up all
The strings of my guitar
My dog's got a rusty tongue

My dog's got a salty mouth
My dog's got a salty mouth
My dog's got a salty mouth
She's gone and eaten all
The cheese from the store
My dog's got a salty mouth

My dog's got crunchy teeth
My dog's got crunchy teeth
My dog's got crunchy teeth
She's gone and chewed up all
The dried and frozen leaves
My dog's got crunchy teeth

My dog's got a cold wet snout
My dog's got a cold wet snout
My dog's got a cold wet snout
Into snow she's burrowed deep
With her hands and feet
My dog's got a cold wet snout

My dog's got a stinky nose
My dog's got a stinky nose
My dog's got a stinky nose
She's gone and sniffed up all
The socks left in their shoes
My dog's got a stinky nose

My dog's got furry paws
My dog's got furry paws
My dog's got furry paws
She's gone and hoovered all
The dirt from the carpet floor
My dog's got furry paws

My dog's got a wriggly butt
My dog's got a wriggly butt
My dog's got a wriggly butt
When she tries to dance
She bounces on her bum
My dog's got a wriggly butt

My dog's got tired eyes
My dog's got tired eyes
My dog's got tired eyes
She's gone and read up all
The books of medieval lore
My dog's got tired eyes

My dog's got real bored ears
My dog's got real bored ears
My dog's got real bored ears
All she ever hears
Are tunes from this guitar
My dog's got real bored ears

My dog's got a rusty tongue
My dog's got a rusty tongue
My dog's got a rusty tongue
She's gone and licked up all
The strings of my guitar
My dog's got a rusty tongue

The Sidney Awards

2007-12-28T09:05:00.000-05:00

Links to some great reading ... here and here

[sic]

2007-12-10T10:37:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is a little strange but here goes. Anyone reading academic articles inevitably comes across that little notation "sic", inserted to indicate an error in whatever one is quoting. "Sic", which translates from the Latin as "Thus,so", is meant to indicate that the error is present in the original and not through the fault or oversight of the present writer.

I've always wondered why people bother – might as well just correct the 'error', especially if it's a grammatical or spelling mistake. But "sic" is often used as a dig at whomever one quotes as well. First, it demonstrates fallibility in one's sources, especially useful if you're arguing against them. Second, "sic" can be put to ideological uses as well. If one reads feminist journals, one comes across examples such as

"Speech is no mere verbalization of conflicts and systems of domination. . . it is the very object of man's [sic] conflicts" (Foucault 1972b, 216)

I'm assuming that "sic" was used because the authors of the essay objected to Foucault's (or the translator of Foucault's) universalizing use of "man" to refer to "humankind".

And what really prompted this entry. Check out the multiple "sic"s on the tracklisting of this CD of Rev. Gary Davis, one of the greatest blues/ragtime/gospel fingerstyle guitarists that ever recorded material! I can't for the life of me figure out why "sic" is used here. Ok ... maybe "Baby, What You Going To Do" (track 3) is ungrammatical (but come on, it's a title and these are the blues... ) and perhaps these were titles the Rev. gave to his performances aren't the proper ones.

Anyway – it's just really strange.

Nothing but the Radio on ...

2007-12-03T09:17:00.000-05:00

It must be the terrible weather that makes you turn on the radio a lot (internet radio in this case) and hang out with voices coming across the void on waves of sound. A few weeks ago, we attended a "Sweet Honey in the Rock" concert. It was superb acapella singing for over two hours and extremely inspiring as well. I'd learnt about the group when I was in JC (and getting into the whole protest music phase) and it was a real treat to watch them in concert. Anyway, here's a link to the NPR page where they perform and talk about their music. At least listen to the track "I Remember, I Believe", which was written by the founder of the group Bernice Johnson Reagon. It's a tremendously good song and it's sung fantastically by the group.

Another thing I've been listening to is the "Prairie Home Companion". It sounds silly, but there's some great humor and bluegrass, folk, jazz, and gospel on the program. The host, Garrison Keller, is really funny and sings wonderfully too and they've got great special effects guys doing all sorts to sound effects acrobatics. A recent program featured Billy Collins, a former poet laureate whose office was right opposite mine at Lehman College (Never caught a glimpse of him though -- must have had different teaching days). Anyway, his poems are really great -- funny, smart and poignant. Here's a link to the program, and play the clip from about 10.35 to hear Collins read. The third poem, "Schoolsville", came on while I was picking up some groceries. He started reading it just about when I pulled into the carpark so I stayed in the car, because the moment was just perfect. The show also features the wonderful Madeleine Peyroux!

Iron and Wine

2007-11-29T14:29:00.000-05:00

By divine providence and sheer good luck (actually I was searching for something for a section title for my chapter), I visited the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" and Lo and Behold, Iron and Wine was slated to play live at the station!
It's worth a listen if you like Iron and Wine. If you aren't already a fan, I sure this set will convert you. He mainly sings material from his new album : The Shepherd's Dog. He does an acoustic version of "Boy with a Coin" which is really great, even though the rich textures of the album version is also mind-blowing. He also sings the extremely moving "Ressurection Fern" and does a very tender version of the epic song "The Trapeze Swinger" (where there's a point when he has to censor himself for radio), and the hauntingly beautiful (if grammatical strange) "He Lays in the Reins".

Listen to it here! (I'm glad I listened to it 'live' cause the link doesn't seem to work properly -- then again, it might just be my connection and you might have better luck)

Other Iron and Wine performances:
NPR World Cafe. (Interview and Studio performance)
In Concert

Sourdough's Song

2007-11-25T18:51:00.000-05:00

Sourdough shows why every dog should have her own theme song. For those of you who want to hear it (and those of you who want to turn it off just in time), it comes on in the second half of the video. In the meantime, one could do worse than Gerry Mulligan playing at the Village Vanguard ...

Sourdough in the Snow

2007-11-24T11:31:00.001-05:00

Meme (with thanks to and text from AnonymousNoises)

2007-11-13T10:26:00.000-05:00

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, iPaq etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

01 - OPENING CREDITS: Penance (OST The Mission) - Ennio Morricone
02 - WAKING UP: Vertigo -Chris Potter
03 - FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: Easter - Patti Smith Group
04 - FALLING IN LOVE: Free - Ornette Coleman
05 - FIGHT SONG: Old Friends - Simon and Garfunkel
06 - BREAKING UP: Bad Whiskey - Skip James
07 - PROM: My Old Flame - Charlie Parker
08 - LIFE: African Mailman - Nina Simone
09 - MENTAL BREAKDOWN: Love Comes to Me - Bonnie "Prince" Billy
10 - DRIVING: Freedom Time - Lauryn Hill
11 - FLASHBACK: Equinox - John Coltrane
12 - WEDDING: Breathless - The Corrs
13 - BIRTH OF CHILD: Lazy Bones - Skip James
14 - FINAL BATTLE: Blue in Green - Bill Evans Trio
15 - DEATH SCENE: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Bob Dylan
16 - FUNERAL SONG: All or Nothing At All - Diana Krall
17 - END CREDITS: You Got the Pocket Book, I Got the Key - Stefan Grossman

Sourdough plays fetch!

2007-11-05T16:37:00.001-05:00

Visiting

2007-10-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

The past two and a half weeks have been an enjoyable if physically exhausting time. Edna's brother, cousin and friend visited and we tried our best to show them a good time. That's not that easy to do in Lansing though I think they did have quite a relaxing and hopefully fulfilling time. I got a lot of practice driving since Edna had to be in school and I'm the one with the "flexible" schedule.

The most memorable trip we took was to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It was memorable largely because of the rugged beauty of the dunes and the magnificent views of Lake Michigan. Of course, there was the crazy climb. We were at the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, with all the other old folks and retirees, admiring the views of Lake Michigan. Then Edna decides that it would be fun and challenging to scramble down the 450 foot bluff. There's actually a warning sign that suggests that you not try it but, well, I guess the thrill of being physically challenged augments one's judgment. If Edna was going, I was as well. I'd seen one young man crawl up and sit breathlessly on the boardwalk, so I knew that it would be difficult. Anyway, we made the descent easily enough and the high bluff loomed ominously above us. Going down, we passed another guy, who could only say, "It's very tough ..." as he scrambled up the sand past us.

To give an idea of how physically demanding the thing was: we had to climb on all fours, we kept slipping because of the sand, and we had to stop every twenty steps because our hearts were beating so hard and our limbs were fatigued. And we're not exactly out of shape -- we've been running quite a lot. After a while we realized that we were providing some entertainment / drama for people at the top who were taking pictures of the Asian couple crazy enough to make the climb. We did make it, after about half an hour of climbing, and were congratulated by an old couple who were monitoring our progress up the bluff ("We were wondering if you'd make it before the park closed ....") Apart from the sense of achievement, we came away with sand filled shoes, forearms, quads, and gluts that ached for several days after, and a healthy respect for warning signs (more me than Edna).

Anyway, some pics:

The long descent. If one looks carefully, you can actually see a person at the beach already. This was the other guy that tried the climb while we were there.

This pic was taken at about the half-way mark, it was about a 45 to 60 degree (?) incline. Anyway, after a while you lost sight of the boardwalk at the top of the bluff and really began to feel alone.

Of course we finally make it down and have all the way up ahead of us.

One of our many rest stops. I think the number of stops we made dissuaded anyone else from attempting the climb...

"Let me be your manifestation in the granite streets of the cities, leaving you free for all unencumbered missions. I will be your mark. You will be my meaning. I will be your sign. You will be my signification. You will be the freer, relieved of the mark I carry, to move more fully, further, faster." (S.R. Delany, Flight From Neveryon)

HOooooooowwwwwwwl

2007-10-04T08:04:00.000-04:00

Here's a recording of Ginsburg reading Howl commemorating a 50th Anniversary:

Howl

True Confessions

2007-09-24T17:28:00.001-04:00

As always, here are some thoughts very after an event.

Quite a while back, Otto Fong, science teacher at RI outed himself as gay on a blog-post. Some of the subsequent commentary on the event takes up the questions of homo-sexuality as identity in interesting ways. As I understand it (from the little that I've read), queer theorists tend to now eschew thinking about fundamental identities to think about a range of practices -- a way of thinking about things that debunks the "homo-hetero" dualism, as well as the "normal-deviant" axis. The strength of this kind of thinking and research enables the situation of particular practices rather than pre-ordained identities as the locus of discussion. It also spreads out the sense of 'queerness' because practices within "hetero" sexual relationships that were formerly considered 'safe' from critical inquiry (ie protected because hetero identities are always already assumed to escape the critical eye) can now be connected with practices that are more usually associated with "homosexuality". Work that takes this approach often reveals how intensely culturally bound the prejudices that we take for granted are. For instance, we barely blink an eye when we think about the use of contraception (even though a very large and powerful religion still frowns on it), but in a certain time of human history it was a really really bad thing: what was probably the most common form of contraception in the Middle Ages, coitus interuptus, was considered an unnatural act, and within the mystifying equivalences of the Church's spiritual economy, would have been a worse sin than committing incest with one's own daughter. But that's enough titillation for one blog post (and far too penetrating a glimpse into my research ...)

Yet part of the practice of sexuality in this particular case is the act of "coming out". In an interesting way, "coming out" is a practice that is strangely connected to that older spiritual and moral institution, the Confessional. There are obvious differences. In "coming out", the individual isn't confessing a sin; indeed, one of the reasons for "coming out" is to re-establish for the individual, what is out there in the open, what doesn't need to be hidden, and of course, what therefore shouldn't be regarded as sinful. At the same time, there is a cathartic element to "coming out" that may match or even trump the ritual cleansing associated with the Confessional. More interesting, I think, is the way "coming out" potentially disrupts the way the Confessional works as a form of internalized surveillance camera on the conscience. Confessionals, as a mode of social spiritual control, are turned on their head in a move like Fong's, and are enabled by the paradoxical (public yet intimate) technology of confession that is the Blog.

If the mainstream media is any gauge of popular opinion on the subject, I figure the general position of the "liberal but concerned" individual would be this: "Coming out of the closet is fine but only with family, close friends and peers". There are clear limits to the audience for a Confession. However, like the ritual of Confession, "coming out" must necessarily straddle the institution and the interior, for an effect to be properly wrought. If indeed the Confessional was also a potent tool for the moral instruction of the believer -- you confess your sins, you get instructed in the right way by doing penances assigned by the Confessor -- one interesting question is how "coming out" is itself a potent pedagogical tactic. I know this sounds trivializing, but for individuals for whom educating means more than a paycheck at the end of the month, it may make some sense.

"Coming out" makes the teacher human. I think that too many teachers are far too distant and always on their guard about who they are to be effective in communicating their intellectual passions and interests. Of course, not every teacher is going to have something news-worthy to "come out" (now, obviously, loosely used) about, but surely there are elements in every teachers life, that while not directly related to the subject matter at hand, may strike a chord with his or her students. And while some may accuse this kind of stripping away at oneself as purely self-indulgent attention seeking behavior, I think there's something to be said about the way being vulnerably human establishes an indissoluble tie between persons.

Perhaps one of the greatest privileges I had was to study the poetry of Robert Lowell in JC. The following poem, Waking in the Blue, in the stark naked voice of one of the greatest poets of the confession, illustrates the power of the confessional:

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night,
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--
more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's;
the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie,"
Porcellian '29,
a replica of Louis XVI
without the wig--
redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,
as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit
and horses at chairs.

These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.

In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

NoteBooks

2007-09-19T17:20:00.000-04:00

I was straightening out my things today and realized that I've accumulated quite a pile of notebooks. You'd think that in this techno-driven age the notebook would be an outdated thing of the past. But I've grown to love my notebooks. I think I've filled up quite a number since 2004: I've got the two tiny ones that I use to record the details of mundane happenings. The first was even featured on this blog as a strange romp in the weird imaginative universe of Limitlim. The second is now mostly filled with driving directions, calorie counts and places to bring people when they visit little ol' Lansing. (It's also an overpriced "I-don't-believe-you-paid-that-much-money-for-a-few pieces-of-paper-sewn-together" Moleskine ...)

As for bigger work related notebooks, I think I filled in about five or six hundred pages worth of notebooks while I was doing coursework. I've noticed that a lot of people take classes without needing to jot things down but note-taking has always been a security blanket for me. I've got small handwriting too so the wall of words looks pretty cool when the blanks are all filled in. The first notebook that I used here in the U.S. is quite funny because I was trying to save space. I managed to write really densely -- doubling the lines of text for each ruled line in some instances. (I later found cheap notebooks -- from India, thus further internationalizing my academic endeavors -- in the dollar stores along 125th street ...)

While studying for the Orals I took another two hundred pages of notes (in addition to typing out about two hundred more pages of more coherent reading reports for the consumption of my Committee). I reckon that these pages will come in useful when I begin to teach this material and so my students to be will be treated to dusty spiral bound pages flipped to and fro as I search out that elusive insight that I'm sure I recorded. And no I do not love MSU -- it just was the notebook on sale at the bookstore here when I ran out and needed a new one. Essentially, I've used spiral bound notebooks during my time here: they're are quite convenient except that they leave an imprint on one's writing hand and sometimes turn inconsistently if they're poorly made. I had one where the metal spiraling kept come loose and I always had to struggle with it to pull it out of my bag as the wiring would get caught in fabric.

As for the latest addition to my family of notebooks, I got myself a nice Miquelrius notebook (Mine's a "flexible" leather notebook). It was a bit of a splurge (I'm too embarrassed to confess to how much it cost) and it really looks like a Moleskine imitation -- with elastic band and all. It's a nice thick notebook (300 pages -- and breaking it in I've realized that it's really hard to write on the verso side of the pages because it's still so fat on one end ... ) and should last me the dissertation.

I like notebooks.

Starting up all over again

2007-09-16T15:38:00.000-04:00

After a pleasant week of pottering around, enjoying the cold, working out and calorie counting like a teenage girl, testing new recipes, watching many movies and playing around with Facebook, it's time to get going again. Now the immediate objective is to cobble together a dissertation prospectus ("there's a ten page limit but your bibliography isn't a works cited page ... it's meant to be long ..."). Ten pages isn't a lot -- and that's where the challenge lies. I need to lay out where I stand in the scholarship, say something about my original contribution, discuss my theoretical approach and outline my chapters -- all within 10 pages.

Apparently the 10 page proposal is pretty standard for book proposals in the humanities -- so the prospectus is meant to force one to be succinct. I'm planning to work on the Family (of course, this means interrogating and re-thinking what "family" means) in Middle English poetry. My tentative title (I think it's quite a nice one): Familiar Estrangements: The Practice of Family in Middle English Romance. The first task -- to read up on the history of the family in the middle ages -- represented by this stack -- and hopefully obtain some confirmation of my intuitions ...

Here's Sourdough making sure
I have the right books and working
out which ones will be the most tasty ...

Some things I've been watching

2007-09-14T12:29:00.000-04:00

I haven't really written about the films I've been watching in a while -- so here's a short list.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
The Paper Chase
The Jacket (this was Edna scouting out less known Keira Knightly films)
Domino (Another Keira Knightly film that was really quite funny and great fun ... she's a bounty hunter in this one)
Several Louis Malle documentaries (The Criterion Collection's got a 'new'ish line which releases less well known works by great film-makers. It's aptly named Eclipse. I've had the good fortune of watching (or 'archiving', ahem) the first two sets: The Early Films of Bergman and the Documentaries of Louis Malle.
Eric Rohmer: Suzanne's Career and The Bakery Girl of Monceau.
Basquiat!

I've also starting viewing Roberto Rossilini's post-war trilogy of films: Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero. Thanks to the excellent public interlibrary loan system that connects different libraries throughout Michigan State, I've been able to get a hold of some pretty interesting materials.

Finally Facebooked

2007-09-11T15:19:00.000-04:00

I've succumbed to signing up for a Facebook account after receiving the "n"th email invite. Being the unconnected person that I am, these web-networking things never sustain my interest for very long -- I have Friendster and Multiply accounts but never check them out. I know Facebook is cool -- I've already seen guys with whom I was friends with in ACS on a friend of a friend's profile -- and presumably I could get in touch with them if I were so inclined. Anyway, I've come to think of these connectivity things as distorted reflections of genuine social relations (are we getting into Marx here?), though I'm sure there are proponents of these network things who love Facebook. Anyway, two thoughts:

1. How long would it take for two very separate circles of friends on Facebook to finally come full circle and link up with one another? I'm guessing that for most people, the people that are their friends on Facebook come from a very specific sphere of their lives. For me, it would be all 'em young 'uns that I've had the privilege of teaching. But because Facebook cleverly scans your email account, I also have (one) a friend from an earlier life -- when I was a student at RJ. Now -- the question would be how large would my network have to be before my "peers" link up to my "students". To make this a fair thought experiment, the link cannot replicate the social situation that got me acquainted with either circle. For example, the networking doesn't come full-circle if one of my former students now gets taught by a classmate of mine. (I don't think it can work the other way). Here's the thing. The most probable way that the circles will overlap is through blood relations. Some student somewhere is a nephew, niece, or cousin of one of my friends. But even if this were the case, the fact that Facebook culture governs who ends up being friends with another person, suggests that these 'blood' relationships probably won't get manifested in a Facebook network. (The best way to get your child off Facebook is to become friends with all his / her friends). Of course, the OTHER way that relationships are established would be virtually, through Facebook itself -- the medium is the message. But for the experiment to be 'fair', people can't be allowed to become friends via Facebook.

2. Another experiment. Say you take two people who are pretty close to each other. (For example, Ms. / Dr. Edna Tan ie the wife and I). Each person signs up for a Facebook account but can't add the other person. I'm convinced that it's possible for us to exist as Facebook accounts without our network circles touching.

Anyway, in the spirit of Facebook, here are some pictures that I've put up on my profile:

Album

Get it ?

Done

2007-09-08T05:53:00.000-04:00

It's 5.50 in the morning and the sounds of the City that never sleeps but always dreams in fits and starts have kept me awake since I tried to go to bed several hours ago. Another thing that's been keeping me up -- the caffeine from the great diner we discovered (it had great Eggs Florentine with a really interesting sauce -- pretty fancy for a diner, I think ...) and too many cups of Chinese tea from XO in Chinatown. And of course, the last thing that's keeping me awake is all the adrenaline that's still coursing through my body from the Oral Exams that took place yesterday.

For the first time in my life, I was actually overdressed for an occasion. I've actually seen candidates and examiners emerge from the 'thesis' room (so named because every thesis that has been written under the auspices of the English program at the CUNY GC lines its walls, therefore making it a significant but intimidating venue for the exam -- as my Committee Chair put it, "We could have the exam in my office but we'll do it here so that you'll REALLY remember this room ...") decked out in suits and other formal apparel. But all three examiners were rather casually dressed which was a good sign, I suppose.

So we had "intellectual conversation" for about two hours, with my Committee asking me a wide ranging series of questions about the theoretical, thematic, stylistic, and of course, idiosyncratic elements of the books that I've read over the past few months. Anyway -- I thought it was a very fulfilling experience and I was really tired after the whole affair. By the time my third examiner started asking the questions, I was barely cognizant of what I was saying. Anyway, of the several "low-lights" in the exam, I remember three in particular ( since the ordeal is over, I guess I should say "remember three rather fondly"):

1. This was on my Old English / Middle English Romance / Arthurian list, which was second in questioning order. The response started out fine. I mentioned "Genesis B" as a particularly interesting text because it depicts, in ways that are pretty startling for an early work, Satan in a somewhat sympathetic light (and hence the theory that Milton may have encountered this work). After discussing the way the feudal relationship marks out Satan's character and motivations and his longing to return to his former glory, the questions turned to the way the temptation itself worked. And immediately I knew that I would be in trouble in one of two questions because my mind drew a blank as to how the poem embellishes the temptation scenes. All I could recall was that the demonic tempter poses as a messenger of God to Adam, adopting the role of the servant loyal to a liege lord. What escaped my memory was the fact that Adam rejects the offer because there's not 'written' proof of his status as vassal and that Eve succumbs because the demon entices her with a vision of what acceding would bring (medieval writers had a rich imagination when it came to fleshing out the word of God). I was reduced to an apologetic, "I'm sorry, I really can't remember the specifics ..."

2. The next difficult moment occurred on a question on my more 'theoretical' list, the psychoanalytical material. Essentially, the question was about how theorists apart from Lacan take up the vexed question of how the ego fits into a post-Freudian re-reading of things. Anyway, I launched into a tentative spiel (trying to sound confident but obviously betraying my befuddlement at how to approach the question) about how Luce Irigary's work seems to be taking the Freudian text itself as a problematic ego that ends up suffering different contradictions and resistances when she 'analyzes' it as a feminist, which drew the response, "That's interesting, but I was thinking more about Teresa ...." And then it clicked in my mind, ah yes, Teresa Brennan and her notion of the age of the ego ... Ah well ...

3. When opening his section on the third and final part of the exam, my Comm Chair candidly said that despite his section being the theoretical bit, he would endeavor to end the section by weaving in a question on Langland (the medieval writer of Piers Plowman), "who hasn't yet been mentioned today". And he made good on his promise by closing the exam with a question of how the family is embodied by the text. The difficult thing here is that there aren't that many explicit references to family in the text. I managed to point out how the autobiographical sections added to the C-text as well as a brief allegorical drama involving the Soul in the castle of the Flesh, 'use' the family in literal as well as didactic ways. At the back of my mind I was going to say something about the four daughters of God (Truth, Justice, Mercy, Peace) who make an appearance at the harrowing of Hell but I figured it was 1. too conventional and 2. not quite the Thing that the question was looking for. Of course, my Prof brilliantly elaborated on my answer to point out that one of the most striking moments (unfortunately it didn't strike me) of how the family is embodied by the text is in the description of Piers Plowman, his wife and his oddly (and extravagantly) named children. Unlike the two earlier moments of absolutely drawing a blank and immediate recognition, this moment had my memory gurgling with the faint impression that, yeah, I vaguely recalled that ... he's right.

Anyway, there were several highlights as well, but my overall experience of the thing was that it was really effective as an initiatory rite into the pursuits and conversations that are supposed to consume the rest of my academic and intellectual life. The fact that I'm expected to carry out conversations at the same level of erudition and eloquence as my examiners remains a pretty daunting prospect. I'm still amazed at how exhausted I was after the two hours, not so much intellectually but physically as well: I was ready to zone out for the rest of the evening (but obviously haven't managed to). Anyway, I ended up passing the exam (with distinction, thanks to the generosity of my Committee) and am now formally advanced to candidacy. Or, to use one of the most dreaded acronyms of grad school, I'm now ABD: All But Dissertation.

I'm going to kick back for a few days, watch the U.S. Open (on TV), eat real food in New York, begin reading "Anna Karenina", and of course, meet with my dissertation Sup on Monday to discuss my plans for the dissertation.

Notes on Nerves

2007-09-03T07:54:00.000-04:00

With about four days to go before the big day -- the Oral Exams -- I'm getting a little nervous.

I've been reviewing the notes that I've taken over the last 8 months and making notes from those notes...

Sometimes, it all comes together nicely:

Melancholia: Freud: pathological because of 1. the nature of the object cathexis in the first place : not true object libido but took the object into the ego narcissistically. 2. leads to the identification that cannot de-cathect from the object: the loss object is experienced as a loss to own ego. In a sense, if we connect this to neurosis and a failure within Lacan's symbolic structure, the inability to de-cathect is a failure to find the right substitution in language (because the object is related to metonymically and can't be transformed into metaphor). The breakdown of the metaphorical system, where the absent mother of the Fort-Da game, cannot be replaced in language.

Sometimes, I wish I took better notes:

ln1785: Honor's Court -- given very rigid allegorical schema of courtly positions. The ornate allocation - complex heirarchy - again - a thinking 'back' on allegorical convention (PP?) -- but here 'done' so 'perfectly' developed. [what the hell was I thinking ...?]

Braking and Accelerating into the Last Century

2007-09-01T07:56:00.000-04:00

As faithful readers of this blog happen to know, I passed the driving test about a week ago. I just got my license in the mail and I'm pretty amazed by the fact that I can now legally operate a highly dangerous machine -- a true symbol of the last century -- without 'adult supervision.'

It's not a big deal, I know, especially in a place where kids can start driving a few months after their 14th birthday, and celebrity car crashes and 'children-of-celebrities' driving incidents are constantly in the news. I suppose being "unlicensed" at 33 is akin to being the 40-year-old virgin. But since getting a driver's license pretty much a 'coming-of-age' thing in our post-industrial societies, I guess I can't really claim to be a luddite hold-out (also sometime concerned environmentalist -- "If I drove, I'd contribute to pollution" -- and pseudo sympathizer of the working classes -- "What about all those people who HAVE to take public transport because they can't afford to drive?").

I'm still pretty uncomfortable behind the wheel but at least I'm a functional driver now. If I'd taken lessons and the exam in the motherland, I'd probably still be clanging gears and desperately trying to swerve through 'S' courses. The good thing about learning how to drive in Automobile land is that it's a practical skill that's much needed and test standards take that into account. I'm pretty fortunate that I've gotten to drive a lot while learning how to drive and after I've passed, as I know so many people back home who after getting a license never got the chance to drive cause it just costs so much to own a car. (Eg. Edna only really got a chance to drive several years after getting a license because she had access to my mom's car -- and of course because I don't drive ...)

Anyway, some scenes from my history as a learner driver. I actually took a couple of lessons in Singapore before deciding that driving was not for me:

Taking the Theory Test:
Police guy administering the test: Ok, no writing until I say so. All of you look up at me when I give the instructions. You [not me, I was one of the meekly compliant] -- why you not looking up -- you trying to cheat? Get out. You fail already.

The first practical lesson takes us back to about 1996 (it must have been ...) when I rather belatedly decided to sign up for lessons at the Bukit Batok Driving School. First lesson:
(Before anything happens and I'm sitting in the car)
Me: Hello.
Instuc: You got a brother who works here, right?
Me: No.
Instruc: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, quite sure.
Instruc: You drive before, right?
Me: Nope.
Instuc: Don't bluff, you drive before right?
Me: Err, no.

After another lesson like this, I decided that learning how to drive wasn't something I wanted to do. Of course there was that CRASH that happened when I tried to head my mom's car into the driveway of our house. Somehow, despite all the intensive theory instruction that's required in Singapore, no one told me about idling speed.

Driving lessons here were much more pleasant. I actually took lessons with an ang moh lady (6 in all) as Edna and I decided that for her to teach me how to drive would be a quick way to end the marriage. But Edna was really patient and indulgent in allowing me lots of time in the car while I was still learning. Leading to scenes like the following:

Me: So I'm going to turn left here once traffic clears. (Car inches uncooperatively forward)
ET: 你在做什么？
Me: I'm going to go left after that car. (Car right in the intersection, possibly endangering lives)
ET: 你在做什么!？
Me: I'm waiting for the red to complete the turn.
ET: 你在做什么!!!
Me: Why are you shouting at me in Chinese! (Car accelerates into the turn then stops and starts lurching forward strangely)
ET: 你在做什么!!!!
Me: There's something wrong with the car! It won't go forward! Ah, wrong pedal...

Anyway, I think I'm pretty safe on the roads now. Apart for Edna's insistence that we reverse into parking lots (esp. after I put the car into "Drive" when I should have reversed out of a lot), I think anyone could entrust their lives to me. The good thing about learning to drive is that I'm a pretty good at navigation (a skill that Edna hasn't really cultivated cause I always work out the directions), so if the PhD doesn't work out, at least I can say that I learned a skill in the US and make a living driving people around.

In the Midst of the Storm

2007-08-25T08:15:00.000-04:00

There have been flash thunderstorms that ripped through where we live in the past two days. These lasted only 5-10 minutes but were pretty scary because of the force of the water and the winds. Yesterday's storm was especially bad. Power lines were shut down (no nice underground cabling like in New York or Singapore here) because tree branches thrown onto the lines. I also saw some power line poles that had they're heads broken off. We took a walk (because Sourdough needed a walk) after the storm and there was quite a lot of physical damage to the trees. Two huge pine trees that flank our building -- they reach up to the third story, so I'm guessing they're about 30 feet tall -- were uprooted and lay on their side like felled giants. Over by the pond, a huge willow tree was uprooted as well. This was probably the event of the week for most people staying here and lots of people were out of their apartments -- gawking at the uprooted trees, taking photos with their cell-phones and generally taking in the spectacle of the storm's aftermath.

Anyway, after losing power, our first reaction was to figure out how to make sure all the food we had stashed in the fridge and freezer wouldn't have to be thrown away. We had no idea how long the outage would last, so we decided that we might as well make an event of things (the slightly celebratory mood was probably enhanced by the fact that I've passed my driving test - a kind of final frontier for me - and the recent news that several of Edna's papers from her dissertation have been accepted in top education journals) and go out and get a grill and grill all that food as it thawed.

A quick phone call to a more grill savvy friend narrowed down our options quite quickly. Apparently there are laws about the kind of grill you can use on the balcony of an apartment in Lansing, so we could only get a gas grill -- the kind fueled by a propane tank. True aficionados don't think highly of gas-grills because charcoal and coal grills add aroma to the food but we didn't have much choice in this one. (Also, see this NYTimes video in the middle of the page, which I had chanced upon earlier in the day).

I used to do a lot of BBQing in Singapore (for large crowds -- having to feed the church youth group or my classes of students and where flavor was pretty much secondary to everything else that went on at one of these gatherings) but that was with charcoal grills which you had to take a lot of time to stoke and get up to heat, so I was pretty apprehensive about using a gas grill. The notion of attaching a propane tank to a flimsy nozzle and all the cautionary labels about the hazards and potential explosions were pretty scary. Plus, I was never very good with bunsen burners in secondary school (I shamefully recall the fact that the last time I attempt to turn one on, during my O-level Bio practical exam, I wasted precious minutes fiddling with matches and the gas control). At the same time, a gas grill is much cleaner and takes much less time to get into cooking mode. Anyway, we found a cheap (small, portable and "Made in China") one at Meijer (16 bucks), brought it home and assembled it. I had some trouble getting the grill ignited (because the in-built ignition switch doesn't work I think) and caused a pretty spectacular fire ball that would have singed off my beard if I had one (reminiscent of the silly stunts we tried to pull with 30 cent lighters in sec. school ... the most memorable being the blue flame running up one's jeans) when I finally got the thing going after using a gas lighter (must remember to let the gas clear if one fails to ignite the thing and not put my face right in the grill ...)

At which point, the electricity came back on, making the whole need to grill redundant. However, I just couldn't pass up on an opportunity to grill (after nearly burning off my eyebrows and inhaling lots of gas) so I quickly thawed out some chicken, rubbed it with a quick seasoning and proceeded to cook it. They turned out pretty nicely in the end. In fact, Edna was impressed enough (with the flavor, if not appearance) to declare that we would do a major grill session today!

Just in Time

2007-08-23T08:26:00.000-04:00

Just in case readers of this blog were utterly disgusted with my last lengthy post on High School Musical, here are links to recent articles which suggest that we (reviewer of trivialities and irritated readers) are in good company:

Time Articles: Once more with (Chaste) Feeling! and one on Zac Efron.

Highly Guilty and Greasy Pleasures

2007-08-18T08:56:00.000-04:00

In my last post I admitted that I didn't really like the slow-moving bulk of Camelot. This is generally true for me and musicals. Perhaps the only two movie musicals that I've enjoyed are The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. Of course I'm not really "into" musicals and haven't watched that many (my guess is that my familiarity with the genre is just about as lay-man as things get) so it might be wrong for me to even have an opinion about these things. In an effort at full disclosure, I'll admit that I fell asleep during Les Miserables, and didn't really enjoy The Phantom of the Opera or Miss Saigon. Also noted is the fact that despite living in New York for 2 1/2 years, I didn't watch a single musical despite walking by Times Square almost every week. The closest I got to a musical in New York was standing in queue at the Mama Mia discount booth in hopes of securing a cheap seat for my mom when she was visiting. (No luck - no student tix during the summer).

Which is why I was a little confused at my setting aside an entire evening to watch (on TV) an avowedly "bad" musical made for 10-14 year olds: Disney's High School Musical. Perhaps it was the desire to watch something truly commercial and mindless or some strange nostalgia for JC (the musical's portrayal of cliques and cool while hopelessly stereotypical had moments of truth). At any rate, while I'm still embarrassed about watching (and enjoying at some level) the in-your-face emotional caricaturing that shamelessly unfolded on the screen, watching this blockbuster hit for Disney did lead to some thoughts about the culture industry that so dominates our tastes and insinuates itself in our fantasies.

Most reviews of High School Musical compare it (unfavorably) to Grease. The superficial resemblances are striking: the leads meet each other on vacation (and vaguely flirt
while singing a Karaoke number), she comes to his school as a new transfer student (and he rules the school cause he's the cool captain of the Bball team), because of their attraction to each other they manage to break out of their cliques (he from the jocks and she from the brainiacs) to do something that they both love but have hidden from the rest of the world: singing. Like Grease, this journey is not without complications as friends try to pull them back into their circumscribed social roles in a tightly straited High School. And finally, the big event that all of us wait in anticipation for is a kind of performance (the final auditions for the parts in a musical in High School Musical and the spot on an American Bandstand-like show in Grease).

Aging Well
Despite these narrative similarities, there is a profound difference in the spirit of the movies. One just needs to look at the pictures of characters from one movie mapped against their counterparts in the other:

The male leads: Troy Bolton (School's Golden Boy) and Danny Zuko (questionably and ridiculously cool)

Their female counterparts and love interests: Gabriella Montez (Genius kid who's new to the school) and Sandy Olsson ("I'm from Sydney, Australia")

Sidekicks: Chad Danforth (basketball team mate) and Kenickie (fellow gang member)

Somewhat nasty female antagonists: Sharpay (!?) Evans (who leads her own clique that consists of her brother and herself as she tyrannically dictates the Drama Club and expects to star in the school's musical) and Rizzo (chief Pink Lady).

These images (I know to do this properly I need to get the DVDs and make proper screen captures but images off the web will have to do for now) are meant to demonstrate how a 1978 movie depiction of what a High-Schooler looks like has radically shifted in about 30 years. Of course, Rydell High is a very different place from Eastside High but just the age of the actors is telling. John Travolta was 24 when he played Danny Zuko, Olivia Newton John 30 (even though she looks closest to a 16-18 year old) and Stockard Channing (Rizzo) was 34! When one watches Grease now, you're struck by how impossibly old everyone looks. The cast of High School Musical, on the other hand, all range in and about high school age, with the oldest from our list (Ashley Tisdale, who plays the Sharpay character) being an old 22. So the shift demonstrates a fascination with youth that has overtaken our collective sense of what it means to represent being in school. (For more of this, go watch To Sir With Love). Of course, one could argue that Grease, made in 1978 but set in the 50s/60s deliberately cast older looking actors to bank on the nostalgia factor and High School Musical, made about Highschoolers but aimed at Tweenagers, wants everyone to look much younger. Still, I don't think that really detracts from my point that the cultural industry has managed to install a thirst for the Fountain of Youth in the collective consciousness.

A Place to Belong
Of course the other striking thing about the two films is the way they situate the lead characters with respect to the social structures of school culture. In Grease, all the action occurs in the margins of school life with Danny Zuko and his boys comprising the T-birds while Sandy tries to fit in with the Pink Ladies. Even the institutionally sanctioned finale (the first finale of the film's triple endings - the other two being the car race and then the reuniting of Danny and Sandy), the nationally televised dance-off, gets hijacked by these characters who don't really fit into the mainstream. What defines these characters is how far they stand from being integrated into a school community as they mock the athletes, spike the punch, and of course, moon all of America when they get the chance. But in High School Musical, no one is really on the outside. Troy Bolton is right in the middle of school life and even Gabriella quickly gets picked to be part of the school's Science Decathlon team. Even if the theme of this film is how borders are crossed, they're crossed from ostensibly safe positions of well-defined and institutionally accepted identities. Even the bad guys belong, as Sharpay Evans and her very metro-sexual brother rule the Drama club and incestuously engage
in plotting against others while patting each other on the back.

"You're the One that I Want"
Indeed, this question of belonging extends into the way transformation is conceived differently by each movie. At the end of Grease, Sandy decides that she must change in order to win over Danny's heart and his clique's approval, she transforms herself into a vampish fantasy babe along the lines of the Pink Ladies (pictured left). This over-the-top metamorphosis is, of course, an ironic comment on the nature and value of transformation, for all that she needs to do really change is to wear the right clothes, get a big hair-do and don some attitude. Danny's own failed attempts to become a jock (in order to impress Sandy) earlier in the film have pretty much the same effect. In High School Musical, however, transformation is taken more (and much too) seriously. The leading characters, already stars in their chosen arenas of the basketball court and science lab, show their peers that they can do it all by turning out to be stellar singers as well. In sharing this hidden talent with each other and later with the rest of the school, Troy and Gabriella, 'discover' their true selves and true love. The fantasy here - you can be anything you want to be as long as you don't worry about what your friends think - posits the multi-talented individual as the norm, and transformation becomes a stamp of individual agency that has the power to cut across stereotypes and reformulate group relations, instead of being a superficial (yet effective) tactic that is used to mask the fear of not belonging. Even though this seems to communicate 'positive messages' (such as "Just be yourself!"), in the world of High School Musical, only the exceedingly resourceful, intelligent, and good-looking have any chance of being individuals. You can't find love by donning tight-clothes, getting big-hair or dancing in high-heels in Walt Disney's universe.

Music and Lyrics
Grease achieves witty commentary on the strange obsessions of teenagers with its silly and clever lyrics. Some element of the concrete and particular (my strange obsession) is always present whether we want the lovers to tell us more about their summer frolicking on the beach, dream about "Grease Lighting", or get advice about beauty school from Frankie Avalon. In the final sequence, when the entire cast sings "We Go Together", the frivolity of being teenagers is brought out most clearly in lyrics that go

We go together,
Like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong,
Remembered forever
As shoobop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom
Chang chang changitty chang shoobop,
That's the way it should be,
Wha oooh, yeah!

The nonsensical lines that require skillful singing are precisely the point of being a teenager, of being obsessed with extraordinarily complex and esoteric trivialities that don't really matter in the long run. The spaces that these lines open up allow a certain mode of negotiation and creation even as the idiosyncratic (and highly technical) are mastered.

If the trivializing ending of Grease performs this insight into the teenage mind, High School Musical dramatizes the abolishment of that mind. The teenager is turned into a spokesperson for every kind of high-minded abstraction that modern societies idealize. In fact, Singapore's NDP planning committee should seriously consider jettisoning yet another failed attempt to come up with a "national day song" and just turn to High School Musical's fabulously Singaporean (they're even decked out in red and white) ending. With stylishly vague platitudes emoting that "we're all in this together", every tween's fantasy end to a highschool movie dovetails into the ideological template for any state that wants to dilute and eventually flush clean the heterogeneous desires and dreams of its people. Unlike Grease, which leaves us stained with its idiosyncratic observations of teen hood that, like grease, can't really be fully gotten rid of, High School Musical effaces any trace or possibility for difference:

We're all in this together
One sweet note
That we are
We're all stars
And we see that
We're all in this together
And it shows
When we stand
Hand in hand
Make our dreams come true

I am well aware that infinitely more subtle minds have taken the Disney entertainment complex apart for far more profound reasons. Amongst the most illustrious, Theodore Adorno, who found in

Disney hygiene, a funereal reading of Mickey Mouse culture and its sadomasochistic phantasms. At the tail end of Mickey Mouse's orbit around the globe, Adorno concluded that both fascism and the culture industry were "psychoanalysis in reverse". (Laurence Rickels, The Case of California 52)

I should end with this quote which seems to be a fitting conclusion to what I've been trying to get at in this post. I've definitely gone on too long indulging the guilty pleasure of re-visiting a guilty pleasure, perhaps because of High School Musical's effectiveness in dictating what counts as pleasurable. And, after all, I need to go catch the world TV premiere of High School Musical 2.

More on the Movie Front

2007-08-16T07:30:00.000-04:00

Some things that I've watched:

Camelot. This is the 60s musical that I thought I had to acquaint myself with in my attempts to be a good medievalist. It seems to be based not so much on "traditional" sources but on T.H. White's Once and Future King (which contains interesting ideas about Arthur's youth, Merlin's mentoring and the political conception of the Round Table). Like most extravagant productions from the period, this was bloated and slow moving (like Lerner and Lowe's other hit, The King and I). I didn't make it to the end.

BTW, look who's playing Arthur in a Camelot revival that's actually going to make it's way to East Lansing. Yup, Lou Diamond Phillips. I really liked him in La Bamba and wasn't he in Young Guns as well? Perhaps he will make subjecting myself to 3 hours of slow-moving singing worthwhile.

Gerry. I learnt about this film while reading an NYT article that assessed Matt Damon's career thus far. It's a strange plotless adventure of two pals (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) who decide to trek the desert wilderness in Utah, and end up getting lost. The film showcases the rugged and unforgiving landscape but really tests one's patience with long shots (five minutes and more) of just the two of them walking the barren landscape. Thank God for the tracking function on DVD players.

Capote. I enjoyed this much more than the other two!

Driving in Our Car

2007-08-15T09:42:00.000-04:00

Having never been able to drive, I've never taken an interest in cars. But since I'm planning to take the driving test soon, I just wanted to make sure that our car is in an OK condition for the test. The car, a 1999 Toyota Camry, has, since the first day we got it, always shown on the instrument panel that something's wrong with the rear lights. We've checked it and all the rear lights work, so we put it down to a quirk of an old car.
But it dawned on me about two days ago that we've never really checked the "high mounted stop light", the superfluous thing that lights up on the rear board, that sits between the speakers in our car. In fact when I got Edna to go out and look again yesterday, she missed the light completely and it was only after I pointed it out physically that we learnt that the light doesn't work. So we've been driving without a "high mounted stop light". And so have many drivers given that I can't help but notice whether that light lights up whenever we hit a red light now. (Another Bono Moment whole thing is interesting but 4.25 for song itself).
So, my penchant for taking things apart kicked in. After all, how hard could it be to check a light bulb after years of taken electrical and electronic things apart and (almost) perfectly putting them back together again. So, with the handy 1999 Toyota Camry manual in hand, I peered into the fuse box (fuse was ok) and dismantled the rear light (bulb and contact points seem ok). I was really tempted to dig into the wiring to see if I could do anything but decided that this was no Tamiya / Airfix model kit.
Better to bring in for the pros to figure it out.

Becoming A Movie

2007-08-12T08:43:00.000-04:00

We caught Becoming Jane watch with their girl friends (probably leaving their husbands free to go laugh at Jackie Chan in "Rush Hour 3" with their buddies). It was quite nicely done and like every Jane Austen inspired period piece, had one ball too many, an impossible number of empire line dresses for the protagonist's wardrobe (strangely enough, Jane's sister appears in scenes timed several months apart in the same pink dress), and an improbable reserve of witty repartee (which is the point, I suppose). Still, it's a pretty interesting addition to a slowly growing list of films that try to suggest how an authorial existence might have been crucial (in direct or unexpected ways) to the works by which we at the cinema yesterday. I think there were only about 4 men in the largely middle aged female audience. It certainly was a film that a lot of women went out to remember them. Becoming Jane isn't bad though it's a pretty unsophisticated statement about how an author's life translates into her writing. That growing list of films about authors? I'm thinking of Shakespeare in Love, far and away the most effective and amusing because it doesn't pretend at any veracity, Capote, The Hours and Sylvia. I guess Naked Lunch and Henry and June would be on the list too, though they were made somewhat earlier. What else is there?

Anyway, authors about whom films should be made (perhaps films have already been made and I just don't know about them):
Herman Melville. And there's a ready-made title in "Call me Ishmael".
Ken Kesey / Jack Kerouac
Hemmingway. (who was a popular source of film adaptations in the 40s and 50s, right?)
Chaucer.
James Joyce.
Proust.
S.R. Delany.
The Bronte Sisters. (Hah -- I half-suspected that there was already a film on them, and checking IMDb, this turned up.)
Lord Byron.
E.M. Forster (who is the single novelist whose books have been turned into film adaptations at a rate that compares to Austen but who seems to have fallen out of favor. Henry James is the other guy who was a pretty popular source for adaptations.

I guess there are only so many ways to show writers at work ...

L'eclisse Babel Bleu (or One for Shawn)

2007-08-11T08:20:00.000-04:00

Three films that I've watched since the last post. Michelangelo Antonioni's (who just recently passed away) L'eclisse. It was heavy going, with all those long lingering shots that silently capture the turmoil of indecision and frustrated desire. It tracks the transitional space between the afterlife of one relationship and the birth of a new one, with the film spanning precisely the time from a break-up to a consummation. One of the controlling motifs and settings is the stock exchange where the male protagonist (Alain Delon) works and how its esoteric yet eminently precise practices obliquely represent the emotional vicissitudes that the lovers experience. It was the first time that I've seen a film with Alain Delon in it and I must say that he's really good looking. Click on the image for a really nice synopsis-analysis of the film.

Of the three films I'm writing about, Babel was the most disappointing. It's a great film if you're into bashing the white man and his thoughtless cultural colonization but there was a lot of inflated fluff. I think the feeling of dissatisfaction I have with the film lies in the way too many moments that are shot like standard made for Hollywood sequences, which establish event, place and character with too much certainty. At some moments you're thinking, "Ok, I get it already ... either assemble more interesting shots or move on ..." I thought, however, that the way the stories were interlinked without being chronologically synchronous (the film itself becoming a fourth dimensional Tower of Babel that holds together the illusion of a unified sense of time) was pretty interesting.

Bleu. This film is part of the Three Colors series of films that Krzysztof Kieslowski made in the early 1990s. I actually watched this when it showed in the cinemas. The interesting thing (for me) is the way I remember (or misremember in this case) my watching of the film. For the longest time now, I've always thought that I watched the film in 1989 with a classmate. This made sense to me for on artistic grounds as I've always thought that the trilogy was made to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution as well. (See, displaced memories always depend on elegantly dreamt up causes.) As it turns out, Bleu was only released in 1993. It's a significant shift for me because it demonstrates a certain repression taking place. I've always thought that we watched Bleu because my friend was a cool 15 year old who was extremely cultured and a committed Francophile (which he may have been). So 1989 was an appropriate date. But 1993 was a very different (and difficult) year for me and it turns out that my friend was probably being really nice in deciding that companionship, a movie in a foreign language, and the lovely Julie Binoch might lift my spirits. For that gesture of kindness, I am belatedly most grateful. I guess it may have worked its magic then, but sadly, I'm only placing it (the double "it" of the movie and the act of kindness, I intend to separate yet combine them - can I? - and don't want to use the plural demonstrative pronoun) back in its proper place amongst remembered things about 14 years too late. The film follows Julie Binoche's character as she tries to erase her past after the traumatic loss of her husband and daughter in a car crash that opens the film. Because her efforts at "running to stand still" only have the effect of the past haunting her constantly, and finally returning with a vengeance, watching the film caused me to experience an uncanny return of the repressed. Anyway, as this link suggests, that friend has gone on to great things, and as much as a dedicated blog post and a great U2 song can, I wish him well.

As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free ...

2007-08-08T08:01:00.000-04:00

I watched this little documentary / film about staging a play yesterday called Shakespeare Behind Bars. It chronicles an actual prison program in Kentucky that has inmates put on a Shakespeare production every year after about 36 weeks of preparation. The film is very very tenderly put together, with obvious biases against the prison system. We comes close up to the inmates (many of them killers ... of wives and lovers) as they reveal themselves and their pasts even as they are interrogated by the roles that they play.

The play, one of my faves, is The Tempest, and it was nice to see a documentary (and production) that did not focus on the "play within a play" motif that dominates most interpretations. Instead, the forgiveness theme of the play was what the the inmates connected with, and this showed as they dealt with their character and personal struggles.

It wasn't all triumphal. One of the players, a great interpreter of that sly intellectual Antonio (and in prison for sexually abusing 7 girls ... I'm sure he was a lit teacher ...) is placed in solitary confinement and later transferred to a maximum security prison. Interestingly, the film doesn't try to explain what he did wrong but captures the sense of unease and uncertainty as the other members of the cast try to get a handle on the rumors that surround his disappearance. Sadly, his replacement, an initially enthusiastic youngster who is in for two life sentences without parole, later drops out of the production (because he wanted to get his tattoos finished and tries to get them done illegally in prison), and ends up committing suicide by hanging himself by his shoe-laces.

It's a powerful documentary and Shakespeare as therapy works wonders of revelation if not always redemption. You feel bad for the convicts after their enthralling adventure with the Bard, when in the "Updates" section of the "Bonus Features", you learn that almost none of them make parole. But as one of them puts it, at least there's Shakespeare next year.

Trailer

Back to the Movies

2007-08-07T09:02:00.000-04:00

I finally got myself a library card from the Capital Area District Library, which is public library that serves the greater Lansing area. Their holdings aren't bad and what really prompted me to go and get a card made was the desire to do a Bergman retrospective (although I'll probably do that in bout a month's time, after the Orals) and the fact that I'm learning how to drive (another story for another time), thus making the libraries accessible. So, I've requested a whole list of movies from the libraries (they too have a nice delivery service like the NYPL), and I collected my first batch of movies yesterday.

The first thing I watched was "Eros", a series of three short films by Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and the recently deceased Michelangelo Antonioni. There's a nice review of the three films here, (which essentially says only Wong Kar Wai's piece is worth watching) although I think that the second film by Steven Soderbergh was pretty interesting for me as it involves the dreaming up of a clinical situation that parodies a psychoanalytic session. Anyway, the DVD had a really nice cover too.

Intellectual TortOIse (Or why U2 gets me ...)

2007-08-03T11:26:00.000-04:00

I don't get to listen to music much these days as I can't really concentrate if there's anything playing in the background when I'm reading Middle English or Theory. But, since I've begun running (ok ... slogging as in slow jogging) more consistently, I've been able to pay quite close attention to the music piped through my earphones. I've got a U2 playlist (of course) on my ipod and something about the nature of Bono's lyricism struck me as I was listening to Stay (Faraway, So Close). These are the lines:

Faraway, so close up with the static and the radio
With satellite television you can go anywhere
Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin
from "Stay (Faraway So Close)"

How does Bono manage to string together proper names and achieve that sense of space and history that he does? Part of this relates to the way the line is timed. "Miami" and "New Orleans", are stretched out over two measures, creating an anticipation for more. And then, we get, in the next two measures, the expansive "London, Belfast and Berlin" - cities with tumultuous histories, and possibly located in dramatically different political-spatial realities - and the line is suddenly flung into the wide open spaces of satellite TV.* Of course, despite being able to achieve the epic and universal scope that they do, the lyrics of many a U2 song achieve that expansiveness precisely because there is always a concrete specificity of reference and image. I've always associated the lines quoted above with the bridge-like section of a much later song, "Beautiful Day":

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by clouds
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light and
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
from "Beautiful Day"

The phrase that really gets me in what essentially is a list is "Bedouin fires at night" largely because it contrasts the vast movement of flight over land and sea against really specific kinds of activity. I think way the lyrics zoom in and across (I'm thinking Google Earth here) are pretty spectacular because they don't compromise on the splendor of being able to observe detail from "such great heights" (as another great songwriter would put it). The fact is, the bridge ends with a stunning movement back in time with the dove of Noah's flood now making an appearance. Movement takes on mythical proportions, and like the spirit of God hovering over the uncreated expanse of the earth to be, the lyric manages to compress space and time and transform it into promise.

Just two more examples of the lyricism of the concrete. The first is from "Pride (In the Name of Love)", a song which enshrines the legacy of MLK.

Early morning, April four
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
from "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

This final verse shifts out of the repetitive line pattern of the first two verses (which deal with universal situations of persecution and resistance -- "One man ..." could be Everyman) and focuses on the shooting of MLK itself. Even though it's factually wrong -- MLK was shot in the evening -- the date and location of the event, as well as the fact that the verse is addresses the dead King (and thus his legacy), creates another kind of precision: one that reminds the listener that the actual sacrifices of great men must never be in vain.

Finally, from one of the greatest U2 songs that hardly anyone likes: "Angel of Harlem". I know there's something pretentious about some Irish guys going on about jazz history and one of its tragic leading ladies, Billie Holiday. But I'm sure I haven't been the only person whose ears were opened by lyrics ("We got John Coltrane and a love supreme") to explore (and fall in love with) the music that inspired them. So, even if the identifications are somewhat superficial, at least they've generated a new generation of poseurs. (And as Bono's shown, all it takes is poseurs to change the world). Anyway, the song opens with that evocative detail that I've been going on about.

It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground at JFK
Snow was melting on the ground
On BLS I heard the sound of an angel
New York, like a Christmas tree
Tonight this city belongs to me, angel
from "Angel of Harlem"

What's interesting is the way the acronyms work powerfully to create that sense of U2's cool "insider" status with this very foreign world. (Come on, people fly into New York's most congested and inefficient airport just so they can say "I came through JFK") "JFK" obviously works especially well because it resonates with an idealized image of the man as well. Now here's the somewhat embarrassing thing. All these years (and it's been many many years that I've listened to this song and regarded it as one of my faves), I've always assumed that the fourth line went "On the BLS ..." and pictured Bono being driven down some highway to Midtown Manhattan. Only when I picked out the lyric to write this piece did I realize that 1) there is no BLS that runs around New York and that 2) it makes more sense that "BLS" refers to a radio station. So, I was going to conclude that Bono just made the "BLS" thing up until I ran a quick google search. It turns out that there is a WBLS 107.5 (or 'BLS) playing out of New York. The fact that it plays R&B (it was a quick and short search ...) makes it possible that it was playing in the car and Billie Holiday was on at the time. (I'm sure all this can be confirmed by looking up an interview with the group about how the song originated but ...) Anyway, we have, nicely captured in a song, U2's own sense of how a precise moment of reception, not necessarily characterized by listening to the music alone, but also hearing in it the history and geography of an age, can lead to that wonderful feeling of being indomitably caught up in the present: "Tonight this city belongs to me".

That precision of affect also explains why U2 continues to get to me and probably will continue to do so for a long time more to come.

*The line also reminds of lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land":

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem** Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal (366-376)

** Which reminds me that U2 actually has a song called "Jerusalem". It's ok but it's before they became subtle and clever in their use of Biblical references. But for a nice video of U2 25 years ago, here's a YouTube link to a high energy performance of that song.

About Death's Deal (which is supposed to sound like "The Seventh Seal")

2007-07-31T10:11:00.000-04:00

I was looking at a Bergman website in the UK, where they're releasing a new version of The Seventh Seal and found some nice wallpapers. I've now got the famous image of the Dance of Death (which occurs near the end of the film) on my desktop.

The Seventh Seal was the first Bergman film that I watched (and currently the only one that I own). I can't remember what attracted me to it -- it may just have been the cover of the DVD, which has the figure of Death with his cape outspread. I think it's one of Bergman's most accessible films. It's very artfully shot, with a strange inter-play of dark humor and genuine existential questioning. Check out the website for some stunning stills from the film. (You can also enter the contest, win the box set and give it to me ... I've already entered with all the email addresses I own ... of course, for all I know this may be an old website that hasn't been taken down ... )

The Dance of Death (or La Danse Macabre for poseurs like myself ...) is a medieval allegory where Death comes to a range of people, in a range of secular and spiritual stations of life. He speaks to each one in turn (in a more or less descending order of social hierarchy) and warns them (and mocks them) about their impending death. Each one then responds by expressing their unwillingness to die and how they will miss worldly delights. A version that I've read, by John Lydgate, paints a pretty bleak picture. Even the religious figures are more concerned about accumulating worldly riches and prolonging pleasures. No one is prepared for death except for three lowly characters near the end of the poem: the Laborer, the Child and the Hermit. Lydgate's version is a pretty close translation of a famous medieval mural at a Church in Paris (Of The Holy Innocents), which apparently had the Dance of Death strung out and illustrated on the walls surrounding the cemetery.

Bergman's film doesn't really have Death interrogate the various characters in the same way, although the opening scenes has Max Von Sydow as a knight entering a church and looking at a Danse Macabre mural. Death catches up with him and challenges him to a game of chess (another of the stunning visual moments of the film). The knight gets to live as long as he keeps the game of chess alive. Along the way, various individuals join the knight's strange journey home. Having the horrible memory that I have, I don't really recall how it all ends: it might indeed end with the Dance of Death (my copy of the DVD being in the "safe-keeping" of a friend in Singapore...) but it certainly is a profound cinematic experience.

Strangely enough, the text that I'm laboring over today (and am delightfully distracted from as I write this post) is the medieval morality play Everyman, which has eerily similar qualities to the Danse Macabre. I guess the Freudian uncanny is always lurking around, ready to cut into and alienate our experience of consciousness.

On the Fourth Day

2007-07-30T21:58:00.001-04:00

We're coming to the end of the Fourth Day of the Diet, the day on which I get to eat bananas. Yesterday was bad. I was really hungry at night and couldn't go to sleep (a noisy apartment across the field and our new neighbors upstairs who own a squeaky bed and go at IT like rabbits didn't help either). But bananas really make a difference to how one feels in the stomach. With fruit and veggies, you eat a whole lot and then 2 minutes later your feeling of satisfaction has dissipated. At least bananas stay with you.

NYT Bergman Obit

2007-07-30T11:32:00.000-04:00

Here's the link to the Bergman Obit that the NYT just put out. It's too long to copy onto the blog. But here's an interesting excerpt from right at the end of the piece:

Once, when asked by the critic Andrew Sarris why he did what he did, Mr. Bergman told the story of the rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral in the Middle Ages by thousands of anonymous artisans.
“I want to be one of the artists of the cathedral that rises on the plain,” he said. “I want to occupy myself by carving out of stone the head of a dragon, an angel or a demon, or perhaps a saint; it doesn’t matter; I will find the same joy in any case. Whether I am a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or pagan, I work with all the world to build a cathedral because I am artist and artisan, and because I have learned to draw faces, limbs, and bodies out of stone. I will never worry about the judgment of posterity or of my contemporaries; my name is carved nowhere and will disappear with me. But a little part of myself will survive in the anonymous and triumphant totality. A dragon or a demon, or perhaps a saint, it doesn’t matter!”
Mr. Bergman’s celluloid carvings often revealed an obsession with death. But in later life he said that the obsession had abated. “When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying,” he said. “But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It’s like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.”

Another Obit: The Guardian

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Swedish Film Director, Dies at 89

2007-07-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

[Bergman and this blog: Saraband 4 th July 2006, Scenes from a Marriage 5th June 2006, Through a Glass Darkly 29th May 2005, Winter Light and The Silence 31st May 2005]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, an iconoclastic filmmaker widely regarded as one of the great masters of modern cinema, died Monday, the president of his foundation said. He was 89.

''It's an unbelievable loss for Sweden, but even more so internationally,'' Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers the directors' archives, told The Associated Press.

Bergman died at his home in Faro, Sweden, Swedish news agency TT said, citing his daughter Eva Bergman. A cause of death was not immediately available.

Through more than 50 films, Bergman's vision encompassed all the extremes of his beloved Sweden: the claustrophobic gloom of unending winter nights, the gentle merriment of glowing summer evenings and the bleak magnificence of the island where he spent his last years.

Bergman, who approached difficult subjects such as plague and madness with inventive technique and carefully honed writing, became one of the towering figures of serious filmmaking.

He was ''probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera,'' Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988.

Bergman first gained international attention with 1955's ''Smiles of a Summer Night,'' a romantic comedy that inspired the Stephen Sondheim musical ''A Little Night Music.''

''The Seventh Seal,'' released in 1957, riveted critics and audiences. An allegorical tale of the medieval Black Plague years, it contains one of cinema's most famous scenes -- a knight playing chess with the shrouded figure of Death.

''I was terribly scared of death,'' Bergman said of his state of mind when making the film, which was nominated for an Academy Award in the best picture category.

The film distilled the essence of Bergman's work -- high seriousness, flashes of unexpected humor and striking images.

In a 2004 interview with Swedish broadcaster SVT, the reclusive filmmaker acknowledged that he was reluctant to view his work.

''I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry ... and miserable. I think it's awful,'' Bergman said.

Though best known internationally for his films, Bergman also was a prominent stage director. He worked at several playhouses in Sweden from the mid-1940s, including the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, which he headed from 1963 to 1966. He staged many plays by the Swedish author August Strindberg, whom he cited as an inspiration.

The influence of Strindberg's grueling and precise psychological dissections could be seen in the production that brought Bergman an even-wider audience: 1973's ''Scenes From a Marriage.'' First produced as a six-part series for television, then released in a theater version, it is an intense detailing of the disintegration of a marriage.

Bergman showed his lighter side in the following year's ''The Magic Flute,'' again first produced for TV. It is a fairly straight production of the Mozart opera, enlivened by touches such as repeatedly showing the face of a young girl watching the opera and comically clumsy props and costumes.

Bergman remained active later in life with stage productions and occasional TV shows. He said he still felt a need to direct, although he had no plans to make another feature film.

In the fall of 2002, Bergman, at age 84, started production on ''Saraband,'' a 120-minute television movie based on the two main characters in ''Scenes From a Marriage.''

In a rare news conference, the reclusive director said he wrote the story after realizing he was ''pregnant with a play.''

''At first I felt sick, very sick. It was strange. Like Abraham and Sarah, who suddenly realized she was pregnant,'' he said, referring to biblical characters. ''It was lots of fun, suddenly to feel this urge returning.''

The son of a Lutheran clergyman and a housewife, Ernst Ingmar Bergman was born in Uppsala on July 14, 1918, and grew up with a brother and sister in a household of severe discipline that he described in painful detail in the autobiography ''The Magic Lantern.''

The title comes from his childhood, when his brother got a ''magic lantern'' -- a precursor of the slide-projector -- for Christmas. Ingmar was consumed with jealousy, and he managed to acquire the object of his desire by trading it for a hundred tin soldiers.

The apparatus was a spot of joy in an often-cruel young life. Bergman recounted the horror of being locked in a closet and the humiliation of being made to wear a skirt as punishment for wetting his pants.

He broke with his parents at 19 and remained aloof from them, but later in life sought to understand them. The story of their lives was told in the television film ''Sunday's Child,'' directed by his own son Daniel.

Young Ingmar found his love for drama production early in life. The director said he had coped with the authoritarian environment of his childhood by living in a world of fantasies. When he first saw a movie he was greatly moved.

''Sixty years have passed, nothing has changed, it's still the same fever,'' he wrote of his passion for film in the 1987 autobiography.

But he said the escape into another world went so far that it took him years to tell reality from fantasy, and Bergman repeatedly described his life as a constant fight against demons, also reflected in his work.

The demons sometimes drove him to great art -- as in ''Cries and Whispers,'' the deathbed drama that climaxes when the dying woman cries ''I am dead, but I can't leave you.'' Sometimes they drove him over the top, as in ''Hour of the Wolf,'' where a nightmare-plagued artist meets real-life demons on a lonely island.

Bergman also waged a fight against real-life tormentors: Sweden's powerful tax authorities.

In 1976, during a rehearsal at the Royal Dramatic Theater, police came to take Bergman away for interrogation about tax evasion. The director, who had left all finances to be handled by a lawyer, was questioned for hours while his home was searched. When released, he was forbidden to leave the country.

The case caused an enormous uproar in the media and Bergman had a mental breakdown that sent him to hospital for over a month. He later was absolved of all accusations and in the end only had to pay some extra taxes.

In his autobiography he admitted to guilt in only one aspect: ''I signed papers that I didn't read, even less understood.''

The experience made him go into voluntary exile in Germany, to the embarrassment of the Swedish authorities. After nine years, he returned to Stockholm, his longtime base.

It was in the Swedish capital that Bergman broke into the world of drama, starting with a menial job at the Royal Opera House after dropping out of college.

Bergman was hired by the script department of Swedish Film Industry, the country's main production company, as an assistant script writer in 1942.

In 1944, his first original screenplay was filmed by Alf Sjoeberg, the dominant Swedish film director of the time. ''Torment'' won several awards including the Grand Prize of the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, and soon Bergman was directing an average of two films a year as well as working with stage production.

After the acclaimed ''The Seventh Seal,'' he quickly came up with another success in ''Wild Strawberries,'' in which an elderly professor's car trip to pick up an award is interspersed with dreams.

Other noted films include ''Persona,'' about an actress and her nurse whose identities seem to merge, and ''The Autumn Sonata,'' about a concert pianist and her two daughters, one severely handicapped and the other burdened by her child's drowning.

The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, the TT news agency reported.

Veggie Overdose

2007-07-29T10:05:00.000-04:00

So -- yesterday was day 2 of the veggie soup diet -- the hardest day for me cause you don't eat fruit on day 2. We (yes, Edna's doing it with me even though she has no weight to lose and she's never lost anything on the diet when we've tried it out in the past) ended up eating a nice salad for lunch (Baby Arugula and Spinach, with balsamic vinegar and olive oil) and stir frying some bitter-gourd and brinjal for dinner. In effect, it didn't look all that different from a regular day's menu except that there was no carbo.

In place of carbo -- vegetable soup. Edna's convinced that I hate the soup because 1. I eat it really slowly (it's the only thing that she finishes before I do), 2. never go for seconds and according to her, 3. have a look of intense agony on my face as I slurp each painful spoonful. Strangely, I think the soup reminds of home cause it tastes exactly like the thing I used to make back in Singapore, down to the same brand of chicken broth. We're almost out of soup -- so I'll probably have to cook up another batch today. I'm thinking of pureeing it all (with the slurpie blender) and see what it's like.

So -- it's day 3 of the diet -- and I'm allowed fruit AND veggies today. Thank God for fruit.

Back to the Soup

2007-07-28T08:17:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to lose some weight (what's new) and have resorted to the only diet that has ever worked for me: the Vegetable Soup Diet. It's day two of the Diet -- the hardest day for me cause you can't eat fruit on this day (and I'm not so hot about the Veggie Soup, though by most accounts it's a really yummy soup). Anyway, I've got a whole stock pot worth of Veggie soup and lots of green leaves to work through today.

Day One -- wasn't too bad. Partly because it's berry season here and I was stuffing my face with strawberries and cherries. I like apples also (they're the potatoes of fruit), so not being hungry isn't a challenge. But I was thinking about food constantly yesterday -- about Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Dinosaur BBQ Ribs -- and I haven't even eaten these things for a really long time. Shoot this entry is causing me to salivate and all I have in front of me is this bowl of soup ...

The diet worked really well back in 2000/1 when I lost quite a lot of weight going on it. Of course, I tell people that the diet just gives you a kick start and motivates you to work out. But I'm sure that in some secret compartment of my grease-loving soul the diet represents both penance and a quick-fix for all those meals made up of Popeye's Fried Chicken (the best in the world in my book ... and available on just about every major street in New York, on MLB Blvd in Lansing and at Changi Terminal 2 ...)

Anyway, I've been working out (moderately -- I'm doing the Couch to 5k running program) and hopefully weight loss will help me up the intensity of the work outs.

How about a recipe?

2007-07-26T07:54:00.000-04:00

Edna had a friend over for dinner two weeks ago -- right about when I was furiously experimenting with smoothies. I still am, but this smoothie was particularly memorable. I've decided to christen the following recipe "Blakely's Blush", cause of the effect it had!

You take

a carton of frozen youghurt
five to six cubes of ice
a few pieces of frozen banana
three nice sized strawberries
some orange juice

AND here's the blush

Two shots of Bacardi Rum

and slush it all together! "Blakely's Blush" should be served in those cute stemless red-wine glasses (ok they're the only ones we have ...)

Bad Argumentation

2007-07-11T17:50:00.000-04:00

It struck me, as I watched the argument between Michael Moore and Sanjay Gupta, that this is a superb example of the bad argumentation that goes on all the time in American media.

Watch the intro:

Then watch the exchange between Moore and Gupta:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

What is interesting is how the arguments run down to "I'm right because I have the best facts" versus "No you cherry-pick the facts". I think where the argument needs to go is to interrogate a key assumption: why is it necessary to be consistent with one's sources of fact for a position to be valid? Michael Moore skips over this entirely and Sanjay Gupta keeps insisting on this criteria -"consistency of sources" - as the measure of what's honest or effective argumentation.

What is required is an inquiry into the faith we hold in wholes.

"Guaranteed translatability, given homogeneity, systematic coherence in their absolute forms, this is surely what renders the injunction, the inheritance, and the future - in a word the other - impossible. There must be disjunction, interruption, the heterogeneous if at least there must be, if there must be a chance given to any "there must be" whatsoever ...." (Derrida, Specters of Marx)

Summer Smoothies

2007-07-10T08:23:00.000-04:00

It's getting really hot here in Lansing and we've been consuming many a smoothie. Edna decided that it would be a good way to beat the heat and satisfy our sweet tooth without being too unhealthy. Anyway, quite a while ago, she got a few bags of frozen fruit and left the smoothie making to me ...

1. The Naive Smoothie:
Three handfuls of assorted frozen berries.
One carton of yoghurt
Some Orange juice.

This was ok and would have been our staple except for ...

2. The Gary-Takes-the-Suggestion-that-Everything-can-Go-into-a-Smoothie-Literally Smoothie:
A handful of frozen berries
Some Orange juice
Some Honey
A Handful of Crushed Quaker Oat Squares
A Banana
Some Milk
And a splash of Pinot Grigio

Gary later notices a cup containing this experiment quietly sitting in the fridge .... This was just never made again.

3. Gary-Belatedly-Discovers(In an "Aha!" moment that reveals his ignorance regarding important life skills such as smoothie making)-that-the-Key-to-Nice-Smoothies-is-Ice Smoothie:
A few pieces of FROZEN banana
A carton of FROZEN yoghurt
Some Really Old Chocolate coated coffee beans from Trader Joe's
Some Milk
A few cubes of FROZEN water

We're getting there, though Edna requests for a spoon to consume this one ...

And finally ...

4. The Can-You-Make-Another-One Smoothie:
A few pieces of FROZEN banana
A carton of FROZEN yoghurt
Some Ice
And half a glass of Cabernet

This was actually not too bad.

In sum, freezing everything helps.

And yes, Sourdough was not forgotten. She just loves crunching on ice-cubes.

GeoTagging

2007-07-09T08:29:00.000-04:00

I've been messing around with the Geotag function in Flickr. I'm strangely fascinated by the fact that pictures can be traced to points of abstract representation on a map:

Anyway: MAP

Strange Brew

2007-07-07T08:46:00.001-04:00

"... Bryþen was ongunnen
þætte Adame Eve gebyrmde æt fruman worulde"

I came across this interesting account of the Fall while reading an Old English poem on St. Guthlac, and English saint this week. I've never read a figuration of the Fall in these terms, so the novelty of the image struck me. The line translates: "The brew was in the making that Eve fermented for Adam at the beginning of the world". It goes on to discuss sin and death as a potion that is first made in the Fall and remains to be drunk by all of humanity. I suppose this would have been one attempt to explain that age old conundrum of the transmission of "original sin".

I guess I was reminded by it because of that creamy Black and Tan I had last night at Claddagh, an Irish Pub/Restaurant that's one of the few places for food that's not bad around here.