Still-Life with Eyeliner

poem by wallace stevens 

Domination Of Black
(by Wallace Stevens)

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

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I love this poem, so, I thought I'd share it.

Labels: poems

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haha. 

Find here a funny sketch on PhD Comics about budget allocations in graduate school.

Labels: comic

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"Moonlight" -- Petition to Renew it Going around. 

I'm incredibly disappointed that "Moonlight" -- currently, my favorite television show -- has been canceled by CBS, the network that aired it. The detective drama, based around vampires in the LA area, has about 7.5 million to 8 million viewers. I'm really surprised that it would not be renewed, given the size of its audience of incredibly loyal viewers.

There's been a petition to renew the show going around. Sign it, if you get a chance and if you like this show. Here's a link to more info.

I think that the show is a lot like "Vampire: The Masquerade" done very, very well, with a big budget, great storytellers, slick sets and wardrobe, and sexy actors/actresses. The characters seem to be developing with the storyline. Each episode has gotten better than the one before it, the pilot being the least exciting and the season finale being the most intriguing thus far.


*.*.*

I'm in Texas at the moment. NYC was great fun and definitely improved in my opinion upon increased exposure. I've only been there about a half-dozen times, but it seems more enjoyable on every subsequent trip. I think it's definitely a place I could enjoy living for a few years. It's much more direct than Los Angeles, less hidden behind veneers, and there were so many things to do! But, LA has a lot that I haven't explored, as well. My sister thinks that NYC is a city better enjoyed as a visitor than a resident, which is what I think of LA. Perhaps she and I ended up on the "wrong" coasts. Maybe I'll squeeze what experience I can muster out of LA while I'm still there next year and come away wanting to return. LA has lost its charm, already, for me, but perhaps it can be regained; at least I should try that before relocating on a more long-term scale to a new city.

I'll get around to writing more about NYC at some point, or transcribing impressions from my journal, or posting photos. Just not in the mood right now.

Labels: Cities., TV

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... 

"Harold and Kumar" 2 is funny. Not as funny as the first, as it left more loose threads untied, but funny, anyway. More thoughts on it later.

I really liked "The Darjeeling Limited", which I watched today. It was subtle and strange. Anyone who likes "Rushmore", "The Royal Tenenbaums", or "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" will probably like this one. Perhaps, more on this later, as well.

Labels: movies

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:) 

I just passed my Qualifying Exams!

:)

And tomorrow, I get to read something completely non-work related and just for fun!


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Review of "My Boy Jack" on Masterpiece Theatre. 

I just watched "My Boy Jack" on PBS and, to my surprise, found it quite moving. It was beautifully done. It's difficult to depict stories of soldiers without evoking political debates, but this version humanized the personal conflicts and struggles that they must have endured without excessively bringing in the political. What an interesting story, even the more so for its basis in real life events.

It puts Rudyard Kipling in a new light, for me, makes me feel compassion for him as a person. I read quite a lot of his work when I was young and enjoyed it. In college, I usually saw him depicted as jingoistic, too much devoted to the British Empire, romanticizing and objectifying Indian people for the sake of stories. But, encountering this story of his life in this context, human and fallible and in love with story and romance and playfulness, makes me want to reread his works. I wonder whether he was conflicted in his own self-identity.

Daniel Radcliffe did an amazing job as an actor. I thought that all I would see was Harry Potter pretending to be Jack Kipling, but he was so believable as Jack. David Haig was remarkable as Rudyard Kipling.

Here's the text of Kipling's poem, recited at the end of the film (as available on pbs.org). I'm particularly drawn to its insistence through repetition, which reminds me of the first part of Lorca's "Lament for the Death of Ignacio Sanchez Mejias". It's haunting and ghostly and so much like the process of coming to terms with grief.

My Boy Jack
by Rudyard Kipling (1916)

'Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has any one else had word of him?'
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

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Embodiment is an acquired skill. 

I've been re-learning how to ride a bicycle recently, thanks to the encouragement of SK. It's been about 14 years since I've cycled and, as I opted to buy a bicycle instead of a car this past winter, it's about time I get the hang of it. The old saying that you never forget how to ride a bike doesn't seem to apply to me, but today I made some progress; it felt great to find a moment of balance down a long stretch of road (er, alleyway).

I'm looking forward to a movie called "The Fall" which is allegedly slated for a May 9 release. Here's a link to the official site: http://thefallthemovie.com/.

There's a lot about BPA on the news lately and it sounds awful. Reading about it makes me realize how bad plastic can be and how hard it is to avoid!


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under construction, still, or again... 

So, just about everything in my life is under construction and in progress at the moment. Maybe that's how life always is. But, once in a while, I do tend to get caught up. :)

I'm reworking some of the website and reworking some content, so, what has been just a skeletal framework for far too long might be animated soon! Please excuse the lack of flow and the sparseness. I hope to have it up and running as it ought to be by June 1.

Until then, a book recommendation: Cole Swensen's "The Glass Age". The poems in this book really seem to get at questions of what we see and what we see through. It's a book whose world is populated by glass, water, and crystal in an intriguing way.


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LOL. 

For a really funny comic, click here.


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... 

Tesla was a genius.


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Nellie Bly 

While watching "Jeopardy" during a tea break from work, I discovered Nellie Bly. Not her person, mind you, just a clue about her. Some quick googling yielded this website detailing her escapades. In order to get the right kind of story, she acted and dressed like a lunatic and managed to get taken to the Blackwell's Island Asylum. She remained there for ten days, passing for an insane person, and then wrote an expose on the maltreatment of inmates for her newspaper. That's some moxie!


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negativity 

It's remarkable how contagious and addictive negativity can actually be. It's easy to get trapped into negative thought patterns without even noticing that one has done so. If one spends too much time with chronic complainers and negative people, one takes on such attitudes almost unwittingly. I suppose that we are all creatures of habit, at least until we notice the pattern or habit and decide whether or not we want to continue engaging it.

In thinking about the role of negativity and complaints in my life, I started reading online materials about it and found a fairly interesting blog about "Personal Development for Smart People" by Steve Pavlina. I don't know who he is, but he had some noteworthy things to say. Here's an excerpt from it that I particularly liked, followed by the URL:

"It’s been said that the mind is like a hyperactive monkey. The more you fight with the monkey, the more hyper it becomes. So instead just relax and observe the monkey until it wears itself out....Recognize also that this is the very reason you’re here, living out your current life as a human being. Your reason for being here is to develop your consciousness. If you’re mired in negativity, your job is to develop your consciousness to the point where you can learn to stay focused on what you want, to create positively instead of destructively...Complaining is the denial of responsibility. And blame is just another way of excusing yourself from being responsible." (Steve Pavlina)

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/08/how-to-stop-complaining/


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change? 

For a very long time, I've been blogging about things that are personal. There are several reasons for this. I enjoy reading about other people's lives and think it's only fair to share mine, as well. Writing about personal material allows people that I know to keep up with my own personal climate and life, which is important to me. I tend to think about most things in a personal way and find that to be the least pretentious way of approaching a topic.

But...I'm having doubts about whether or not I want all this personal stuff to be floating around out there. Blogs can be useful for so many other things! People have misconstrued my intention or used information against me that was found here. People have complained about my not including what they felt was relevant on here. And you might think that this is incredibly obvious, that it would be naive to think otherwise. But I tend toward the optimistic, and it often borders on absurd, and I don't mind it a bit because it gets me through the day. But, it's time to consider whether or not I'd like that to continue in a public format.

I recently read an article about whether or not the Blog of the Academic was considered a scholarly source which made some great points in favor of a yes. Then, I read another which made some great points in favor of a resounding no. But the idea of contributing to discourse on a field instead of just putting out fluff about my life is a welcome one. And besides, LiveJournal, with its marvelous many filters and friend-protecting capability, seems to be a much more natural forum for the personal. But, where is the line between bad journalism and sincere contribution? What can be said about the ownership of an idea? How open does one really want to be with one's intellectual property anyway? I don't have answers for you yet. But, I've been thinking a lot about "publication" and what it means and how it's changed.

And so I will be reconsidering, reformulating, and potentially reformatting this site. Most likely, personal matter will move to LiveJournal. Most likely, I will offer some original content here, and on the rest of my page.

Thanks to those of you who have been patient through this transition of space that is my page. Do feel free to comment on anything that strikes you. And stay tuned for changes on the horizon.


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Support the Artists

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Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb 

Just started reading a novel that a friend loaned me called "Sweetness in the Belly" by Camilla Gibb. It's interesting so far and I'm drawn to how the author moves narrative along while still maintaining suspense; it's a strange balancing act of relevant information that doesn't feel expository and a holding back of emotional information that will presumably be meaningful later.

Here's an excerpt that struck me:
"We know plenty of Ethiopians in London who do not even furnish their flats. What possessions they acquire sit in their cardboard boxes ready for transport. The tower of boxes holding televisions, toaster ovens, microwaves, electric heaters teeters to the left of the door, ready to be shipped at a moment's notice. They commit to nothing. They float on the myth of return."

Is that what it means to hope? Lately, I've been contemplating what that word really means, what it invokes, what it sacrifices.


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unsafety 

Monday night of last week, two guys tried to get into my apartment, but I managed to scare them away without getting myself hurt. Later in the week, I saw two guys who seemed similar hanging out outside the building and looking really shady. This week, DPS sent out a report of an attempted kidnapping a couple of streets away and the guys fit the same description as the ones I had seen. There's been a lot of crime near campus in the past month. Kind of creepy. I'm feeling pretty unsafe.

Happy Mabon / Happy Autumnal Equinox.


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weathering 

Slow, steady, slipping down along the sidewalks, the sounds of rainwater sneak into my rented room, filling its space with cleaner air and the scent of clay. There are groups of boys across the street gossiping drunkenly with each other about people they know. I can hear them as if they were right outside my window. But outside my window is only a tree with long pine needles low with the weight of water. I won't be able to take my tea on the balcony in the morning and I don't mind because the world sounds so alive tonight.

I am sitting in blue pajamas with a blue agate pyramid facing the screen and feeling very much at peace with my world today. But I'm unnerved that I've left off my meditation this week, a particularly guilt-worthy note in part because this month is meant to strengthen the spirit, not to let it wither. But, there's time to make amends, if you can think of it so.

Today is a day of many birthdays. And several more loom on the horizon.


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(* 

RAMADAN MUBARAK!


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The dude in the apartment next door is listening to "Thriller". 

Just started reading Dennis Johnson's "Fiskadoro" and I'm not sure what to make of it yet. It's compelling and very strange. Though I don't feel a connection to any of the characters that we've met so far, I am curious about what happens to them beyond that distance.

The film version of "Stardust" turned out very well if you ask me. I really enjoyed watching it and will read the book again, soon. As an aside, Claire Danes is so gorgeous.

Thank goodness there's a breeze to cool us off today. Yesterday, I felt like I was in an oven.


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Fall 

I'm really looking forward to both Fiction and Poetry Workshops this semester. I missed being around people who talk about writing in this way.


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busy busy bee's knees 

First day of classes today. Fiction Workshop. Poetry Workshop starts tomorrow.

Had really bizarre dreams last night. I'd call them nightmares but they were absurd and unpleasant more than frightening. These days, I'm trying to remember my dreams to write them down each morning because somehow, I find that by bringing that surreality into the world I am more easily able to write poems that I actually believe in -- of course, those poems are not necessarily based on the dreams, mind you. But there's something about being able to hold a dream in your head that trains your head for holding a poem...

Halfway across the world, a strongman is carrying three quarters of a ton of gyprock 2.1 kilometers to build an echo-chamber. Isn't this how all rooms begin? Tesla's laboratory, Bluebeard's castle, the Telesterion, the Pyramids...


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puddles 

Life has been demanding and unproductive lately.

Outside my window, it's raining heavily, thundering enough to frighten the cats. It makes me so sleepy. Instead of giving in, I am rereading "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and trying to find enough energy to write something real today.

Though the summer began with good intentions, too much stuff has kept me from following through on most of it. I've decided to cut out caffeine for a little while in the hopes that my motivation will come back.

Door is sitting right up against my laptop. Einstein is pacing in and out of my doorway, avoiding the window because every time it thunders it makes him jump off the sill.

The idea of Codex Alimentarius bothers me quite a bit. Have you heard of it?


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what a statement... 

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.

-- from Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet"


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Texas 

So, these days I'm in Texas, but will head back to LA soon. Taking some time to get a bit of writing done in a familiar environment. Making some progress, but I don't want to say much more until I get farther along in my goals for the summer.

I've been catching up on a lot of work and haven't been too social lately - nothing personal to anyone out there. Plus, my phone crashed on me a few months ago and I've lost most people's contact info....I'll be in touch once I've restored some data. Given these circumstances, it feels a bit like a writing retreat, far away from the crazy people of Los Angeles -- something that I now realize I sorely needed!

I saw "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" the other day and seemed to be the only one who enjoyed it.

Currently Reading: Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red" -- so far, a delightfully complex novel.


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New Rules for ID Cards from wired.com/news 

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72843-0.html?tw=wn_politics_5


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New Book Review for "Voices of Resistance" 

So, since some of my poems are in this anthology, and also since I think this is anthology covers some interesting and necessary topics, I wanted to add a new book review for "Voices of Resistance" up here. Please check it out if you get a chance. You can get it through Amazon and Borders and various other places. I found it at USC's bookstore even. Thanks!

http://www.jordantimes.com/mon/features/features1.htm

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Authoring change’
Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality
Edited by Sarah Husain
US: Seal Press, 2006
Pp. 284
$16.95


What brings together the 39 women — and one man — who contributed to this volume is not only their Muslim background, but a shared conviction that something is seriously wrong across the globe.

In essays, poems and artworks, all 40 are crying out for a better world.

This is a cross disciplinary group: writers, visual and performance artists, professors, graduate students, lawyers and community activists. A number of them hold multiple degrees. One, Maryum Saifee, was formerly a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan, teaching English in a rural school.

They are also transnational. While most live in North America, their roots curl back to Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many of them include autobiographical elements in their essays, and the sheer cultural diversity which finds expression in their writing is fascinating.

Besides being of mixed origins, most of them refuse to be pinned down in a single static identity, as expressed by the title of Mansha Parven Mirza’s piece: “My Kaleidoscopic Identity.” (p. 206)

While the essays are intensely personal, they cover issues of great political and social import. These women are on a mission, engaged in a multi-pronged struggle to resist war and other forms of violence — from the Israeli soldier threatening to rape a Palestinian teenager, to the Koran teacher taking advantage of his position to sexually abuse a female student.

Editor Sarah Husain calls it “authoring change”. (p. 273)

“Connecting the wars ‘back’ home — the ones stored in our memory and in/on our bodies — to the wars being carried out today under the dictates of democracy and security, our work seeks to create the disturbances necessary to build peaceful futures.” (p. 7)

An important component of this is struggling to reclaim the essence of their Muslim faith, casting off customs which subordinate women in the name of Islam.

September 11 complicated their mission greatly. As Muslims and women of colour, they faced misunderstanding and harassment, and were deeply affected by the ensuing “war on terrorism”.

As Jawahara K. Saidullah writes, “This current American war machine, chewing up resources, truth, money and people, terrifies me. I am angry there is a war that my tax dollars are paying for. A war that is killing Muslims…. I am enraged at the complacency of the people of the United States who are so naïve as to allow themselves to be willfully mislead.” (p. 194)

Pondering the situation in Palestine, Iraq and other sites of wars and atrocities, as well as the state of the poor and homeless in America, Nuzhat Abbas notes: “There are many ways to kill a people.” (p. 60)

On the other hand, the post-September 11 atmosphere made it more difficult to raise problems within the Muslim community.

Azza Basarudin queries: “Dare I bring gender into the frontier when my community is being harassed, humiliated, denied its freedom of worship, and detained without proper trials, in the name of national security? … People who advocate for gender reform in Muslim societies are, more often than not, accused of being ‘agents’ of the corrupt ‘Western’ world.”

Yet, while “mosques across American scrambled to open their doors to non-Muslims” in the wake of September 11, “in the hope of salvaging the image of Islam,” Muslim women were still hindered from praying alongside men. (pp. 144-5)

In one of the most lively pieces, Aisha Sattar recounts her experience of going on the Hajj to Mecca. Shocked to find that women had less access to the holy places than men, she also resented being constantly reminded not to have a hair showing by the “purity police”, but all the while “they were silent on the obscene presence of malls and McDonald’s lingering outside the gates of the Ka’aba”.

To her, the “focus on technical improvements, rather than on the spiritual dimension of Hajj, undermines the beauty and power of the pilgrimage”. (pp. 164-5)

Most of the authors have kept their transnational links to their country of origin and their essays express a strong sense of family. Despite having broken out of the mould family and society set for them, they value the lessons learned from their parents.

One example is what Bushra Rehman learned by watching her parents telephone networking in New Jersey, to organise relief for her grandmother’s remote mountain village in Pakistan, when it was hit by an earthquake.

“It is from my parents that I learned my first lesson of community organising: You must first have a community, one that you share joy with as well as suffering.” (p. 81)

“Voices of Resistance” is an effort to generate the discussion and commitment needed to form such a community, or series of communities, of people brave enough to resist violence and take control of their own bodily and spiritual lives.

This book may be found at ARAMEX media stores.



Sally Bland

Monday, January 22, 2007.


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a totally ridiculous but funny little video from youtube 

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Thought I'd share a poem that I'm thinking of lately. 

Waiting for the Barbarians
By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933),
translated by Edmund Keeley


What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Labels: poem

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A Fantastic poem by Kim Addonizio 

I found this poem online somewhere today and really thought it was great, so I'm sharing it with you all, too.

"WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?"
(by Kim Addonizio)

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they’ll bury me in.


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nafs 

I've been drowning in my ego for so long that it seemed impossible to emerge from it, and yet the impulse to do so has never been extinguished. Lately, thinking about what is causing this to happen is allowing me a way to return from this deplorable state of being. There's hope yet -- as long as I stop thinking of this as an achievement and remember that it is an ongoing process.


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staring at a tapestry on a wall 

Perhaps it's self-indulgent to post about my moods when so much in the world is truly horrible, but it seems the only truthful way to represent my experience of anything. I have to say that thinking about the things I see increasingly on the news has me frantic, anguished, and in despair over what atrocities human beings are capable of. And to what effect? What does it even matter what I think? Such insignificance. Instead, I keep trying to organize and clean out my life, in the hopes that the never-ending struggle to create order will somehow help me not to think about all the things I wish weren't happening to so many people who deserve better than the suffering they get instead. Even this ability to tune out everything is a convenience.


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how can you measure the purity of your faith? 

Nothing is ever truly foolproof, regardless of how much research went into the decision-making process. Perhaps you can never really know if something is the right choice or the wrong one, just act and let life happen.

It's taken me a long time to let go of fear, but I think I finally have (in a particular context). Now, if I could just recenter myself in me, I think I could finally get back to living.

I'd forgotten that the medium is not as important as the message and it took hearing the recitation of an amazing poem (which was in the form of a prayer) to remember it.


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dissolution 

Today, I saw X-Men 3 and though I enjoyed the movie, I think that the way it handles Jean Grey/Phoenix was profoundly disappointing. What she stood for metaphorically was beautiful, powerful, and to have that potential destroyed before it was given a sufficient chance to balance was upsetting to witness. Jean Grey happens to be my favorite character in the X-Men films (and interestingly, I heard that Famke Janssen, the actress who plays her character, studied writing and literature at Columbia), which is why I really resisted how the storyline handled her.

A few more weeks before I go back to Sugar Land for the summer and I'm hoping that Netflix and a couple of new books I bought will keep me occupied until then.

Currently reading --
"The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain" by Harvard Neurologist Dr. Alice Flaherty
and
"Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing, 1947-1997" edited by Salman Rushdie & Elizabeth West.

Currently listening to nothing because my computer is all kinds of messed up, and needing replacement, so I have no music for a few weeks.


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