Want.

Kay Ryan & Good Poetry

Here's some poetry from Kay Ryan, America's newest poet laureate. I'd never heard of her before she was named laureate (her term starts in the fall), but I like the tautness of her work and the precision of her words. So many of her poems are composed of lines of only two or three words each, each carefully considered so that each word counts and there's no flab, no excess. And she has a way of beginning small and common, and then dropping in a word or phrase--words that aren't even particularly extraordinary or unique--which scythe out that underlying truth she's trying to tell you about. They're so short that they leave you almost startled: you know you read something that meant something, because you feel it some sort of resonance in your chest, but it's like the resonance or ghost of a note hanging in the air after the song has stopped. You have to go back to look at the score to try to parse out what those notes were.

Great Thoughts

Great thoughts do not nourish small thoughts as parents do children. Like the eucalyptus, they make the soil beneath them barren. Standing in a grove of them is hideous.

Full Measure

You will get your full measure. But, as when asking fairies for favors, there is a trick: it comes in a block. And of course one block is not like another. Some respond to water, giving everything wet a little flavor. Some succumb to heat like butter. Others give to steady pressure. Others shatter at a tap. But some resist; nothing in nature softens up their bulk and no personal attack works. People whose gift will not break live by it all their lives; it shadows every empty act they undertake.

Blandeur

If it please God, let less happen. Even out Earth's rondure, flatten Eiger, blanden the Grand Canyon. Make valleys slightly higher, widen fissures to arable land, remand your terrible glaciers and silence their calving, halving or doubling all geographical features toward the mean. Unlean against our hearts. Withdraw your grandeur from these parts.

This Will Be A Boring Post. Seriously.

I was going to give you a list of books I freaking need the authors to write ASAP, plus favorite scenes from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (aka One Of The Best Books Ever) but instead I'm just giving you a mash-up of Random Stuff/Things I Like/Have Been Thinking About Recently. This post will be long and boring. Unfortunately, I think that's just the nature of this blog/me. 1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. This is an amazing, amazing book, and you must read it posthaste if you have not already. It's a (fictional) history of the revival of magic in England in the 1800s, and centers around the friendship and eventual rivalry of the first two practical magicians England has seen since the disappearance of its half-human, half-fey Raven King, John Uskglass, 300 years prior. It's an enormous, sprawling, beautiful work that's written in this awesomely prim, Jane Austen-ian tone (you know that way she had of skewering social niceties and egos with a few pointedly innocuous lines? Like that). Clarke also weaves a fabulously complex and believable backstory of the history of English magic that draws you into the world of JS & MN, complete with footnotes and extracts from letters and secondary sources for verification. Anyway, it's a gorgeous mashup of history (Napoleon & Waterloo), traditionally British & Spenserian mythology (think the Faerie Queen and Tam Lin, Arthurian legend and ... Norse mythology, I guess--"Uskglass" doesn't sound very British to me), Jane Austen and Charles Dickens (society balls and society scandals), and ... pure awesomeness. Also, I love what she does with language. My favorite scenes are probably too long and need too much explanation for posting, but look at this snippet of casual text: "The box was small and oblong and apparently made of silver and porcelain. It was a beautiful shade of blue, but then not exactly like blue, it was more like lilac. But then again, not exactly lilac either, since it had a tinge of grey in it. To be more precise, it was the colour of heartache. But fortunately, neither Miss Greysteel nor Aunt Greysteel had ever been much troubled by heartache and so they did not recognize it." OK. I know that wasn't groundbreaking per se, but I love the fact that this paragraph--which is a throwaway paragraph, buried in an immense book--is so precise in its description. Neither blue, nor lilac, nor grey: the colour of heartache. You know exactly what that box looks like now, don't you? And you know it's something not of this world (it contains, by the way, the severed smallest finger of lady who is under enchantment). And then the next great thing: after giving you something touchy-feely and sensitive like the colour of heartache, she goes on, in quintessentially British fashion, to brush past it with the matter-of-fact But fortunately, neither Miss Greysteel nor Aunt Greysteel had ever been much troubled by heartache and so they did not recognize it. Without so much as a comma, people! .... reading over this post I doubt you will be impressed. I'm not explaining this tiny bit of text well. But it's good. Read it. 2. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog! Joss Whedon (Buffy and Firefly creator, along with this fall's Dollhouse and some other tv shows) currently has a 3-part web-only musical coming out, starring Neil "Doogie Howser" Patrick Harris as supervillain Dr. Horrible. Dr Horrible just wants the chance to talk to Penny, the cute girl at the laundromat (Felicia Day), and to be able to prove his worth to the Evil League of Evil, which he's trying to join. Alas, Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillian, um yum?) is there to save the day and steal the girl. Part I is up now at the link I sent you and it's really hilarious, campy and OTT in the best way. Please watch it. Seriously. He makes a song about a freeze ray into a love ballad. It's amazing. 3. Er ... More Books! Okay so I don't think people understand quite how much I read. In the past three weeks, I have read the following 10 books:

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (and oh, did I mention this is her fiction debut?! freaking amazing)
• Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card (Card's Ender's Game is one of my all-time favorite books, but I just can't quite wrap my mind around how ... altruistic and optimistic Card's views of humanity tend towards in his other books, this one included.)
• The Wrong Hostage by Elizabeth Lowell (Lowell isn't a bad writer, but this was mass market trash. hey, I was in an airport and the selection was small)
• New Moon and Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer (part of Meyer's hugely popular Twilight Saga ... YA fantasy novels. They're OK, but definitely YA, aka, melodramatic/romantic/sappy. And the heroine is really annoyingly helpless.)
• The Host by Stephanie Meyers (This was supposed to be her foray into adult books and scifi; it is slightly more complex than the Twilight books, but still basically felt like a YA fantasy/romance. All of Meyers' stuff is sort of trashy, addictive fun, but not exactly mentally-straining. Which is why I read 3 of them in the past 3 weeks. Also, I was on a roll.)
• The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (This was a very beautiful, thoughtful, and sad coming-of-age story about a girl growing up on a fading ranch in Montana. The title refers to a conversation the girl has with her father when they're weaning foals from mares, a painful process involving forcibly separating the animals, who scream out for each other unceasingly for days before giving up. The narrator wants to know who watches over animals and soothes their pain the way humans believe a God does ours, and the book bring into question all the truths of that, and makes you wonder how much difference there is between us and the horses.)
• In the Woods by Tana French (A fantastic book--a literary mystery about a pair of Irish detectives investigating the murder of a little girl on the same spot where two children disappeared twenty years before. Wonderful characterizations and an amazing narration.)
• The Floating Island: The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme by Elizabeth Haydon (YA novel, first in a series. Capitalizing off the Spiderwick etc trend. I bought it b/c it was $4.95; didn't love it.)
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (speaks for itself. Reader, I married him!)

That, my friends, is a total page count of ... 5,324 pages. Of all of these, the top three are Jonathan Strange, The God of Animals, and In the Woods. They're all very different genres and what they have in common is fantastic writing and an internal resonance with the human condition.

I Have A New Blog! (take 2)

Well, I actually tried to do an initial "new blog!" post earlier--like 2 weeks ago--but obviously (in keeping with the theme of this whole endeavor) it was Not A Success since it didn't actually ever show up. Anyway. I've decided that this one will be less existential rambling about life and less excessive use of the f-bomb in relation to my job, and more fun stuff like lists, books, pictures, etc etc.

So! To start with: a few pictures from my recent trip to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Austin, Texas (the last one being the most foreign, of course). Below is the view from the sidewalk cafe directly outside of our hotel. It was on Ipanema beach (yes, the Ipanema of the famously irritating "Girl From Ipanema" elevator song).


A half-mile away, Rio's other famous boardwalk/beach, Copacabana, at night. Freaking gorgeous. (The famously irritating "Copacabana" Barry Manilow song, which, btw, I have mostly memorized, was not about this beach.)


I hadn't realized quite how beautiful and yet ridiculous the layout of Rio was--the whole port side of the city is divided up by these incredible, abrupt mountains, which means that that part of the city is segmented into little coves of beach, hills, lagoons, and enclaves of buildings. Most amazing is the way the buildings--in the rich areas as well as in the favelas (Brazilian ghettos)--wind their ways up the hills. Despite the incredible grade, buildings are just packed on top of each other all the way up.

This is the famous bonde (tram) up to Santa Theresa, one of Rio's old, bohemian neighborhoods. It's the last working tram in Rio. You can see the kids (and some older people) clinging to the sides. The rule is if that you grab it as it's trundling by (instead of at a stop) and cling to the side for dear life, you can ride it for free. I think that's supposed to be limited to the local kids, but I definitely some rather muscle-bound and mustached "fourteen-year-olds" if they're gonna stick to that story.

Jare and Dad wait for the bonde like good little (?) tourists.

We had some freaking incredible food at a little restaurant perched on the Santa Theresa hillside. Succulent, succulent pork. Even Jarrett's vegetarian meal (mmm fried cheese) was tasty.

We also went up to a smaller town called Petropolis, north of Rio and into the mountains. This is where Rio's royalty used to go in the hotter summers, and also where they scurried away to whenever disease hit the city. Anyway, the point is that we got to this crisp mountain town in Brazil ... where we encountered a German heritage celebration. Yup. Those are Brazilians in full lederhosen. They are twirling each other. There were also a substantial number of flower-bedecked carts, pulled by goats. See exhibits A and B below.

(Exhibit A. See the twirling?)

(Exibit B. You're right. That IS a small dog in a handkerchief and cowboy hat, being pulled by a goat.)

We also hit Corcavado, a high mountaintop where a huge statue of Jesus sticks his arms out benevolently and woodenly (or granite-ly?) over the city. I'm just saying. He doesn't exactly look comfortable.


A few days later, we headed to Buenos Aires in Argentina next. BA was cold--in the 50s. It's winter down there, hence the coats you see on everyone. BA felt surprisingly like a European city to me. It gave off very Parisian-slash-Dublin vibes. Probably all the cranes and the cold, grey weather. But seriously, does the street below have a South or Latin American vibe to you? Me neither.

That's probably just my ignorance though. BA was settled by the Spanish, of course, and a long time before America was even thinking about getting around to statehood. And oh look, here to educate us of that fact is a very Spanish-looking statue of Pedro de Mendoza, who founded what became the current Buenos Aires in 1536 (he wasn't the first Spaniard to get there, but earlier colonies died out under Indian attack, starvation, etc etc. Actually Mendoza's did too, but eventually people came back to the place he'd settled; ergo he gets a statue). And, in a nice nod to veracity, in the background we have an incuse of an indigenous woman throwing up her hands in supplication to the gods, probably to save her from smallpox blankets. Or maybe that was us up in North America.

And in lighter news, here's a picture of me in front of a ginormous steak at a parrilla. I'm not actually a huge steak fan but you can't go to Argentina and not eat it. Unless you're Jarrett, and the waiter definitely had a hard time understanding why he only wanted salad until he whipped out the "soy vegetariano"s.

One of the coolest things in BA was Recoleta, the huge, sprawling cemetery. These people take their mausoleums seriously--everything you see below is a house of the dead for a family or person. You (literally) need a map to navigate through the cemetery, which is laid out on streets. Some of these things were serious pieces of architecture, and even the "smaller" ones were the size of, say, a bedroom in a New York City apartment. Despite the fact that Recoleta wasn't begun until the mid-1800s, it's essentially full now. Many of the mausoleums were quite old and untended, and with the broken glass and crumbling marble you could see coffins stacked on each other, and smaller chests for cremated remains propped on top, when the room ran out.

I like how in this picture, the city of the living is only a foggy presence in the background of the city of the dead. Which has a streetlight, natch.

And here's a picture of Congress. Just for you. Somewhere inside, Cristina Kirchner is stamping on the export rights of farmers. (Actually, there was a lot of "Cristina is Evita Reborn!" graffiti on the monuments nearby. But who knows--that could have been from 6 months ago when she first took office and her ratings were higher.)


And lastly, one of me and Pop in front of Casa Rosada (the "Pink House"), which is the presidential ... uh, building, I guess ... from whose balconies Eva and Juan Peron gave rousing speeches. It's pink because back in the mid-1800s after Argentina had declared independence from Spain, but before the country had really gotten its feet beneath it, the president at the time painted it with the mixed colors of the unionists (white) and the federalists (red) in an attempt to get everybody to stop fighting each other and start fighting the local tribes. I think.

And finally, a few Austin, Texas wedding pictures! Angela, my best friend from high school, got hitched to Andy, this guy who's barely worthy of her. Just kidding. It was a really nice wedding. They had it at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and half of the reception tables were outdoors. There wasn't a lot of fripperies and adornment--they just kept it simple and used the surroundings. It was really pretty, as evidenced below.

Here's me and two of my other HS BFFs--Jenn Cheng and Karen Wang. Jenn is now married and Karen is engaged. SIGH. FINE. I'LL GO BUY MY CATS SOME MORE FANCY FEAST.

Angela looked gorgeous as always, but strangely, all of my pix of Andy were ... terrible, though whose fault that is, I'm not entirely sure. Note the one below in which he is throwing a gang sign while holding a baby. This bodes well for the marriage, I think.

Okay, here's a cute one. This is them handing out candies as the relatives leave. No, but seriously, they're a really good-looking couple and only someone who works as hard as I do at f*cking up pictures could have come out of this wedding with a roll of what amounts to outtakes. No applause necessary. I try hard.


Okie that's it for now! Soon to come: a list of sequels I really want the authors to freaking sit down and write. And maybe some amazing passages from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Sofa king good, that book. Read it now if you haven't yet.