slow life

My time is now my own.

This is a terrifying thought, mostly because it means I can no longer lay the blame for my own poor usage of it on any class, professor, or siren-call of the practice room. This thought has also come to me with particular force lately, as I’ve been immersing myself in the Victorian and pre-Victorian worlds of “Vanity Fair” and “Middlemarch.” No prizes for guessing which I like better–the inflated, chauvinist portrayal of women (weak and wily) of Thackery, or the delicate, joyfully clever investigation into the institution of marriage that Eliot gives us.

I’ll probably do a review of Middlemarch later, but for now, indulge me as I ruminate on a proper usage of time, and the conception of a “full day.”

Much (too much) has been written about the fast pace of our lives in this “modern,” “technological,” “twitterific” age (oh how I loathe that last word). I don’t mind the pace, in fact. There are ways to deal with it–the streamlined Google Reader, selective use of Facebook’s newsfeed, waiting until TV shows come out on DVD (and then appear on Netflix’s site for instant streaming), thus avoiding the ads, and also having the reviews of others to determine if the show is worth my time after all (one of my latest discoveries is the excellent “Slings and Arrows,” a sit-com about Shakespearean theatre).

These things help me separate the entertainment wheat from the chaff, but really, why should I kid myself. Every moment I spend trawling through the blogs I follow, every show I watch on Netflix, is time spent, not entertaining myself, but being entertained. Completely passive, requiring little thought or input on my part. The most I have to think about, say, a movie I’ve just watched is to decide how many stars to give it in Netflix’s rating system. Five divisions–five ranks of relative enjoyability.

Is this it?

What I find myself craving more and more (and this may merely be a symptom of being separated for too long from the academic constructs I’ve reveled in for eighteen years) is to be able to ask “Why?” not just express approbation or disdain. I want to WANT to analyze the media I consume, not just give it a handy thumbs-up or thumbs-down. I want to give my attention to the things that can stand up to analysis–an analysis which is not too byzantine and not too clinical–an analysis that results in some kind of conclusion, even if it’s tenuous. And an analysis that forces me to respond. I want to be moved to action. I want to go from reading Dostoevsky to choosing a job which is ethical. I want to fill my days with profitable work.

This is a Victorian concept–having a good character and acting rightly in every situation is the hinge upon which many Victorian novels turn. Profitable work is difficult to define, and I suspect my definition of it would differ from many people’s, but, with no mobilizing deadlines, I want to be mobilized by things ethical, beautiful, and worthwhile. I want to fill my day with worthy endeavors. I want it all to mean something.

This is grand talk, in sweeping terms, and I have no idea if I’ll be able to live up to my ideals in the future. But for the moment I have to try.

train station post!

This post is written in a hurry, fueled by the manic energy of the people going places around me and the sugary goodness of the frozen lemonade I am currently slurping. Also, I don’t have anything profound to write about, but I’ve always wanted to write something in a train station, and I am delighted that Union Station has free wireless.

I just finished reading William Makepeace Thackery’s “Vanity Fair” (doesn’t he have the greatest name?), though, so I suppose I could ruminate on that for a few paragraphs. I’m surrounded by our society’s version of vanity fair at the moment–various shops selling high-priced lotions and men’s shoes and jewelry are just around the corner, and at the cafe I’m sitting in, every person has a laptop or Blackberry or iPhone.

“Vanity Fair” was something of a disappointment to me–the characters were wonderfully constructed, and it’s worth reading the book just to get to know the ambitious and accomplished dissembler Becky Sharp and the meek-to-the-point-of-irritating Amelia Sedley. The problem I had with the book was not the philosophy or the morality, but the plot. The plot dragged. Victorian novels aren’t generally known for their snappiness, but this book lacked the Dickensian grotesquerie that makes his padding endurable. This book was just too long, and wrapped itself up too quickly, albeit in an interesting manner. But, due to the drawn-out nature of the novel, Thackery didn’t earn the ending he gave us.

This is an interesting concept–that of an author having to earn the right to write something. Thackery didn’t, with his long-windedness, earn the right to end the novel with the confetti-paper bang he ended “Vanity Fair” with, while Charlotte Bronte’s “Villette” has a similarly quick and bombastic ending, but it feels perfectly natural and allowable.

I think Thackery’s problem was really his narrative voice–the voice becomes almost a character in itself (in fact, the reader is sort-of introduced to the narrator at one point), and it takes over towards the end–too anxious to get the moral across, and ignoring the plot in the meantime. Finding himself at the end of the story suddenly, he quickly gets back to the much more engrossing lives of Becky and Amelia, and sends them dramatically offstage with a pat of poetic justice on each of their heads. The good girl gets the happy marriage and the devoted husband, while the bad girl gets poverty and a ruined reputation, but of course this is a moral tale, so the reader understands that Amelia’s marriage is not exactly a bed of roses, while Becky’s squalor is probably more to her taste, and gives her more creative opportunities, but it is exactly the opposite of what she wanted out of life. If Thackery had let his characters dictate their futures, he would have ended up with a much more compelling ending, and he would have earned the right to it as well.

And now, my train is coming and I must go. Farewell!

art and artifice

Washington, D.C. is a great city. It has its share of corruption and more than its share of bureaucracy, but it makes up for this with clean streets, quiet neighborhoods, and the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian Museums are all free, all excellent, and usually showcase the best our nation has to offer. Of course, my favorite free museum on the mall isn’t a Smithsonian at all, but it’s still wonderful. The National Gallery of Art–I would pull a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler there if I thought I could get away with it. The quiet grandeur of the rotunda, Hermes perpetually fluttering his ankle-wings in preparation for flight from the dark marble fountain, the small wood-paneled galleries which contain secret marvels from the Dutch masters, the echoing emptiness of the high sculpture hallways on a Monday at nine o’clock.

So a few weeks ago I made my first trip of the summer to the National Gallery of Art. Walking there from the metro station, I decided to detour through the Sculpture Garden right across the street. Since I’d been there last, they’d added a new scupture, “Graft,” by Roxy Paine.

Beside the trompe l’oeil house in bright red, yellow, and black, and the perfect replica of one of the art nouveau metro entrances in Paris was this tree, blindingly silver in the strong afternoon sun. Its branches tangled with the branched of real trees next to it. Its burnished trunk sprang from the packed dirt like any other hardy plant in a hot D.C. summer.

So, what is so different about art and nature? When we look at a flower, is it not nearly the same thing as looking at a sculpture that’s stuck in the ground next to that flower? What matters, I think, is context. A sculpture in a marble hall–that’s clearly art. We walk around it, we read the tag on the wall explaining its history and provenance. We look at it, expecting that it will say something to us. And if it doesn’t say anything, we either blame ourselves for being insufficiently perceptive, or we blame the artist for producing a failed work of art. Rarely we blame the lighting or the context of the sculpture or painting–because that’s where art is supposed to be, displayed in art museums, right? That’s what they’re there for.

But seeing this metal tree in the sculpture garden (which is sort of an outdoors art museum, the purpose of the place being the display of art objects) my paradigm was shifted. Nothing was really what it seemed anymore–Paine’s tree was as much part of the landscape as the carefully-desposited mulch piles. The famous, giant typewriter eraser had grown there from a tiny typewriter eraser seed. The pine trees in one corner were exquisite artifice, planted and pruned and genetically engineered to be looked at and appreciated as art.

So I don’t know what I think anymore–is art made to be looked at, or to be seen? Is the world for living in or for analyzing? It’s probably a jumbled mix of a lot of things, but I’ve ceased to think that context is overwhelmingly important when dealing with art, or life, for that matter. Context is just one more detail, and what matters more, I think, is the response we make to art or artifice, wherever we find it.

feminism, vampires, and other offensive monsters

Among my many drawbacks is a certain penchant for cheesy sci-fi movies and shows. I cut my genre teeth on “Lost in Space” and “Pitch Black,” and soon decided that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was one show I really shouldn’t have missed out on. Due to the complete awesomeness of (first) Hulu and (then) Netflix, I embarked on a months-long journey filled with witty dialogue, 90’s pop culture references, and lots and lots of ass-kicking.

The appeal of Buffy is not just in the fight scenes and hunky vampires, however. Joss Whedon (the show’s creator and demi-god of geekdom) is a staunch feminist, and he had a very specific agenda in creating the show. Buffy, the eponymous hero, is a little blond girl, interested in shoes, dating, and just getting through high school with a social life and reputation intact. But she’s also the slayer, the one girl in the world with the power to staunch the tide of evil creatures pouring from the Hellmouth in Sunnydale (right under the high school, as it so happens). By the end of seven seasons, she’s stopped several apocalypses, died two and a half-ish times to save the world, and gathered around herself a close-knit group of friends willing to back her in anything.

One of the overarching themes of the show is that fighting vampires and demons and the forces of darkness in general is all a metaphor for high school and growing up, but, especially in the last season, another theme is very clear. Whedon’s all about the empowerment of women, something which, sadly, I find too many people don’t see a need for. Whedon writes, in an article from 2007,* “I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished….And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.”

Buffy and the other female characters in the show, Willow, Cordelia, Tara, Dawn, Mrs. Summers, Faith, and Anya, among others, are not expendable. Nor are they weak or manipulative. Whedon does an excellent job here of trying to redress the cultural balance, writing a hit TV show with a female lead and a heavily female cast about the endless battle of good and evil. In the last season of the show, Buffy and her friends find themselves up against what seems like insurmountable evil–the opening of the Hellmouth and the subsequent release on the world of a race of uber-vamps, endowed with iron-hard skin and a certain quality best defined as “hard to kill.” The evil mastermind behind this plan, called The First (short for “First Evil,” think platonic ideals here), is also killing off all the potential slayers around the world, hoping that by the time Buffy gets killed, there won’t be anyone able to take over the role of slayer.

And here we get into spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen the show yet and are planning on it (as you should), I apologize. In order to save the world once again, Buffy, with the help of her friend (and witch) Willow, endows all potential slayers with full slayer powers. Young girls all over the world become strong, not through a bloody or ritualistic sacrifice–Buffy herself lives–but through a sharing and amplification of power. It is not by violence that women are empowered, but by turning towards each other, sharing in the inherent power each possesses. Buffy sees a way around the (male-mandated) lonely line of single slayers each doomed to fight and die alone, and instead of buying into the single-hero, superman myth, she chooses multiplicity and a congress of women. Which, of course, turns out to be the only way to save the day, and the world.

This tactic is a particularly female one, I believe. Men are more inclined to want to work alone, to be the tortured hero, to be the Jesus or Atlas, taking the world on his manly shoulders and suffering in silence. Women gather friends and family around them. We network, we share, heck, we even go to the bathroom together. Now, I have no idea if this is a socially-constructed gender trait, or if it’s biological, but either way it happens. And I’d like to applaud Whedon for noticing it, and noticing it through a camera. There are far too many movies made in which women are used like cars or sets–just there to pretty up the place. And that kind of treatment leaks from the screen into real life, and from real life onto the screen. And it has to stop somewhere.

*The whole thing is worth your time: http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

After A While, Another One

Well I’ve been home (by which I still mean “the house where my parents live” because this is still home to me) for three weeks. “The house where my parents live,” among other virtues, does not have any access to the internet other than over a phone line, which would make updating this blog a Sisyphean task (quite literally–as soon as I’d get a post mostly posted, the computer would crash or disconnect from the internet because it wouldn’t feel like being connected anymore. Modern parables!)

Done with the excuses and flashy but unskilled linguistic gymnastics, I move on to: Books I’ve Recently Read and What I Thought About Them.

While I was home, my mom recommended to me The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. She’s a French author, so I started reading with a teensy bit of trepidation. Much as I love them (and the language) the French have a tendency to write very Frenchy prose, and when it comes out in English prose it can be a bit overbearing to my English-accustomed brain. But, either the translator (Alison Anderson) foresaw that problem and took care of it in the process, or Barbery doesn’t write very Frenchy prose, for the book, while clearly not a book written first in English, was stylistically consistent with English Word-Art Conventions.* The clever and beautiful novel revolves around three people–a concierge in a posh Parisian apartment building, the 12-year-old daughter of one of the families, and a new tenant, who moves in after one of the old ones, a world-famous food critic and heartless person, dies. All of these people, however, have something to hide.

The concierge, Renee, is a brilliant autodidact who uses her genius mainly to hide her true intelligence from the insufferable bourgeoisie who inhabit the building. A shuffling, lower-class concierge do they expect? A shuffling, lower-class concierge they get. She acts her part with a glassy stare and down-at-the-heel slippers, carefully choosing her vocabulary as to not cause alarm and only wincing occasionally at the grammatical errors of the building’s residents. Her musings range over subjects as disparate as Japanese film, recent developments in semiotics, and the pleasures of whiskey tarts, and she has a true appreciation for the finer things, contrasted with the harried and falsely superior tenants in her building.

The twelve-year-old girl, Paloma, is a child genius who’s decided that life is not worth living and that she’s going to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. In the meantime, however, she keeps a journal, recording things that make life worth living, and, more often, things that make it unbearable.

The third character is a mysterious Japanese gentleman who sees both of these people for who they truly are, and allows both of them to be themselves.

The novel itself is a beautiful rumination on what makes life worth it–the shocking moments of truth and love that make us human, beyond our bankrolls or even our pontificating.

All that to say, you should read it.

New subject! On the train ride down here I read The World to Come, by Dara Horn. Instead of giving you another insufferable book review, I’ll just say that it’s about an art theft, Marc Chagall, Jewish eschatology, what happens to babies before they’re born, Soviet Russia, plagiarism, and love. It also contains one of the best depictions of heaven I’ve ever read, a place where one drinks books and eats art, where one can bask in the steam-rooms of friendship or plunge into an icy bath of hate. There’s a bridge made of mistakes, and a broken ladder that’s supposed to go from hell to heaven. So, read that one too.

And, if you don’t already have enough to read, read this review: http://therumpus.net/2010/06/complicit-with-everything/

Apparently the thing in American poetry is realist poetry, so here goes:

Britney’s Pre-Concert Interview

the skin on my thighs is peeling,
skyscraper thighs, cherry-pie thighs,
i peel the body composite
(an Escher print hangs above my bed,
apple-headed man and wife)
the vegetable gardens of the rich
and middle-class: tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes.
salad for dinner on california lettuce
heads. dandruff.
no,
heads. roll. guillotine. revolution.
hell no.
heads. up. st. louis arch, my legs.
eat this america.

*I just made up this technical term. In short, it means what The Academy** means when it talks about “good” style in any of the arts involving words and their use, written in English. Naturally, were I to have read this novel in French (would I had the skill…), I would not include the above paragraph at all, because I’d be evaluating it by French Word-Art Conventions (les conventions stylistique du mots artistique). I’m sure Barbery is quite good at writing in French.

**sorry not going to define that for you

the obligatory self-aggrandizement

THINKING over last night’s post, I naturally decided to write a poem about it, to help explain (or fuddle*) what I meant. Here it is. Shun as you see fit.

* a portmanteau which I just made up of “further” and “muddle”

A Fine Perfection of Form

This morning’s muggy and coffee-stained light
gently waving up from parking lots in heated coils,
a spiderweb’s symmetry marred by madness
on a chain-link fence. Beribboned blight,
steely ribbons broken open and wallowing
in the wind.

A fine perfection of form, when noted,
when documented in vacuum, but
the green grass intrudes, sends down
aching tangled roots. Dig up the lawn,
a matted historical interest to worms
and lawmen, sliced up and carried off like cake.

When will you stop observing
the sparrow’s fall and let the huddled breath
of feathers simply fall. Even keen-eyed lab-rats
cannot see atoms stepping on each other’s toes
in their hurry to get to the rain-trees-moon-stars dance.
A dead sparrow is death itself, but does not need
your sympathetic symphony to make it so.

dostoevsky, dc, and diplomas

HERE I am in Washington, D.C. (that’s the correct punctuation for it, in case you were curious. Comma, period, period.), city of my childhood wanderings and adolescent dreams. I’m here for the summer, working as a nanny and trying to like it. I’m also here as a newly minted graduate, trying to figure out how I’m going to “do” life. To that end, I’m going to keep thinking and writing and thinking about writing (and, hopefully, writing about thinking), and I’m going to use this slightly narcissistic online space to do that.

Now, enough filler. Here’s the real dope: Dostoevsky. I’ve been trying/meaning to read The Brothers Karamazov ever since my freshman year, naively traipsing around Europe with a backpack and a blue cloth-bound copy of the novel I’d picked up at my town’s local used bookstore for a buck or two. I imagined I’d read it on the midnight train to Salzburg or Leipzig, relishing the moral dilemmas and barren landscapes of Russia as I immersed myself in the cultural pond of the continent. However, I was more often than not engrossed in the landscape flashing past the grubby train windows, and found it mentally easier to gaze at Tuscan cedars and the distant Alps than to embroil myself in the un-pretty troubles of the Karamazov family.

But now, relatively fetterless and newly inspired to finish things I start (it being a good habit to get into) I have resolved to read this novel through to the end.

Therefore, thoughts. I’ve just reached the Grand Inquisitor scene, where Ivan and Alyosha talk about God and the relative existence thereof. Whether you’ve read the book or not, what I want to discuss is an idea that started worming around while reading this scene: the idea of a longing for perfect justice and perfect peace. Ivan declares,

“I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace the murderer. I want to be there when every one suddenly understands what it has been for.”

Lots of utopian (and dystopian) novels have the premise that in order for there to be a utopia in the first place, everyone has to have the same motivation and the same end. This, at least in the novels, doesn’t work. Sir Thomas More’s utopia is a hellish place, based on a rigid class structure and the denial of the humanity of people. In fact, most utopias work because they reduce humans to either animals or machines.

But what if this were not the only way? What if peace were possible only by asserting the individuality and creative potential that is the driving force of every human being? This utopia would look very different from Zamyatin’s We or Huxley’s Brave New World. There would be no precision instruments, no programming of the psyche. This may turn out to be only a different shade of extreme democracy, but I think that the only way humanity might be perfectible is through messiness itself, and the ability we have to both expect the best from ourselves while extending forgiveness and encouragement to others, allowing space for all to messily and colorfully create life and art in abundance.

another beginning

SO, I’ve graduated from college and now find myself needing to start something new. Because stagnation causes slime mold to form, and that stuff is some scary shit.