Indian summer- the Gowns

From the Indian summer with its somber odors tumbles melancholic memories of autumns past.



Weekend notes: to observe, analyze and document events witnessed.

Gowns show @ RML 9/9/2006

We filed into the solemn affair, the only light, projected candles on three screens.
Initially out of a forlorn calling violin, a voice, without boundaries, disintegrates as it hits air. Among screaming erupted the swell. If you blinked, you might miss the whole note being stuck. The hushed extravagance, impressions left, felt teeth dent insides lips. I chewed my bottom lip until it bled. The light reflected off her guitar and struck my face The oscillation disappeared, then my eyes downcast to white shoes. Her voice beckoned me past 6 feet low, "calling, calling" crawling past 6 feet below.

Doraemon!

"Doraemon is a cat like hamburger" This was a quote on a Doraemon puzzle I had hanging in my bathroom for a while when I lived in my previous residence. It could be interpretated many ways- in fact, I think something was lost in translation. A co-worker picked it up somewhere in Asia. I grew up with the Doraemon image, my brother & I had Doraemon toys, stuffies, pencil boxes, chopsticks, manga and ad infinitum. It's one of my few pleasant childhood memories, and I become a bit happier when I see Doraemon. He's been around in Japan since 1970, and has a rather complicated storyline attached to him. Of course, when we were little, my brother and I understood very little of it, but we liked how he looked. He does look rather pleasing with his calm blue color and big rounded shapes. He's so pleasing that his image is everywhere in Asia. And especially in Taiwan. He appears to be the 7-11 representative, because there he is- huge, glowing and friendly blue, on the door, as you walk in. If you want to know more- here's a good Wikipedia article.


The pictures above:
1. Doraemon on the 7-11 door.
2. Doraemon at the night market
3. Doraemon coloring contest
4. Doraemon in plastic

Tainan temple scenes

Thoughts on Tainan, Taiwan.

1. Tainan is not a pedestrian conscious city. It appears that most people drive scooters or drive. Parked scooters, tables & chairs often block and clutter sidewalks. I didn't even see many people walking down the sidewalks. This also might be due to the excessive humidity and heat, which causes one to sweat profusely, in huge drops. In the traffic hierarchy, pedestrians come last, after cars then scooters. One much pay great attention when crossing the street as scooters are everywhere and will cross against red lights if there are no cars around. However, Tainan is quite compact and one can traverse it by foot, easily.

2. Many open air restaurants exist. One can't even pass a block without encountering such restaurants. Unfortunately, being a vegetarian, I was not open to trying much of the food as it appeared to contain meat. However, one could eat fantastically here, as the food is plentiful and inexpensive.

3. Tainan houses many temples of the Daoist, Confucius, and Buddhist variety. You can find them at the end of little crowded alleys, tucked in between streets or within markets. You can find huge magnificent ones out in the "ecological areas", which are a good 30mn drive. They are complicated and often beautiful, but incomprehensible to me.

4. Tainan is not a particularly cosmopolitan city, I don't think many tourists, especially non-Taiwanese or Chinese tourists visit. It was challenging at times to find an English speaker. However, people seemed more or less friendly and curious. The ones I asked for directions were helpful and no one seemed wary of me. I believe, for the most part, it is a relaxed and safe place to live.

herculean- Taiwanese sky shots

After herculean efforts to appease her, he realized her insatiable demands bordered on the extreme irrational.



Facts about Taiwan-from Wikipedia

Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa (this name came the Portuguese),
is part of the Republic of China, but it is not a part of the People's Republic of China, therefore maintaining its independent status (so far- this is an ongoing debate- whether to join China or not)

In 1624 the Dutch colonized Taiwan and made their capital in what is present day Tainan (the city I visited)

In 1887 the Chinese annexed Taiwan and in 1895 the Japanese took it over.
After WWII, the control of Taiwan has been ambiguous, but it has operated as an independent sovereignty.

Religion: 93% of Taiwanese are adherents of a combination of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism; 4.5% identify themselves as Christians, including Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, and other non-denominational Christian groups; and 2.5% are adherents of other religions, such as Islam and Judaism.

panagea

Das Bunker- German Bunker in Nantes



Would a panagea be a panacea for our continental drift?


Back and jetlagged...
Need to download pictures and write something cohoerent.

In the meantime, look at pictures from Nantes, France taken in May.

http://photos-by-lisa.fotopic.net/c1038294.html

Rx

A well-performed play can be the just needed Rx for summer doldrums.

Picture from Siskiyou Wilderness 10/2004

"Proust says that love is the perfect training for a writer since it makes us jealous and alert and suspicious and leads us to submit the beloved to a circular analysis that later we can apply to any literary subject."

-Edmund White My Lives

I'm currently reading E. White's memoirs, I'm trying to finish it before I leave the country tonight; I only have one chapter left. Another memoir devoured and digested.

I love reading memoirs, biographies, auto-biographies and diaries because it gives me a window to look into another's life; an opportunity to inhabit their brain as they sift through their life experiences and try to make sense of the disorderly conduct which makes up a life.

In White's memoir, I mostly enjoy the candid and revealing depictions of his love affairs and romances. I cannot go into more detail than that, for fear of attracting lurid attention. I don't think I have the stomach to impart from my personal life the scenes he describes so openly, and so publicly. However, I do find his sordid details entertaining and enlightening, at least. S-x is one of those topics, for which I have a detached amusement with no moral assignments. It is an action others find so essential and compulsory, yet I find charming, but nonconsuming. There are other thoughts I am more likely to dwell upon; in reading about White's s-xual stunts, I realized how little I think or even chose to remember such details in my own life. Instead much of my relationships were centered on conversations, shared interests, and time spent together; s-x happened for sure, but was always a periphery. Not to paint a picture as though I was some ice-queen, I enjoy it certainly, but only in addition to love.
Perhaps, it is the same for White, in all his exploits, he saturates those memories with love.

Some good reviews in case you are thinking of reading this book:

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0614,beller,72712,10.html
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,,1572447,00.html


Tonight I'm off to Taiwan, I'll be back with plenty of pictures, I suspect, and maybe a book review- a real one.

flotsam

Thoughts like flotsam, floating by.



Today's Oakland picture: Dave's- it used to be a 24hr diner I would go to with my friends very late at night back in the early 90's. Located on Broadway Ave., it is now closed.





Today's super-mini pianist biography- for more info- see link.


Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837) - born in Slovakia

He studied under Mozart, Clementi and Haydn.

Notes about Hummel from Harold Schonberg's Great Pianists,

According to Czerny (another g.p. who studied under Beethoven) "Never before had I heard such novel and dazzling difficulties, such clarity and elegance in performance, or such intimate and tender expression, or even good taste in improvisation."

In person, Hummel was anything but elegant. He was course, ungainly, slovenly and his face was pitted by smallpox. Czerny described him as "..a striking young man with an unpleasant common-looking face that constantly twitched", and wore "… utterly tasteless clothing". In late life Hummel grew monstrously stout and when he played he puffed, blew and perspired. But he was a refined musician and, aside from Beethoven, the greatest improviser of his age.

hypogeusia

Several years of wearing purple with red could be attributed to her hypogeusia.


Nothing but links today.

About Pythagoras
http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/commentary/commentary20041110.html

giant oysters in sf bay
http://www.sfei.org/inthenews/SF%20Chron%208-18-06%20invasive%20oyster.pdf

Walter Benjamin and hash
http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2006/06/another_side_of.html

http://www.edrants.com/?p=4078

more on the flâneur and the arcades-
http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Passagenwerk.html#Arcade

Library of Unwritten Books
http://www.unwritten.org.uk/pages/about.html

and on Polar Bears' shrinking genitalia- how they figure this out, I cannot even imagine! http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060823_polar_bears.html

Don Juanism

It is no fun to love a man who is infected with Don Juanism. **


Little Piano history facts: (from Great Pianists, Harold Schonberg)

In 1709, Bartolommeo Cristofori invented the piano in Padua, Italy, originally called: gravicèmbalo col piano e forte.

J.S. Bach first played one in Dresden, 1736.

The first muscician to compose pieces for piano started in 1732, his name: Lodovico Giustini; Mozart and Clementi were the first well-known composers who wrote music for the piano.

Thomas Jefferson was likely the first to own a piano in America, he had one in 1771.



If you want to know how astromoners define planets: read this.



Weekend scene note:

It is Saturday around noon. I drink a cup of coffee in the downtown Berkeley Peet's. To my right, two 30-ish women carry a conversation. Behind me sit an older couple (65+) chatting about various incidentals. Mostly the woman comments on things she saw on the television, interspersed with actions she notices across the street, through the window. Once in a while, she will ask the man what instrument is playing in the background classical music. Most likely to test his hearing. For one piece, he answers, "piano", then adds a second later, "Steinway".


**I've decided to title my entries with words from the random-word generator, then try to write a sentence including the word. Whatever pops into my head. A bit of word-omancy!

Morgan Territory 2004

execrable

Little notes:

Sentence constructed from random word-a-day:

I dreamt execrable scenes; bolting heavy frames onto sheetrock walls.

I ate several madeleines for breakfast the last few days. I want to find the perfect madeleine that one can find in the bay area- so far I've tried: Nutty Cookie, Whole Foods and Donsuemor.
So far my favourite is Donsuemor, the right chewy consistency with a bit of crunchy resistance. The Whole Foods cookie is just too big and caky.


No pictures today, but here's a link to other pictures I took the last few weeks.
http://photos-by-lisa.fotopic.net/c1041242.html

Monday, I hope to present a mini-bio of a great pianist.

incunabula

I'm back. I know I was going to stay away longer, but it has been a month. Mostly I didn't want to try to think of something to say every day. Maybe if I post a couple times a week; and more if my mood is willing.

I was inspired by 2nd Entry's camping trip. Reminded me of when I used to on botany fieldtrips and so I included some pictures I took when I went to the White Mountains (Eastern Sierra Nevadas), one of the few homes of Pinus longaeva- maybe the oldest species of living trees. They can live up over 3,000 yrs old. In fact, there is a tree reputed to be older than that age somewhere up there. That means that tree was already 1,000 years old when so-called Christ (or someone who fit that description and demeanor) walked the Earth. Kind of makes you think we should do something about global warming, huh?

So what have I been up to: I've been reading a very challenging book by Witkiewicz, Insatiability, written by Polish writer during the space of the two World Wars. The basic plotline is a young baron's coming of age story. However, a lot of ideas about art, politics and life get tossed in. Witkiewicz was one of the esteemed Polish Modernist writers, and he also had a foot in the Surrealist camp. As in this novel, he expressed much anxiety. I will write a more inclusive review when I complete reading it.

Things I would like to do with blog: continue with the documentation of my psychogeographic activities (or flâneur's reveries), and book reviews. I would also like to present mini-biographies of famous pianists- since many have strange lives and there's not many places to find that info. Also more pictures, and word experiments. We'll see how it goes.

The last note for today. There a thought someone who had been a friend of mine had written to me: "it would make me happy to know someday that you feltso much security inside that you didn't need to do any of it, that you could be strong alone, that your priorities could be your own and not someone elses." I thought about this a lot. And now I know how one arrives at that point of strength. One must feel that there are others in the world that care and want you to embody that strength. These are friends and lovers who value you as a person and will try to understand who you are, how you are feeling and what you need. You don't simply serve for some purpose for them, to be tossed away after use. They appreciate the uniqueness you bring to their lives. No action needs to be premeditated; there are no unbendable rules of engagement. There only needs to be openness, and willingness to give and the ability to trust. One of many things I've learned, if I cannot trust someone, I should not try to be in a relationship with them. None of us exist as discrete islands; we are only as good as how well we treat other people.

Ok- enough from me- "hi~"

Nescient

Arcades in Paris- Passage Verdeau





















Passage Panorama






"Writing and publication will be less and less a sign of distinction. In keeping with our electoral and industrial customs, everyone, at least once in his life, will have his page, his treatise, his prospectus, his toast--will be an author." Saint Beuve [U9,2] from The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin



This is my 100th post, so I will take a hiatus from this blog for the summer. I will re-visit it after September to consider how I want to proceed, if I want to continue; and where I want this blog to go- intellectually.
Instead, I plan to spend the summer reading more books, playing the piano, taking pictures, collecting more words, volunteering, practicing psychogeography (or just being a flâneur), learning more of everything, and trying to be a good friend.

amanuensis

Photos of Millenium Park








"The room on the Rue Saint-Jacques where The Society of the Spectacle got written was at once an austere cell- with nothing on the shelves, I remember, but a few crucial texts (Hegel, Pascal, Marx, Lukács, Lautréamont Poésies) laid open at the relevent page- and the entryway to Debord's miniscule apartment, through which friends and comrades continually passed." T.J. Clark (forward) from Guy Debord by Anselm Jappe


Thoughts of Chicago-

1.It is hot and sweat-induced.
2.There are mini-bunnies in the million-dollar Millenium Park
3.American cities are too spread out and rely too much on cars. Even though Chicago has the "L"- it seems not convenient enough.
4.The "no-smoking indoors" policy is slowly spreading across America- even into Mid-West Chicago, amazing.

The sad thing is that I did not read a damn thing- not even while on the plane (except for trashy magazines). I wanted to keep track of the conversation topics which were covered. I'm curious as to what people talk about. People talk so much, I wanted to break it down to common subject- 1st there's the usual "catching up or getting to know each other"
2nd there's the goofing around- non-topics about what is happening in the present-3rd topics regarding work.

no new words

The things I saw in Chicago I enjoyed the most:

Laryngitis

Since Sunday, I have been without a voice; one of the results of my illness last Thursday. This voice lack has created some interesting responses from people, as I am lucky to be witness to some behaviors one usually isn't privy to see.

The first type of response is: when you whisper, some people will whisper back- without even thinking of why you are whispering in the first place. Perhaps they think I'm weird and they're just entertaining me. This is very possible- I do live in the nut-out capital of the world, with people having all sorts of strange and irrational ticks- perhaps people who live here have been conditioned to accommodate all sorts of weird behavior.

The second kind of response is from waitstaff- I have gone out a few times and even ordered tea at Peet's. I write down my order and hand it to the waiter (it's only been men at this point). They nod emphatically to show that they "understand" and they also don't verbalize- as to show their solidarity with me. I find this behavior quite striking- I'm not sure how to interpret this- perhaps those drawn to this industry are more empathetic? I would not draw this conclusion from the service I usually get.

My co-workers have just resorted to teasing me-which is to be expected.

OK- enough of that- I included some pictures of Nantes, France from when I was there in early May 2006. These are pictures of our BIG lunch salad, Insane! And a picture of the sky overhead.
Tonight- off to Chicago and Washington, D.C. No posts for a few days- but I'll be back, with pictures!

Beware of yesterday

I finished reading The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig- here is my little review, as promised:

Zweig's name is no longer recognized as a major writer now, although he was the most translated author during his heyday. He was friends with some of the most well-known names of culture and intelligentsia: Rilke, Freud, Richard Strauss, Maksim Gorky and the list goes on. He penned a wide variety of works from biographical studies to novellas and operas. World of Yesterday, however, is his memoir, published after his suicide of 1942.
I was initially attracted to this book because of my current interest in turn-of-the-century Vienna; although I had heard of Zweig's name, and even read chapters of his large biographical work, Master Builders.

However, after reading WoY, new doors of inquiry have opened in my mind. I started to see Vienna in a pivotal historical moment, inhabiting a crossroads where decisions were made (not only my politicians, but by ordinary people who chose to turn their heads) that affected history's course, but also the face of Europe. Zweig lived during an incredibly divergent time. (Perhaps one can make the argument that all times are like this) Not only was culture brimming with prospects, but ideas were spilling forth and co-mingling within literature, music, visual arts and theory. Zweig traveled back and forth across Europe- writing, thinking and meeting other great artists. He writes of a moment he was privileged to witness the creative fire in Rodin. He speaks fondly of his encounters with Rilke- a gentle, sensitive man. And he gives a picture of Europe before it turn the corner into the two great wars. He expresses his disappointment of Europe's change after WWI- and the horrors which befell Vienna right before WWII.

This is an amazing read- and after reading it I became more fascinated by this man who lived through all experiences- in fact on Sat.- I went a bought a few more books on him!
I also saw a connection between what happened in Vienna and what could possibly happen here in the US- it is a warning. Although this memoir greatly informs, there is a strange elusive quality to Zweig. He does not really let you in, for example, as you are reading- all of a sudden, there is a wife! Who is this wife? What is her name? How did they meet? This he never tells you- nor does he tell you that this marriage ends and as he is about to leave England for Brazil, he gets married to another woman. Nor does he reveal what internal processes he undergoes, nor does he reveal some insight of why he has become the person he is. No matter- I guess one can read other biographies on Zweig to get these answers (there is one penned by his first wife, Frederika).

Nevertheless, it is a highly recommended read- perhaps the best book I've read so far this
year- links for more info:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/szweig.htm
http://www.bookforum.com/archive/apr_06/cohen.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19133

pyretogenic

No outside Oakland picture today- instead I bring you…my room- but it is in Oakland. And for those who wonder if there is a there in Oakland, there is! And I will prove it to you next week….

This is the view when you walk through the door.
















And this is the view from the bed. I better start reading...










Yesterday I woke up feeling terrible. The night before I had gone to sleep extremely cold, then awoke in the middle of the night with twisted sweat drenched sheets wrapped around me. I had tense and stressful dreams. There were no images only voices- as though I was hearing conversation with my eyes closed or I was listening to a radio station. The discussions centered on political and governmental issues. But these discussions were argumentative and warlike. Why would I have such dreams- I think they were highly influenced by the book I've been reading by Zweig, which I have quoted in this blog. I have now finished it and will post a short review on Monday. And also this dream was influenced by snippets of radio programs and other things which have been trying to reveal the warlike nature of our current administration. And maybe it was mostly the fever I had.

4th of July picture

A quick post- A picture taken on July 4th in San Francisco-

seems fitting....

Fri. Oakland pictures

"India itself had a more sinister and depressing effect upon me than I would have thought possible. I was shocked by the misery of the emaciated figures, the joyless seriousness in their somber glances, the often cruel monotony of the landscape and, more than all else, the rigid division of classes and races…" Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday


Why pictures of Oakland? Becuase this city is so strange, than I feel the need to celebrate its paradox... The world should have an opportunity for a glimpse into this uncanny place.
This photo was taken on 45th St. between Lawton and Shafter or thereabouts. While I was waiting for this truck to go by, so I could take the picture, the driver yelled out, "Take my picture!" so I did.

Lewis Buzbee reading photos

As promised-- Lewis Buzbee! Reading at City Lights in North Beach on 6/27/2006 for his book, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop



and you thought I was kidding about the bowling shirt-










The many little girls-- and C-span filming

Book readings-

"One can readily understand my uneasiness at remaining in the dramatic field and the anxiety which ensued every time I presented a new piece to a theatre. The fact that the two greatest actors of Germany had died while rehearsing my verses made me (I am not ashamed to confess it) superstitious. " Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday

On Tues. (6/27) night I attended a book reading at the esteemed bookstore in North Beach, City Lights. I had earlier planned to go to a reading which took place on the same evening, in a bookstore in the Haight. The book is titled, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz; but in order to get to the Haight, I would have had to taken BART and a bus, and I just felt too slack- so I went to North Beach instead, and saw Lewis Buzbee present his The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, which was easier to get to.

A few strange things about this reading (well, actually I wouldn't call it a reading, rather it was an author appearance- which seems to be the trend nowadays- fine by me, I am capable of reading the book myself), 1.C-span wasfilming, 2. there was quite a scene of book dealer, writers etc. 3. they all seem to breed girls- meaning there were a dozen or so little girls between the ages of 6-9, they sat in little chairs right under the podium and wiggled around, listening sometimes and sneaking away.

Buzbee mostly talked about the important of the bookstore's physicality and how that "sensual" (yes, he used that word several times) quality could never be replicated online. He waxed sentimental about his first City Lights visit and his bookselling days and a book's feel. Sprinkled within were little stories and memories; he even got emotional at one point and dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief. I imagined this little segment airing between C-span's wholesome, tug-on-your-heart, plucky heroines from the Oprah Winfrey book of the month club, and the bestselling, must-read-of-the-summer, future blockbuster thriller. Yes, from San Francisco's over-cultured anti-war, pro-drug, post-beatnik subculture bookstore, reads bowling-shirt wearing Nerd Dad and his love of bookstores. But overall- it was a goodtime.

I will post pictures tomorrow- I forgot my camera….and later some more about Author appearances…and how they are fun, much more fun than t.v.

deipnosophist

"Unawares, I found myself in a circle where actual poverty existed, with torn clothing and worn-out shoes, a sphere which I had never touched in Vienna. I sat at the same table with heavy drinkers, homosexuals, morphine addicts." "…passionate individuals whose only mania was mere existence…without a goal…" Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday


This weekend, finished reading The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris
by Edmund White- my very short review:

Overall, a quick read; meaning, it was short and it moved at a lively pace. It wouldn't be a book I would recommend if one wanted an understanding of the flâneur. I think it would have been more honest to simply title the book- A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris, which he does capture that quality. Each chapter seems to focus on a marginalized people and their anecdotal history as he strolls from neighborhood to neighborhood. He writes about the crazy writers, gays, Jews, black-Americans, and royalists (or was that monarchists?). It is a great introduction to a complicated history, but it did make me wonder how a flâneur- novel should be written. Perhaps that's a challenge to be taken up.
My favourite sub-chapter was on the Gustave Moreau museum, mostly because it was one place in Paris that I also visited (of the many listed in his book). Like White, I also believe that Moreau was a minor Symbolist painter, but nevertheless, the museum's charms and mysteries seduced me. Someday in the future I will post some pictures. Other reviews and discussions of the book-

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=1582341354
http://www.fadzilah.com/ostrichlookingforsand/2006/05/25/the-flaneur/#more-178


just for fun-I'm going to post semi-random links-link this random page off of Wikipedia
and this headline from my email
and this blog

Becuase there's pleasure in the aleatory...

Weekend #25

"I had expected great things from his questioning intellect, and I would not have been in the least astonished to hear of some important biological discovery which his intuitive spirit had accomplished; but when many years later I saw the grandiose Gotheanum in Dornach, this 'school of wisdom', which his pupils had founded as platonic academy of anthroposophy, I was rather disappointed that his power had to material and sometimes even to the commonplace." Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday


Things I did in between reading:

Fri. Night at DeYoung














Sat. night goth-warehouse perfomance party- with Kira & Ricky















Sun. afternoon at Saul's

comments on the acid landscape

That's right! Oakland photo time- here's a building in downtown, where Telegraph Ave. and Broadway Ave. converge.


"And above all, we read! We read everything that came into our hands. We got books from all the public libraries, and lent each other whatever we had been able to discover. But the coffeehouse was still the best place to keep up with everything new." Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday


Reading this reminded me of my last years of high school when I lived in Minnesota-I was able to get away with skipping classes, and would spend the whole day in the university library. There I discovered all sorts of poetry: the Imagists, Modernists, Polish experimentalists and the 60's underground. One of the anthologies I would read over and over again was The Living Underground ed. By Hugh Fox- you just can't find this anymore. One of the poets included, d.a.levy, captured my attention with his unique writing style and radical, tragic life. It may have the beginnings of my obsessions with lives of strange people. I was inspired by reading his poetry, but he was dead and therefore inaccessible. I chose then to write to the editor, Mr. Fox, whose address I was able to find in a Michigan phonebook from the library (I had developed good investigative skills being in the library so much). Mr. Fox wrote back to me and asked that I call him instead, which I did, surreptitiously, late at night (my parents never seem to have noticed a late call to Michigan on the phone bill). I was incredibly excited to talk to Mr. Fox, and he was quite gracious with his information- I still have the scribbled notes taken during that phone conversation. D.a. levy was pretty much an unknown in the late 80's, but recently there had been an belated anthology of his work- and a website here. I did not have any friends to share the excitement of my discoveries, but I can definitely relate to Zweig's youthful zeal for such exploration.

Cochineal

"All the livid streets of the Apocalypse have stormed through my life-revolution and famine, inflation and terror, epidemics and emigration. I have seen the great mass ideologies grow and spread before my eyes….and above all else that arch-plague nationalism which has poisoned the flower of our European culture.
I was forced to be defenseless, helpless witness to the most inconceivable decline of humanity into a barbarism which we have believed long since forgotten, with its deliberate and programmatic dogma of anti-humanitarianism." Stefan Zweig World of Yesterday



Last night I finished reading Victoria Finlay's Color: A Natural History of the Palette.

Here's my very short review.

It’s a pretty good book if you like to learn things and travel vicariously. An I don't mean that flippantly. Each chapter is dedicated to a color, or in the case of the black/ brown chapter which is focused on the two.
What I liked most about this book is how Finlay bounces her narrative from the stories of the past to her present travels and research. She steps in cow poo in India, goes snail hunting in Mexico then crashes a Mixtec wedding and travels within post 9/11 Afghanistan. Interspersed throughout her adventure accounts are stories of historical figures: Napoleon, George Washington and French naturalist, Thiery de Menonville.
Its an accessible read, with plenty of science and facts thrown in to make it credible, yet it doesn't simplify it's subject.
Here are some other reviews:
http://etude.uoregon.edu/spring2003/books/color.html
http://www.curledup.com/color.htm

How I spend some of my Sundays

Eating yummy cream puffs from Beard Papa's before seeing short movies by Weldon Kees.













Sometimes I stalk strange birds that I rarely see- like this weird character I encountered while walking back from the Morcom Rose Garden to Piedmont Ave. There was another witness, he said it was a wild turkey, but after some deductive reasoning, I believe now that it was a Peahen. It probably escaped its home and was nonchalantly wandering around the streets- even crossing a street with cars driving by and then walking down a driveway into someone's lawn. Notice the cat on the edge of the lawn, must have been an exciting moment for him/her.

cento

"Your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about the little things like someone stepping on your flowers," Parker said.


More photos of Oakland- here in West Oakland, on MacArthur, between Telegraph Ave. and San Pablo Ave. Photo by Mic Gendreau


















Borges: I believe it was Ludwig Wittgenstein who said that "of what one cannot speak, the best is to be silent". The conversations which occupied our attention were too impersonal, extremely abstract, never leaving the perimeter of the metaphysical. For instance, now I remember that Cioran's favourite themes were: God, the meaning of History, the decadence of civilizations, loathing and tedium... but the theme which obsessed him the most was suicide. Cioran could spend a whole afternoon talking, like one who is possessed, about voluntary death and it was as if he was speaking about the nuances of our day-to-day. He knew the theme of self-sacrifice better than anyone. I imagine he must have read all books which deal with death and its corollaries. I have always admired Cioran's raw lucidity; his splendid pessimism has helped me live and endure not a few hours of this century.

silly June tidbits

Is it possible? Is Bush actually planning to do something positive for the environment? Perhaps…

Anyway- my photo of a Beluga Whale taken in Valencia's Aquarium.

How do accountants kill time?- By looking at celebrity heights!! Ever wonder how tall is Bono: 5' 6.5"- how about Marilyn Monroe- 5' 5.5" and other time wasting "facts"

I hit "random page" on Wikipedia just for fun- and this is what I got: Your Own Decay- hmm, I wonder if the universe is trying to tell me something?