Everyone knows I'm in over my head . . .

(I know, lame of me to title today's blog post after a song by The Fray that was freakishly overplayed on the radio 2-3 years ago.)

I had the brilliant idea of taking six classes this quarter, which isn't too bad, quite honestly, in some respects. I couldn't get Spanish Lit jammed into my schedule, so I decided to take up learning Italian! WHOOHOOO new language!!!

The problem, actually, is that one of my classes is literary theory and has - I swear on upon my bibles which are currently (because my literary bibles tend to change) Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair and Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems - made me somewhat want to melt into a tragic puddle of goo like the Wicked Witch of the West (Poor Elphaba! I rather liked her in Wicked). This theory stuff is so lost on me and I FEEL like a tragic puddle of goo in my head. My grey matter has been beaten to a pulp trying to figure out the significance of poetics and linguistics and chronology and deconstruction.

Because I've maxed out on units for this quarter, I won't be doing any research with one of the lit professors on campus, like I had originally planned. It works out though, because she really doesn't need much help with anything until winter quarter, when I should be taking less classes. Not should. Will be taking less classes. I need to preserve SOME of my sanity.

Right now I should be reading, but I've been in class so long today that I think I need a break to blog and muse and obsess over silly things. Things like WHEN I'LL GET A WORKING PHONE. I wish I could find Professor Springer from last quarter so that I can tell her how much I am a cyborg now. One little piece of technology dies on me, and I feel as though I've lost my thumb or something. Suddenly, I feel more vulnerable and less competent to go about my daily business. That's ok, my laptop survived my aqueous tragedy, so I can obsessively email. See, Professor? There goes my ridiculous cyborg self, adapting with more technology!

Here's a list of my current obsessions:
1. Apple-Caramel lollipops
2. Vanilla Soy Chai from the Mandeville Coffee Cart
3. Really out-there nail polish names (my nails are currently painted "Skin Tight Denim Creme")
4. Fleurs de Cerisier perfume from L'Occitane
5. Certain colognes. I think my favorite is Giorgio Armani Black Code. During the summer I would spray the cologne on the sample strips from the fragrance section in the mall so that I could use them as bookmarks. The salesladies thought I was shopping for a scent for my boyfriend or something. Oh how wrong they were/are!
6. Bhanu Kapil's lists. I LOVE READING HER BLOG. I'm such a stalker on the internet, only not really. I justify my behavior in my head.
7. Feeling terribly embarrassed that Sarah Palin is the best woman McCain thought to take on. Her interviews with Katie Couric and the SNL skits are hilarious. If I didn't laugh at her, I don't know how I would deal with her ridiculousness.
8. Runs in the morning before the heat hits
9. Reading, while curled up in bed (who am I kidding, this is ALWAYS an obsession)
10. Epic movie soundtracks while I run (ie Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, etc) . It makes me feel like I'm going into battle or something.
11. BIC ball-point pens. Cheap and awesome
12. Guardian pens. It's a pity I've lost like 3 of them. They write super well too.
13. Eating dinner foods in the morning and breakfast foods at night
14. Throwing my clean laundry on the bed, only to jump in it and inhale all the good detergent smells
15. http://postsecretfrance.blogspot.com
16. Talking to people I don't know. (It's more acceptable at the beginning of the year when everyone's starting fresh again, and therefore more ok with awkward introductions.)
17. The colors green (like a foresty, dusky or mint green) and red and orange
18. Butterfly-shaped crackers (it makes me feel like I'm 5, and I love it . . even though I don't actually like butterflies.)
19. People-watching around campus on the buses/shuttles
20. Catching up with some of my favorite professors from before, and also a couple of TA's that are still around.

That was quite an extensive list. I was going to stop at 10 at first, but then I came up with a few more. And I had to stop at a multiple of 5 because nonmultiples of 5 tend to irk me. Particularly odd numbers. I tend to think that numbers like 11 and 17 and 19 are just too awkward to have. I'm awkward

Relocation

I'm in San Diego now.
Before I left for SD, I went through a bit of a glory-of-Rome phase. I read The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius. Quite a fascinating read. Now there's an ancient scholar who would have provided quite an interesting interview on the History Channel (which tries to get the celebrated but more interesting historians and specialists for their programs). Suetonius' descriptions of the lives of the Caesars, starting from Julius Caesar, are very detailed, but in a way that really explains the character of the ruler. Weird habits and beliefs and the like. Like the fact that Julius Caesar started combing his hair forward because he was self-conscious about going bald. HAH. History suddenly becomes human and not so removed from now.

Then I decided that I wanted to watch Gladiator, so I did. I love Russell Crowe in this movie, then again . . I like a lot of his movies. He chooses to be a part of many good projects. Then I got pulled into my love for the Gladiator soundtrack, which was written by Hans Zimmer, who also wrote the soundtrack to The Dark Knight. God the man is talented.

Now I'm rereading some of my favorites from this summer, namely "The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain and Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. I'm still exploring darkness in effort to be reconciled with it.

School starts so soon. I can't wait.

Twenty years old and I am still afraid of the dark.
The woods and hills metastasize into one
Black Giant And
Make me feel small and
so insignificant.
In the darkness I shrink Or
Perhaps the shadows grow. Yes.
It must be the shadow are growing
They're threatening to swallow me and
I'm not ready yet or ever.
I don't want to be alone in the dark at night.

My dialogues and monologues sound better in my head.

The smokiness of the sencha is doing wonders
To fight off the thick fog that has settled in my brain
And chilled my limbs to sluggishness.
Not the shocking electricity
Battering ram of Columbian brew but
Cleaner.
Smoky topaz clarity, wizened.

I miss things that I shouldn't miss.
Makes me feel stupid
Handicapped
Bound and gagged and tied to
The past.
I need a knife to cut myself free No, NO
No knives I need air and space to breathe.
Breathing and thinking but NOT
Too much. It Hurts. Or
Is it remembering that hurts?

Image shopping is draining. I feel
Small again and the darkness is creeping in.

Steinbeck's house

I went to Salinas and Monterey yesterday with the family. While spending time with my family in close proximity was hardly the joyous occasion my mom wanted it to be, going to the National Steinbeck Center and the Steinbeck house made me that much more complete. What an extraordinary man!

I read East of Eden yesterday for the hell of it. I read that book some three times a year. I reread nearly all of my books at least once, but East of Eden is one of those that I have to pick up just about every time I have a break from school. In fact, the cover is ripping away from the rest of the book and is curling around the edges in a sad way. I'll have to get another copy very soon. I don't think that my current copy will last me another year's worth of re-readings.

Actually, it reminds me of the fact that both my copies of Atlas Shrugged look as though someone tried to shred the books by mistake and then pull it out after some five seconds of publishing doom. (Other well-loved books that I read repeatedly include The Fountainhead, Marie Antoinette, The Journey, The Bell Jar, and White Oleander. Some books that I've read this summer/year that I know I will be rereading for ages are Big Sur, Allen Ginsberg's poems, Incubation: A Space for Monsters.)

One of the first exhibits was the East of Eden one. I started crying over it, I was so happy. Oh the gloriousness that is timshel. If I get another tattoo, it'll say "timshel". I don't have to believe in God to believe in choice. Choice sets me free!

So, that's one more thing off the bucket list.

Fulfilled . . . For Now

Today I got inked.

Ginsberg and Neruda will be with me for forever now, in a way.

I feel so badass, and it feels amazing.

I had a friend accompany me on my little adventure today, so that I would have some wonderfully accessible support nearby. And she was. I jokingly said to her, "I ran a half-marathon 3 weeks ago and then signed up for a full one to do next year. Now I'm getting tattooed. If I were thirty years older, people would think that I'm going through my midlife crisis."

She laughed and agreed.

That's another thing I can cross off my bucket list.

I finished both The Myth of Sisyphusand Twilight of the Idols at the beginning of this week and was much more pleased with the former rather than the latter. Camus is a very interesting writer and critic; I think I almost prefer him to Nietzsche. Sometimes. While Nietzsche seems bent on insulting the entire thinking world (which is highly entertaining), Camus gives much more fair critiques. Both men are convincing, but hmm Nietzsche writes with a huge holier-than-thou complex.

Oh, and I saw Merlin and was happy.

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Recently I've been freaking out about college and what will happen this year with the essential ETS-produced tests and the need to start looking into grad schools, which I've already started.

I like plans.

Next year's summer plans include studying at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University. What a mouthful. It'll be an adventure, literary-ly and physically (being at a school out of state) and mentally and all that jazz. Mom and Dad have heard me talk about it, but I don't think they realize how serious I am. But I NEED this learning experience like I need water and space to grow.

I'll be in Washington DC for the Presidential Inauguration in January. There's a week long conference that I'm attending. I don't know a single soul that is going, and I like it that way. Of course, my mother is terrified and thinks that I'll be scared and lonely without a solid friend and traveling companion. I really don't mind because I see the trip as a journey outside my comfort zone.

I'm really not a very politically oriented individual, but it wouldn't ever hurt to be informed and take part in once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunities like this conference. It also wouldn't hurt to essentially travel 3000 miles across the country, friendless, to see what I can make of myself in my situation.

It's good prep for Naropa in Colorado.

I think I need a visit to San Francisco. I want to lay on the floor in the City Lights Bookstore and have Ginsberg's poems read to me. He writes gritty and makes it musical and makes it work. I want to find my center or something; ground myself in words that are real. Something like that.

I need to stop worrying about futures I blindly grasp at-for.

I want Merlin to make me believe in the power of magic again. I don't mind the distraction.

UPDATE: My friend pointed out that I start out my sentences and paragraphs with "I" quite a bit. I'm very me/I-oriented and I won't be apologetic for it. It's MY bell jar, after all.

Merlin, Where Art Thou?

I've been very much the lit hermit these past few days . . .

After reading some Arthurian stories (such as Le Morte D'arthur), I feel this gaping hole of a need to watch Merlin, the miniseries from 1998 with Sam Neill and Helena Bonham Carter (two very fine actors, in my humble opinion. I love how creepy yet beautiful Helena Bonham Carter is.) I CAN'T FIND IT ONLINE AND I WANT TO WATCH IT NOWNOWNOW. Was that insistent enough? Netflix won't deliver it for a few days. I think I'm going to die from the anticipation.

I returned Pedagogy of the Oppressed to its owner (I had borrowed the book from a friend) because I figured that I should stick to my own stack of books, which includes all the wonderful GRE practice stuff that I swore I would get a head start on this summer. There's so much that I need to read and so little time! I'm still half-heartedly re-reading Herodotus' The Histories. I've also started "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus. He's a rather candid writer, so this lengthy essay has begun quite promisingly.

For the purpose of light reading. I've binge-read some John Grisham over the past two days: The Partner, The Runaway Jury, the Summons. All are very good and entertaining, of course. Grisham makes the law seem almost exciting. Then I remember that I don't have the patience nor grasp of logic to struggle my way through slews of LSAT practice problems, nor do I have genuine interest in studying/practicing/teaching law in my future.

I've also read through some La Fontaine fables (aka poetry versions of Aesop's fables, if you will). Even children's literature can be fun. Especially after attacking small mountains of denser stuff filled with (sometimes) unnecessary clauses and words that require very comprehensive dictionaries.

Herodotus needs to be DONE.

Morte

I'm re-reading Le Morte D'Arthur (The Death of Arthur) with great pleasure. It's helpful to review it for the GRE Literature subject exam that I'm taking next April. BUT I HAVE been meaning to re-read it for some time now, just for the sheer pleasure of revisiting a lovely tale from my child hood.

I used to love King Arthur stories. Knights carousing and killing dreadful monsters and terrible sorceresses. So much excitement and drama and lifedeath! The Norton Anthology of English Literature explains, "Nostalgia for an ideal past that never truly existed is typical of much historical romance."

I concur. Romanced pasts are so much more fun.

Since I'm a literature nerd, I'm also attacking a book called On Literature by Umberto Eco. The book is a collection of some essays on some really great literature and his takes on various aspects of what qualifies good literature, including Dante's Paradiso from his Divine Comedy. So much fun! The book was a present from a dear professor I worked with this summer. She's such a sweetheart and knew exactly what would suit me.

Packrat Tendencies

I've lost a journal.

Correction: I have temporarily misplaced a journal of mine. This is devastating to me because I write myself real in my journals and chronicle myself in my language privately in ways that no one should dare to read me because understanding does not follow.

I feel misplaced, and I am frantic to regain the pieces of me that have gone missing.

There's always the other journal that I kept for even more scrambled half-formed thoughts and reminders to myself that I rarely look over. But it isn't the same.

----------

Oh my goodness! I've found it. It was hiding under my bed. I wonder how it got there, but I won't ponder that little mystery too much.

This well-loved and well-protected journal is orange with red curlicues dancing on the hardback cover. I've recently started writing in red ink only in this journal. Or sometimes orange. I like these vivid colors that burn. Perhaps that is because I have been mulling over everything too much in this strange latemid summer heat. Perhaps it's influenced by the idiot arsonist that's causing the most ruckus Cupertino has ever known in its recent histories with hisher marvel-at-my-ability-to-cause-chaos fires. Everything around me is smoldering. I'm writing in the red of blood and my journal is flaming and bleeding inside to match the outside.

Part of me is found and I am happy.

----------

I am still not writing the way I want and as much as I want. I'm sad and slightly frustrated with myself, but I tell myself that I can be flexible and that I have time. Words stumble and bottleneck and I choke on them. They cause a stroke and don't come out. I suffocate because they aren't coming. There's no satisfactory release of tension. Something's going to burst. Perhaps I'll have to resort of color-coding my sad, little empty-word meanings to give them some depth that seems always to be conspicuously void.

----------

I'm working my way through two entrees: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire & The Mindful Leader: Ten Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Othersby Michael Carroll

I'm greedy still.

TRANSGRESS TRANSGRESS

I fucking LOVE Kathy Acker.

I remember saying to a friend and fellow classmate that she writes like an angry vagina after reading her book Blood and Guts in High School for my Contemporary Feminist Literature class this past spring quarter. Acker is known to write the way a pornstar-meets-postmodern-writer-meets-graphic-artist-meets-raging-sad-feminist would. She tracks mud and menstrual blood all over the pedestal of "good literature".

Now I'm reading Pussy King of the Pirates and my opinion hasn't really changed. I don't think. But perhaps I just need more thinking and a few more misinterpreted readings and more thinking to follow that. Still the same blaring neon-lit confusion of sexualities and wanting space to survive.

Interestingly enough, I could never really casually flip through the pages of Blood and Guts in High School because of the rough-sketch-cartoonish drawings of vaginas, penises, couples locked in some erotic fantasy of a pose, etc. (Who said that good literature can't have freaky random porn drawings?) THIS TIME . . . I'm a little embarrassed to be flipping through a book that has the title "Pussy King of the Pirates". "Pussy" and "Pirates" don't exactly signal "good literature" in my head. It's all Kathy Acker writing her transgressive self again.

Acker always makes me think that I have to break down my walls even more and get comfortable with the dirty stuff. Kapil makes me feel as though its ok to be a monster. Monsters can be dirty. And goddesses can be monstrous. I'll be a dirty, monstrous goddess.

I officially have a few favorite quotes from this book:

-"We wondered at our bodies."
-"I stood on the edge of a new world."
-"Finally free of johns, the whores, now alone, spewed out bits of ink, words in ink, sexual or filthy words, words that were formed by the scars and wounds, especially those of sexual abuse, those out of childhood. All the women bore their wounds as childhoods."
-"She decided that she must be a victim, though she had never before thought she was was a victim, a victim of her society's definition of women her age. These women, no longer children, according to the society were no longer sexually desirable to men, except perhaps as prostitutes; more important, according to her society they no longer possessed sexuality."
-". . . if I didn't throw away the old blood, something dreadful, like rot or disease, was going to touch my body."

Note: I secretly don't understand why the world fears (and hates) feminists. There is absolutely nothing wrong with strong women, and many people like strong women more than they'd admit. "Feminist" is just a name, an official word for strong women who love the strong part. Not all feminists are angry. Not all feminists hate all things feminine. So why all the hate? Is it just from a lack of misunderstanding and a lack of desire TO understand?

My-thology

I've been reading The Arabian Nights and a book of folktales from India. I don't know too much about West/Middle-Eastern/South Asian mythology. I figured that it was time to start exploring sometime this summer. After all, B. Kapil told me to write complicated goddesses and I have every intention of doing so.

But I don't think I can write my goddess real without knowing what already exists in the myths of ancient cultures. I think it was Donna Harraway that condemned looking backwards for the origin myths of powerfully feminine goddess beings. Personally, I find nothing wrong with referring to the beginning of various his/herstories for the sake of create something new from it. It's good to know where things come from.

There are so many demons in these myths/stories I'm reading! If there's one thing I can conclude from my current project, it is that deities are incredibly petty. And I do mean all god(desses). Even the Jewish and Christian god proclaims himself to be a jealous god. What a petty, human sentiment for such a powerful entity!

People write so many human characteristics into their deities. No wonder they aren't perfect. The jealousy and pettiness of all these powerful entities is found in all the stories. We can't fathom perfect, and therefore can't write a perfect supreme being real. But we have managed to write our imperfect humanity perfect through our monstrous gods. Oh the irony.

Being Too Ambitious, Perhaps

A friend of mine has been nagging at me for helllaaaa days about blogging. Quite frankly, I haven't really had the time or energy to do so recently because of my internship. I don't like feeling so drained sometimes! (But it's drained in a good way, I suppose, since I really love what I'm doing.) The result of my being so busy is that I've had little time to read, think, and write as much as I would normally like.

I've been waayyyy ambitious with starting books and not finishing them all within the time frame I want. In fact, right now I have literally a pile of books that I've begun reading but have not finished:

-Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
-Folktales from India
-The Arabian Nights
-The Histories by Herodotus (which I am trying to reread for like 3rd time . . . I get so lost in all the names! and Herodotus, the so-called Father of History is not great with providing an understandable sense of time and place . . )

I'm going through such an ancient myth faze right now.

I have, however, finished reading Helen of Troy by Bettany Hughes. This book is basically an exploration of Bronze Age Mycenaean culture to explain the truthmyth of Helen of Troy/Sparta. I love ancient Greek myths and culture, so that was pretty much my motivation for picking up this book. And it was on sale.

It's a fairly good read, since Hughes definitely writes in a way that I like. There is no doubt that she sounds very academic, but she surprises me, the reader, every once in a while with extremely blunt profanity. She tosses in "shit" and "fuck" into her sentences as if they are nothing, but they certainly have the sort of violent impact that other words cannot provide. It actually reminds me a bit of the way I write, because I tend to throw swear words into my writing because sometimes it just takes some loaded word to convey a more forceful, impassioned meaning. More affirmation for me, I suppose, that academic writing can be even a bit transgressive.

Hopefully as my internship winds down, I'll be able to finish these books that I've started so that I can start new ones and write and think some more.

Like I wrote, I'm definitely going through an ancient myth faze right now. I'm exploring old cultures and old icons of beauty, rage, delight, regeneration, and whatnot hopefully so that I can create a new, complicated goddess like Bhanu Kapil asked me to. What a challenge . . . I hope I'm up for it.

RIP Randy

Randy Pausch passed away yesterday. He's taken advantage of his death as much as he has his life. Seriously, read or watch his last lecture.

Tea and Literacy

There aren't enough hours in a day. Tired as I am from work during the week, I never fail read and write just a little before I go to bed to unwind after a long day of expending too much energy. As a result of the fatigue from teaching and talking and training for a half-marathon, it took me some 4 nights to finish Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, which Ellen Revelle had recommended at her tea with Revelle Seniors and anyone-else-who-was-lucky-enough-to-sign-up-but-wasn't-a-senior. Well, I loved the book, and I think I'll send Mrs. Revelle a thank-you card for the recommendation.

The book is about Mortenson's ambitious objective to bring peace to Pakistan and Afghanistan through education. The man failed to reach the summit of K2 and wandered into a poor, remote village of Korphe in Pakistan where he was welcomed by the community, despite his being an "infidel". To repay their kindness, Mortenson promised to build Korphe a school. This he did, but didn't stop there. One school in Korphe turned into fifty-five schools all over some of the most remote places in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though the Taliban and post-9/11-anti-Muslim sentiment in America made it ever-harder for Mortenson to find support for his cause.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about education and literacy. Here in many parts of America, we take these things for granted, particularly literacy. The sad thing is that I encounter more and more people who tell me that they hate reading or that they'd rather get their information from TV or the Internet. Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet too (blogging, yay!) - the tv not as much. I always feel so sad whenever people tell me that they hate reading or they hate books, because it makes me wonder how often they think about what a huge privilege literacy is. People in poverty-stricken areas in the US and even outside in places like Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, etc don't have the kind of access to language and ideas that literate people are entitled to. I find it more than a little bit ridiculous that people who have the liberty of words and language don't really value it, while there are millions upon millions of people who DO want and need it.

I really admire and applaud people like Greg Mortenson who understand the value of education and the wonders it can do for people's lives. It opens doors of opportunities and minds to new perspectives. The world becomes bigger and more hostile and more beautiful. Change and progress, in particular, don't seem so impossible or so threatening.

My Humanities professor said at the end of the quarter, "The age of books is ending." I not-so-secretly hope that it never does. I love the comfort I feel with a good book between my hands, whatever it may be. I can only fervently dream that people who say that they hate reading think twice about what they're saying and realize the leverage they have.

The Last Lecture

After all the jack Kerouac and W.S. Burroughs, I finally picked up two books that were not nearly so depressing. One was called 'Love and Louis XIV' by Antonia Fraser, and the other 'The Last Lecture' by Randy Pausch.

The first book I chose to read because Antonia Fraser is a brilliant and colourful biographer/historian. I loved her biography on Marie Antoinette, and chose this one on King Louis XIV and his relationships to the many, many women in his life (not all of them his lovers). It helps that I find the history of French aristocracy fascinating. I think I love it so much because the French court was so pleasure-seeking in its grand, opulent yet religiously prudish, and sophisticated way. So much so, that it was apparently the most fashionable and genteel of all the European courts for centuries and centuries. It's also always nice to read about important people that manage to find love like any of us, but with the added glamour of these people being powerful and wealthy and what not.

I'm always chasing beauty, especially in history. I'll concede that beauty does not always guarantee the happy ending, which is just fine with me.

The second book, 'The Last Lecture' is basically the last lecture of Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch. He titled it "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". Not what you'd expect from a relatively young man dying from pancreatic cancer. Despite his looming expiration date, his lecture, this book, share nothing but optimism. He gives the reader, his audience, all the advice he has to give on how to live life to the fullest and fulfill all the dreams you had as a kid. It was beautiful and life-affirming. I think even Nietzsche would have approved of Pausch's frank no-nonsense way of dealing with his impending death (no religion is involved, mostly just common sense and a rare quality of truly appreciating what life offers in the way of opportunities).

After reading this book I wondered how I am achieving my dreams. I went back to look at my old scrapbooks and 'About Me' projects for grade school. I had written that I wanted to be an artist and a teacher, and that i wanted to go to college and then more school after that (At the age of 7 I thought that grad school was called "university".) I'm not quite the artist I had in the mind of my 7th grade self . . I don't paint and sculpt and draw glorious things real. But I play them, read and write them (or at least I am working on it). I think I've always wanted to just look for beauty and pass it on - I'm shallow like that.

Ii can claim that I guess I've stuck to a loose interpretation of what I wanted to be by the time I'm an adult. I still want to be a teacher, only of bigger kids. I want the college kids, not the hormone-challenged beasts of grades 5-12 or the still far too young to understand children of k-4. Granted, I still have quite some schooling to go before I teach, and I'm not at Stanford like my grade-school self demanded, but I'm on my way to being a real human being. It also means that I'm still in many ways stubborn as an ass and have a one-track mind, despite my frazzled brain and random bursts of spontaneity.

Mostly I think it whispers in my ear that I think too small, and dream too small. That's my biggest fear.

So I will try to dream big and be more spontaneous and enjoy my life more, because I'm so blessed with so many favorable circumstances.

Go to www.thelastlecture.com for more information on Randy Pausch, Ph.D. He's fulfilling his dreams every day.

Real Junk

Decades before James Frey made it big with his controversial and highly popular fictionalized-claimed-as-true book A Million Little Pieces, William S. Burroughs documented HIS own unexaggerated account of his hopeless addiction to just about every narcotic available on the market in Junky.

And I thought that Jack Kerouac's last book Big Sur was dark. Junky comes pretty close to superseding it. Most people I know are fortunate enough to not go to such extreme lengths to forget themselves and their fear of the damning world they're in. Most people I know are fortunate enough to have no idea what it is like to wake up in the morning and think only of when the next big high is going to come. Getting high for Burroughs comes hand in hand with pushing drugs and constantly running from the police of the 1950s that were thoroughly against men like him and Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder -- all those wild literary beatnik types that seem to do nothing but drink and get high and really sexed up as though life is just one big roaring party.

Burroughs is remarkably frank for someone so hated and rejected for being an addict, homosexual, and beat writer . His documentation of his being a complete outsider is fairly linear, a return to some normalcy for me the reader after all Kerouac's liberal misspellings and lack of a familiar and linear story-telling path. But while Kerouac bounced around everywhere searching for shining stars of adventure and LIFE, Burroughs makes no effort to conceal the fact that he is diving headfirst into a pool of drugs to make his fear go away.

The refreshing thing about this book is that Burroughs doesn't hide the ugly that everyone tries to deny. He gives us the life of a complete social reject. Ever think about how much our media our books our IMAGES delude us into avoiding certain kinds of ugliness? What is so wrong with ugly and what is so wrong about degenerate? Burroughs gives the reader NEW images to consider without the censor, and thank god for that. I've been tired of the happily-ever-afters for a long while now, because life isn't about simply achieving the happily-ever-afters.

I can't wait to read Naked Lunch, also by W.S. Burroughs. It should be amazing.

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain is quite good, actually. I love me some bad characters. Breaking the rules always makes things so much more interesting.
Open your mind and burn some paper spines.

Thirsty Still

I spent about 9 hours yesterday (Wednesday) combined reading the Twilight trilogy (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse) by Stephenie Meyers. No worries, I spent time socializing and running and chores and running the errands my family sent me on. I do have a life outside of books, too.

BUT I must say, while I enjoyed the books immensely (because they simply cannot be taken as serious literature), they left me dissatisfied by the appallingly bad writing. These are very drama-filled books, and sometimes the repetitiveness of certain phrases and words bothers me more than a little. I'm also bothered by the fact that the romance in these novels is too close to perfect that it catches my heart in an unsettling way. Too fantastical and Hallmark, I think. It reminds me that I haven't found anyone remotely so fascinatingly perfect in all the ways that I want yet or ever will. Some characters and people are just lucky, I suppose. It's all too fairytale happy ending for me. Well, a strange and twisted fairytale, but the happy ending is definitely there. I really like the idea of the story, but the execution is underwhelming.

I'm not quite sure how and why (yet), but I feel strangely restless since I finished the trilogy. I want to do something, interact with people. I dunno. Something. Reading's another option since the first two are simply not. Roaming the streets of Cupertino at 2am, now THERE'S a sure way to get my parents angry and get a ticket (because Cupertino cops have nothing better to do).

Since the books featured vampires - humans and werewolves too - I can't help but use the word "insatiable" to describe my current feeling of emptiness and desire to drink in the beauty in everything. I'm very energetic and twitchy right now, so sleep is out of the question.

Jack Kerouac's soul is waiting on my bed for me. and after that, some W.S. Burroughs. Perhaps their hot-cold-cool black and blue-white jazz will drug me. Then I'll sleep. Maybe.

feeling ravenous

One and a half weeks of summer and I have read the following:

-Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac
-some poetry by Ezra Pound
-Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
-reread Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
-reread Incubation: A Space for Monsters by Bhanu Kapil (I swear that it doesn't get old)
-some poems by Gregory Corso
-The Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac
-Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen by Lesley Hazleton

I am currently working on:
-Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
-The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac


I can't get enough Jack Kerouac. That should be quite evident in my recent devouring of his books. It took me a while to digest On the Road.

Those that know me know that I down books like Pooh bear does with honey. Not this one. It is so saturated with Jack Kerouac. Granted, its his story of his bumming and zipping back and forth from coast to coast with his friend, so it should be very real Jack Kerouac. I don't know if I've ever read such a naked piece of work. I feel as though I come too close to his wild and untamed brilliance and his larger-than-life divinity of spirit.

I see a man who's struggled with his immense capacity for passion for anything and everything and plays like a mad sax player all over his spectrum of emotions. He dug books and learning and writing traveling seeing the sights hearing the sounds feeling his relation to the people and world around him. He called himself "mad" for everything, and I can see that. Your average-day normal person can't register so much feeling of everything. He and his friend Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty in the book) were driven by some raging hunger for the present and the unknowable future.

My HUM 5 TA recommended Kerouac to me for some summer reading. I'm glad I listened to him. I wish more people knew his name and were exposed to his schizophrenic and naked prose. It's so damn raw and real that it seems to slam up against you, bruising on impact and obliterating all that you thought was good literature. His writing isn't orthodox, classically learned and Shakespearean in its execution, but it makes you dance and drown in sorrow and feel.

summer 08 reading list

1. reread The Histories by Herodotus. I started this like 4 times last year, and never managed to really absorb the book and remember anything past the first 1/4.
2. Story of the Eye by G. Bataille
3. Waiting for Godot by S. Beckett
4. Junky by W.s. Burroughs (he was a heroine addict and wrote alot while high)
5. Naked Lunch by W.s. Burroughs
6. On the Road by J. Kerouac
7. Big Sur by J. Kerouac
8. anything by Ezra Pound
9. My Mother: Demonology by K. Acker
10. Twilight of the Gods by F. Nietzsche (i have it because of Hum 5, it comes right before the Anti-Christ so i might as well)
11. the other short stories in the Kafka book from hum
12. The Shock Doctrine by N. Klein
13. No Logo by N. Klein
14. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Re-invention of Nature by D. Haraway
15. Our Lady of the Flowers by J. Genet
16. Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius
17. The Mysterious Stranger by M. Twain
18. finish The Second Sex (all the stuff that wasn't covered in Hum) by S. de Beauvoir
19. Water for Elephants by S. Gruen
20. Three Cups of Tea by G. Mortenson and D.O. Relin
21. The Last Lecture by R. Pausch
22. Parable of the Talents by O. Butler
23. Middlesex by J. Eugenides (always curious, never actually read it!)
24. The Heroin Diaries by N. Sixx
25. The Arabian Nights
26. re-read Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir T. Mallory because it's beautiful
27. The Myth of Sisyphus by A. Camus
28. Existentialism is a Humanism by J. Sartre
29. The Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch
30. The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria by B. Hamann

enough for now. I'm sure to re-read a ton of stuff i have at home

Oh my darlin' Clementine

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours. "

WORD.