Great Words

 James Augustus Henry Murray was the ambitious  fourth editor of the Oxford English Dictionary — the most amazing feat of the English language.                                                                                                                                            
   
"I am a nobody.
 Treat me as a solar myth, 
 or an echo, 
 or an irrational quantity,    
 or ignore me altogether."

A Little Bit of Blue

Sometimes you need to feel a little sorry for yourself. Right now, I feel like the resulting blotch left by these women all painted in blue. A botched, blurred version of some absolute perfection — and not in Plato's-perfect-form-sense, but something much grander than that. More human.

Musings on Monet's Cathedral

The Portal, Morning Fog

I always want to spend what is, according to the judgment of most, "way too long" looking at art, but as it is I'm always rushed in museums.  My women walk quickly, boot heels clicking in a purposeful tempo across museums' mirrored floors, bodies determinedly sashaying from wall to wall, from one room to the next, taking all the walls in like a tornado indiscriminately sucking in all that flies across its path, taking it in with wide sweeps of Hercules's broom.


Most people don't realize that examining — no, experiencing — a single piece of art for hours can be far more fulfilling and enjoyable than examining many in a cursory manner.  Perhaps my favorite painting to dwell on (or, in) is Monet's Cathedral in the Fog, a pointillist rendition of the Rouen Cathedral, which Monet returned to again and again, during different times of the day and year, painting it over twenty times. Whether together or alone, his many dabs, his many cathedrals, become a single cathedral, an ur-cathedral, a Cathedral in its most unabashedly perfect form.


I can stare at the piece for hours, sinking further and further into it, seeing the cathedral emerge from the billows of fog in all its golden glory, and then fade back again, receding into nothing but a spectral imprint in my mind. I fall into the cathedral, becoming divine as I flatten myself against its crown, before diffusing myself far from it, becoming just another distant fleck watching the cathedral in all its gloppy glory.


This watching is a learning curve — like getting to know someone with whom you feel you will one day fall in love but haven't learned to be with yet, the painting does not surrender its entire essence to you at first glance; you get to know it over time. It whispers to you, intimating great grey thoughts through the fog and you're both arrested and unsteady. You're pulled forward and you wrench yourself away, testing the experience of being an intimate while remembering the importance of seeing as an outsider. You musn't forget you're not a part of the cathedral, but Monet makes it so easy to slip under its seemingly-translucent skin.


As with that of most people, the beauty of many paintings blurs upon closer inspection. But the world of Monet's Rouen . . . that only grows wider in scope the nearer to it I pan. I stare at pictures, at paintings — at Monet's cathedral — to see the world, to know every stroke and dab of it even with my eyes closed, to love it as it is; a memory truer than truth.

Like An Alarm Clock

This I Believe

So, after 8 months of waiting/forgetting I'd submitted this piece, I found out that I got published on This I Believe!  I'm super excited, and, being the self-serving person I am, want to promulgate.  Click on the title to link to my essay, enjoy, and tell me what you think!

Yes, Please

"After a rain in New York all the dogs that got caught in the rain, somehow the water washed away their whole trail and they can't get back home so about 4 in the morning you see all these stranded dogs on the street and they're looking like - won't you help me get back home, sir, please - excuse me sir - can you help me find my way back home - all makes and models, the short ones, the black ones, the tall ones, the expensive ones, the long ones, the disturbed ones, they all want to get home."
- Tom Waits


So, all I have to say is that I would totally marry Tom Waits.  His voice is like . . . a blackboard that someone threw a thousand glass whiskey bottles at until it was rougher than even an ocean would think possible.  Kind of like that.  There's something at once literary and wino-ish about him, a guy wearing a beautiful winter coat with its collar turned up shuffling through a rat-ridden alleyway at 3 am.  Kind of like that.  Like Bob Dylan, he's a white guy who knows how to make the blues his own.  Except he's aged a little more gracefully, if you can call his hatted-hunch-shuffle "grace".  Hell, you can.  Hell, I do.  Just like that.



Look at that cigarette.  And that pure glee!  And the hat, we can't forget the hat, because: 

84 out of 100 women prefer men who wear hats.  From an old subway car at the New York Transit Museum.   Yes, I am THAT obsessed with public transportation.  Actually, the museum is pretty awesome.  But I'm too sleepy to talk about it now.  I'm going to let Tom Waits sing me slow to sleep.  

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I know that there’s a desire in me to go back to the land, live on a farm, grow my own wheat and take it to a mill, wake up with the sun, not to get to work, but to milk my cow for my morning cereal.  I think this desire (well, maybe not the getting-up-before-sunrise part, but much of the rest) is one that’s in all of us.  This wanting to feel connected to each other as humans, and to feel connected to our land, to our life in this most basic of ways.  My sister gifted me this book a few years ago, and I can’t believe I waited so long to finish it.  With a bit of wit and many folksy anecdotes, as well as facts garnered from Vandana Shiva, her husband (Professor Steven Hopp), and her own research, Barbara Kingsolver makes that longing seem like it can lead somewhere.  Taking us through the trials and triumphs she and her family of four experience over a year of living off their land in Virginia, Kingsolver makes the case for eating locally and mindfully.  

There are points where she does become a bit derisive—curiously, she becomes especially so towards vegetarians, pointing out that vegetable-growing does lead to the eradication of natives species through the destruction of habitats when wild land is cleared for farmland.  However, she also concedes to the fact that her family does not consume meat that wasn’t grown locally and sustainably, and that they therefore have it very rarely.  She also becomes a little angry at California for exporting so much food over so many miles (but I think she's just jealous).

Perhaps what she wants us to remember most is that food should not be an abstraction.  Connecting to food also connects us to each other—to our friends and families, to the farmers to whom we provide business, to our communities at large.  It’s important to keep in mind the kinds of relationships our food consumption fosters.  When eating locally, we are helping our communities become healthier, are aiding farmers in having a hold on their livelihood, and are sending the message that these relationships are important to us.  However, when consuming Chilean apples and Indian bananas, when we are consuming corn and soybeans farmed on great expanses of land and chickens raised on a factory farm, we are not developing positive relationships with people.  Rather, we are telling food magnates that it is ok for our land, ecosystems, and health to be compromised by the overproduction of corn and soybeans.  We are not paying a fair price for the labor of farmers on the other side of the world.  We are smiling at oil companies who profit from the shipping of crops over unnecessarily long distances and saying that oil is something we’re willing to shed blood for.  We're giving a thumbs-up to the intellectual piracy of companies like Monsanto and Du Pont.  We’re ignoring the sweat that goes into food production.  We’re ignoring investments on our land, and forgetting the future.

Kingsolver does not, however, shove guilt down our throats.  She entices us by presenting the joys of growing (and eating!) good food with a strong sense of description and humour. It’s a great read!

I Miss The 90's

Poe, performing Trigger Happy Jack (Drive By A Go-Go)

Be Careful, His Bow Tie is Really A Camera

April 9th:

Little boy, maybe three years old? In a stroller. Playing with a clear plastic spoon, putting it against his ear, talking into it like a telephone.

Toss Me A Cigarette, I Think There's One in My Raincoat

April 16th:

There was a woman on the metro collecting money from people this morning. Each time someone handed her a token amount, a folded dollar bill, a clasp of quarters, she held it high in her hands and kissed it theatrically.

I am taking an afternoon bus to UCLA. Highland/Sunset, Bus #2 is written big across my palm. A man who was at the bus stop before me chain-smoked cigarette after cigarette. I waited 25 minutes watching the passers-by by foot, by bike by car. There was a white mercedes full of old people and a nervous collegiate-looking guy in a polo shirt. There was a couple who beamed at the bus stop standers. There was a bearded man on a bicycle with a long thick braid. There was a man across the street who had dug through the trash cans on every corner of the intersection and amassed a meal. He stood eating it by a trashcan. He was golden and his skin was dirty. He had a big, worn book with the covers missing, and beamed at me cynically as he walked past. A jocular buddy approached him and punched him on the shoulder while he was eating.

The smoking man got on the bus the same time as I did, rode 2 blocks, then walked off. I could see him heave as he coughed in the heat, the sun shining on his pinkish bald spot.

The man across from me on the bus looks like a big buddha. He's cradling a large, Zen-green flowerpot with a few sleepy red flowrs in it.

The inside of the bus is much, much cleaner than the city outside it. But the view changes as we move further West down Sunset, streetlights begin to recede, clean-clipped hedges spring up. Despite the divide between the grit and grass here, or maybe partly because of it, I'm beginning to love this city. And it's at these times, on the bus or the metro, that I realize it most. I don't think you can truly love a city until you have freedom, or until you have your freedom in it. And it's here, on the gossamery line between points A and B, traveling through uncounted time that doesn't exist, that I feel most free.

1/30

A gun shot through the head and

my father cried last night so loud

I thought he was hiccuping

his shoulders breathing too much

ocean air.

my father cried last night so loud

everything unsalted turned petty, soured

my crowing muscles bled lactic acid and were reduced to

turkey jerky.

my father cried last night so loud

he cut my cries at the throat

told 'em to spin glass chips from my

eyes instead.

my father cried last night so loud

he sent the sugar on my tongue mining

into my teeth for protection

without lanterns.

my father cried last night so loud

and I went digging on the ocean floor

without a pickaxe, without a shovel

a glowing fish showed me the blood type of coral

before becoming the moon

I tried to climb there

without a pickaxe, without a shovel

with just a rope

in the moonglow of the

subzero night

in the waxen desert

where all the water

falls.

She Said the Man in the Gabardine Suit Was a Spy

I.

And it is with movement that all the best stories begin.

There are no words in the vacuum of stillness.

All the stories are in the rolling, the creaking, the click-clack of train wheels, the clean light spaces rushing through grey smoky tunnels. Moving means noise, means wiping clean, means scribbling.

II.

The first thing he says to me is, "You look tired."

I think I am. My stomach hurts, and I was already in the mood to feel sorry for myself. I usually like to ride the metro standing, arm curled to cradle a book, and read or look around at the other riders, make up stories about where they came from, where they're going. A jerk on the metro wouldn't move his duffel bag to give me a seat, so a middle aged black man did. He moved his navy sweater over, and as I sank down into the empty space, he said, "You look tired." His companion nods. The man is missing a front tooth, and he has very short, whiting hair. (Later, gesturing toward the empty space where his tooth should have been he says, "I took a fall...I was going too fast...") I think I shrugged a little, or nodded. I was listening to a sad song, and I pulled out my earphones. "Thanks," I say, for the seat.

It's Good Friday. Some people still have ash thumbprints on their foreheads. He asks me if I'm Jewish. I shake my head. Armenian? Persian? I'm surprised that he's guessing something so close. Most people guess Dutch. I don't know why this is. I am not blonde.

"Close," I say, "Iraq."

"So what's your religion?"

"Oh, I'm Muslim."

"Really? You don't cover?" He waves his arms around his head. "You don't wear a---jab--na--"

"Hijab? No."

"Huh. You real liberal?"

I hate this question. It's grating, makes me grind my teeth together. I feel like he's asking, So, you're just sorta Muslim, right? Like, a wonderbread Muslim? Like some sorta got-some-artificial-ingredients-in-there-Muslim?

"I mean, the Hijab isn't really necessary." I'm trying to explain..."My mom never wore one. When she was my age, she even wore shorts."

"In Iraq?"

"Oh yeah," I'm thinking about what people see on the news everyday, so I add, "But I guess times are changing."

Yeah, he says, you and me, our nations, the Black nation, the Iraqi nation. We're in the same place. He pauses. You ain't shy, are you?

No, sir. I reply. Not really.

III.

A long time ago, he was a trumpet player. "One of the five black students in my class at Cal Arts." We talked about reeds, the blues for a while. The metro made a few stops. Folks filed out. Folks crowded in. Now, a man enters. He looks like he's probably homeless. He's leaning a little on a cane, and although doesn't look frail, he seems so. He has a bunch of white plastic spoons and sporks, the kind you'd get at a cheap restaurant or from some sterile cafeteria, stuffed into the breast pocket of his frayed, grungy grey jacket. The car doors swish shut, and as the train lurches to a start, the man sways and collapses. He tries to wave his cane a little to stand, but he's too awkwardly splayed. For 10 long seconds or so, the man lays there helplessly as the man nearest him stands looking down at him.

"Come on, man!" My seat-partner finally shouts. "Help a brother up!"

"Poor guy's drunk," he whispers to me. "Once they start down that path--the drink, the drugs, they fall. Well. Now you know how I fell..."

The standing man begins to reach toward the drunk, and my seat partner's friend stands. I feel like I should gave stood, too--should have given the drunk man my seat--but it's too late. The guy's helping the drunk to his seat, and the man next to me says, "I'd give him my seat but we can't have him sitting by a young lady."

IV.

You seem like a story teller. I don't know quite how the conversation turned, but he began telling me about a girl named "Knacka" (pronounced "na-ka"--I don't know how it was spelled, that's just how I imagine it being pronounced. My new friend slurred his words very slightly. His breath as he spoke had the somewhat-rank smell of cheap wine.) She kinda look like you, same face. Started killing when she was 8, 9 years old. In for so many murders. Started on the drugs. I was sitting by her on the bus to the pen (I forget just how he referred to jail), tears were streaming down her face but she was so gorgeous. But she was so young when she learned to pull that trigger. She had to.

How old was she?

The train was slowing at the Vermont/Sunset station. "You getting off at this stop?" He was reaching for his bag.

No...

Got a pen? I have so many stories. I can tell you so many stories.

(I'm reaching into my bag for a notebook) D'you have an email? I say stupidly.

He laughs at me, "No, girl. I don't have any of that. You know LA housing?"

No...The train's stopped. He yells to his friend, "hold the door" He's really taking his time.

"Kylo, you crazy?" His friend shouts. People are staring. "LA Housing!" Kylo calls as he jumps off the train. Another man on the train gives me the address. The drunk man across from me is sadly looking down at his beard. I start writing.

I Got Rejected From Yale Today

and I feel fine. Well, almost. I won't pretend that my lacrimal glands weren't activated today. I was shocked. Shocked and awed. Naomi Klein, you could probably have scared me into doing anything. But, surprisingly (yes, to me, especially to me), of all the things I'm questioning--the admissions committee's sanity, what I'm supposed to do with myself next, what God is thinking--myself isn't one of them. I'm proud of everything I put on that application. I'm proud of myself. I'm proud. (Not in a pompous way, however much this blog post may lead you to believe so.) I learned to have enough faith in myself to believe I could get in despite fighting mental paralysis to get my...stuff together. I fell in love with essays (and learned to love tough love). I wrote a personal statement that made my mother cry as she shopped for a refrigerator at Costco. And I'd like to think I was earnest, which, after all, is really the thing to be.

When I got home today, I went for a long run on the beach. I watched the sun sink, and as I beat the lasting light home, I figured that even if I have to sink, even if I have to relinquish my fantasy of a day to a humming twilight, star-peeks, moonrise, I can do it damn beautifully. Sunrises are golden paint, everything's better by the time the sun cookie-cuts quarters from your cheeks, but really, that's not the point. The fact that you know there will be a sunrise is not the point. The morning does not hold the glory. It's the way you fade, the way you relinquish yourself to the inevitable, that makes you.

As much as I'd like to believe the nay-sayers, the angry ones, those who can't believe they didn't get their second chance at Hogwarts and say screw the Ivies and legacies and private school quotas, I can't. Among the many nose-blowers tonight, I consider my (now) dry-eyed self the luckiest. I got to spend an enchanted year in what will always be, to me, the most magical place in the world. I found friends in New Haven, and at Yale, with whom I felt more comfortable than those I'd known since toddler-hood. And maybe, just maybe, that's enough.

Tell Me A Story

Two hours to write a prompt-based short story about an article of clothing that helped someone assume a persona...this is what came out of my television-deadened brain.

Just looking at me would have made you burst into tears. I was short. I walked pigeon-toed and hunched forward like a diver, neck extended as thought it were my head rather than my legs which propelled my body forward. Eyes lackluster and starless, mouth small and curled in upon itself like a suicide bomber, as if by self-annihilation it could promise me a life without speaking.

At the time, I was working as a secretary in a crooked corporate-law firm and earning enough to pay my rent, launder my sensible blouses and skirts, and re-sole the uncomfortable shoes with which I walked with the three miles to and from work each day. What I did in those long office hours--what notes I typed or messages I saved or dictations I took--I'm not really sure, but I do remember that on cool February afternoons and warm spring days I would take my lunch outside and sit, back erect as an un-romantic ballerina's, on a bench in the park. Balancing my tray tersely on my nervous, knobby knees, I stared at the gelatinous soups and cakes glowing with shinny that the office provided me, and then--with a nearly imperceptible sigh--at the squirrels.

When the New England winter began stealing away--when all that was left of it were pitiful lumps of snow clinging to the grass like sloppy, sobbing ghosts--the squirrels would emerge from the dripping rees and begin digging in the softening ground. It was a process that never ceased to fascinate me; how after months of cowering from the blizzards that blew a hoary powder upon the ground thick as cream--after months of snow that muted memory into forgetfulness--the squirrels could remember where they had hidden the loot they'd buried when the trees tossed their proud heads of flame.

Of course, at the time I would have described myself as sitting up straight and proper in my gray skirt and white blouse, being careful not to spill the lunch I knew I wouldn't eat on my scuffed black pumps, and watching the squirrels search for the food they'd buried beneath the now-melting ice. Like I said, I was unromantic.

But maybe it was the fact that the cherry trees were blossoming early that year, at the start of April rather than closer to May. It was as if the criminal that was winter had stolen away and left only his shameful, fucshia-suffused face in his place for once, rather than his usual slobbering-ice apologies. Or perhaps it was the intoxication of finally seeing sunlight, whose power I'd forgotten in the short, gray days that gripped time from December to March. Whatever the reason, I chose to empty my untouched tray early, and buy a steaming cup of tea.

I don't remember what kind of tea it was, but it was probably peppermint. Peppermint tea always had the strangest effect on me, rousing the parts of my person that chose full-time hibernation and inhibition, like the falling-in-love part, or the dancing part, or the part that liked the salty, salubrious smell of the sea.

Clutching the hot paper cup in my cold fingers, I shuffled--still hunched--down the avenue until I spied something beautiful. Peeking from a dust-coated window was a scarf, and what a scarf it was! It looked as if it were spun from rainbows and interlaced with the antithesis of apathy. The mere act of it seemed to wipe off the dust of banal years that had accumulated in a cataract-like film over my eyes, to remind my feet and my smile of their youth, to incite an irrational desire to want it.

It wasn't so much the scarf I wanted, but the life it seemed to promise me. Not being able to create an identity for myself, I wanted one pre-made and fashionable--dazzling, brilliant, shameless. I wanted it so much that I straightened my back, marched into the dim shop, snatched the scarf up in my long fingers and veritably demanded from the woman inside, "How much?"

My eyes widened at her whispered sum.

"For a scarf?" I cried, incredulous.

The sallow woman shook her head and brandished the beautiful piece of cloth at me. "For this scarf."

It cost me two weeks' pay. You might call me mad. I quit my job after buying it. Now you'll say I'm senile, although I was only 24 years old, an age hardly meant for sanity. That piece of cloth. It reminded me of things I'd forgotten, that my eyes had glossed over. I stopped gawking at squirrels in search of guidance about remembering things forgotten. I began to frequent cafes I'd always avoided. Where poets spoke rhythms in gentle, husky voices. Fingering the scarf, I imagined myself pulling words as stunning from my pursed lips, and, surprising myself more than any magician's feat ever could, I spoke--stuttering at first--until my imagination woke and stretched and slid from my mouth taking a shape more solid and moving than the cloth draped about my neck. I was soon speaking and then laughing, mouth gaping wide, chortling raucously as a fish against the moon. I turned from city squirrels to sinews of sunlight and a three-speed bicycle, following sunrise and saying to hell with winter's shadows.

I was crouching again, but this was a confident crouch, a crouch of purpose. I sped reawoken from Paterson to Frisco, from Williams to Ginsberg, scarf flowing behind me in the wind like the sweeping tail of a shooting star. Somehow, it reminded me that my fate was not controlled by the calculated contours of the universe, by the diamond-sharp glints of faraway stars scratching out their harlequin horoscope projections. It was a piece of something unimagined, something upon which no one had previously imprinted their persona. It made me taller than Lincoln's top hat and freer than a hippie's headband; it was more potent than a superhero's spandex and more poetic than the patched tweed suit of a poet.

I gathered the scarf up in my fingers like courage and bicycled to Wisconsin. It was quiet in the patch of woods I'd chosen, peaceful before I raised a hatchet and felled one tree after another, splitting them down the middle, fitting them together till I had a cabin with the strength to withstand winter. There was a tree down for taxes and a tree down for corruption, a tree down for silence and a tree down for ignorance. It was spring again, and the cicadas hummed when I was done. I strung my scarf up laughing, until it was only gossamer in the treetops. I knew I'd remembered everything there was to remember. You would have smiled if you'd been there, too.

--Fin--

Now it's time to read some Ray Bradbury and write something better.

Quotables...

My mom and I were at Fry's Electronics a couple days ago to get some earbuds (which, I must add, broke the day after they were purchased. I shake my fist at them. But then, they were four bucks, so, I guess I can't complain that much. (oh wow, that was a lot of parenthetical complaining. I feel like I'm whispering behind someone's back)). Anyway, as we were leaving the store, my mom looked at the pretty girl who was checking our receipts and, being the ubiquitous person she is, asked "Are those your eyelashes?" (they were very luscious). What did the girl say?

After hesitating for a moment...

"They're mine 'cause I bought 'em!"

Needless to say, once we got to the parking lot, my mom and I were laughing our faces off. The thing is, if you're going to get fake eyelashes, you may as well get cool ones that are ... blue and sparkly or something. Everyone can tell they're fake anyway, so why not have fun with it?

Ray Bradbury Musical

Yes, yes, yes, I am writing about Ray Bradbury. Consider this post one of admiration for Who Noor Might Marry (for shizzle--thanks Snoop Dogg) Installment Two. Too bad he's in love with Bo Derrek.

Bo Derrek, before she became a Playboy model.

Thanks, New Haven mommies, for giving me a love for old men!

But honestly, I really want to see this musical. Here's the story: It's the year 2116 and a married couple of forty years is getting tired of waking up to each others' crinkly faces each morning. Enter the androids. They are traveling as door-to-door salesmen. What are they peddling? Marionettes, of course: custom androids, of course. The poor couple decides to give each other androids of their younger, sexier selves for Christmas and learn an important lesson: that by growing old with someone you love, you can keep your youth. Androids represent more than machines and catalysts for a great realization of undying love in this musical; they represent life becoming mechanical, and the lack of attention given to love. A robot may be good for lots of things, but you don't need a robot to see that you need someone.

"Wisdom 2116" is playing at the Fremont Center Theater in South Pasadena until February 27th. You can be linked to an informational page by clicking on the title of my post.



At his home in Los Angeles, Ray Bradbury explains his sappy love story: "the message in life is, love is everything...I'm a mamma's boy, I'm a sissy," he explained.

Ray on computers: "I hate them."

Yes, I realize I'm using a computer to say, I love you Ray Bradbury. I cried when I found out I missed your visit to the library two years ago.

Ray Bradbury when he was old, but not that old. And he likes kitties! My heart's melting...

Bradbury wrote the musical 55 years ago, for Charles Laughton and his wife who were about the same age as his fictional couple. Now 89 years old, he understands old age and old love. But he also understands his stories. He speaks of being invited into a circus tent as a kid. "I was twelve years old...I wanted to grow up and be a magician, and that's what happened, isn't it? I'm a magician, and you'll believe anything I tell you. And I'll live forever, so help me God."

OK, it's This American Life time. Bye!

Internship?

So, I wrote a post on my new internship a while ago but couldn't post it because, having ignored my system updates for so long, my internet had transformed from a sleek cheetah into a slimy slug. Ew, slime. Some slugs are good--in fact, some even eat mold, protecting us and our plastered shelters from the insalubrious fungi--what am I rationalizing? Slugs gross me out. They remind me of miniature, less dry, faceless Jabba the Huts. What does a slug's face even look like? But, digress. I recently began interning at a Pacifica Radio station, and I’m loving it so far.

Many people don’t know this (I know I didn’t), but Pacifica was the first public radio station in the United States. It was founded way back in 1946 by Lewis Hill, a conscientious objector who covered World War II in Washington, D.C. until he was fired for refusing to adulterate facts. The idea of a listener-sponsored radio station, rather than a government or corporate-sponsored media, appealed to him greatly and he began to gather a following. Although it was new-fangled, the idea grew, and he and his cohorts began broadcasting from Berkeley, California in 1949. KPFK in Los Angeles went on the air 10 years later and soon became the most powerful public radio station in the Western United States.

KPFK operates from a distinguished-looking red brick building in North Hollywood that seems to slouch slightly amidst its bustling surroundings. With a Panda Express across the street and an Indian restaurant called the “Bollywood Two” next door, along with cute local places like

(a slightly-seedy jazz club that serves all manner of interesting starchy-Solanaceae concotions including a Maple Ham, Corn, and Pineapple Potato; a Hot Dog and Sauerkraut Potato, a Marinated Steak Potato…the list of oddities goes on), and Universal Studios just a short tram ride away, the radio station seems a bit out of place at first. But its eclectic, electric spirit is represented in its diverse surroundings.

The radio archive at KPFK is the nation’s oldest, and the archives room has a great atmosphere. It’s dimly lit—the ceiling lamps have colored-cloth lanterns hanging over them, casting the entire room in an eerie, softly tinted light, and the rows of cases cradling books and CDs are perfect for crawling between for a post-lunch nap (no, silly, I haven't taken one). The walls are painted a pollen-like orange, with red, white, and yellow stripes running like equators across their bellies. The latitudinal lines are broken by towering chests of drawers filled with old chunks of history—50 years of grassroots political, cultural and performing arts history. There are recordings and interviews with greats like John Coltraine and John Cage, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and even Ernesto “Che” Guevara. I worked in the archives my first day at KPFK, and enjoyed organizing recordings while chatting with other volunteers (like Sylvia, an old woman at whom I nervously had to shout because she was "going deaf, dear"), archivists (like Edgar, who literally had a feather in his cap, well, fedora really), and producers.

I can’t really explain the first few days working on a show. I walked into the office and stood staring at all the posters for a while—Immigration Reform Now! Iraqi Workers Unite! Bush—the Only Dope Worth Shooting.

Researching was easy and enjoyable—preparing talking points was difficult. When writing segment introductions, I was suddenly struck by my power. A strategically placed qualifier, an extra sentence (or a sentence less), a few choice words, the emphasis placed on a fact, all led to radically different slants on the same facts. And the idea of framing a deeply complex issue in only 15 minutes was staggering.

The first segment I had to work on was the most daunting. It was about toxic chemicals used as flame retardants. These chemicals coat objects from pillows and pajamas to television sets and car seats. I read a lot about the issue, the history of legislation surrounding it, the chemical reasons it was bad, the medical problems it caused. But I still didn’t know what the public needed to be informed about. Did they need to know about the chemicals that had been recently banned? The effects of the chemicals? The science behind their toxicity? The corporate lobbyists that prevented them from being taken off the market? The civil rights debates surrounding the issue? The fact that I was in a position to decide what millions of people needed to know was difficult to wrap my head around, and everything seemed important. Sometimes curiosity is unrewarding. I eventually got the talking points in order, but they were too unspecific in some cases and too general in others. But I comforted myself—I’d get it eventually, and I have become better (but not perfect yet, oh no). Every story I research and help write astounds me. My parents are probably getting tired of me talking nonstop about French burka bans and torture in Afghan detainment camps and Scott Brown’s stupidity, but I can’t help it. Everything is too wonderful a prospect, everything seems so important.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I’ve been learning from Pacifica radio is the one that should be the most obvious—that journalism has a profound affect on the way that people act and think. That journalism is what brings people to the front lines. For someone like me, who has always believed she should (and would) become the driving force in every story—who wants to be each hero, the larger-than-life every(wo)man—this is a big realization. I’m learning that telling the stories is just as important, and I’m learning that my old views—my scorning the catalyst in favor of the protagonist—were naïve and, frankly, egotistic. How many people know of Edward R. Murrow and how many people know of Gandhi? It must have been some sort of complex, a

wanting to be great, to be known the world over. I don’t think I’ve quite gotten over it (who ever does?), but, as corny as this sounds (and I know it will sound corny), if it ultimately makes the world a better place, I don’t mind a bit of that yearning on my part or anyone else’s. But Sonali Kolhatkkar, the amazing broadcaster and journalist with whom I’m working (or, to be more correct, for whom I’m working), balances these roles of catalyst and proactive actor very nicely, working on her show, Uprising, and working as an activist in an Afghan woman’s collective. I can only hope that I’ll be able to find such an admirable balance later in life.

Let's Dance

So, I must say that hearing this on the radio made me feel pretty fly, so check it out and help inflate my ego!

Also, I apologize for all the pledge-fund pushing in this episode, but don't fast forward! And, you know, if the mood strikes, you can give us money :-)

KPFK Fund Drive Day 4

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I had to pick out clips from among much archival footage from and about the Depression era. They were all really fascinating. There was a piano-playing debutante who, after losing a million dollars in the stock market crash, pleaded for good souls to buy the only thing she had left--her 25,000 dollar mink coat. There were news clips from Chicago, where hundreds of couples participated in "Dance Marathons" where they would literally dance for months on end. The dancers were allowed to take 5, and sometimes 10, minute long naps. The attendants would take off their shoes and massage their tired feet as they collapsed into their cots. After the buzzer rang signaling the end of their time the dancers would be dragged from their beds and shaken awake. They circled the dance floor like zombies as hundreds of onlookers looked on. Here's a clip I love:

Dance marathons represent what the Great Depression was ultimately about: something very good going very wrong--the rebellious, youthful dance crazes of the Jazz Age morphed into something much more sinister. As Betty asks, "Well, do you think we can stick it out, Frankie?" she's not asking questioning whether she and her partner can keep their toes from dislocating or keep from collapsing of fatigue longer than their fellows. She's asking when it will be over--all of it.

One thread that ran through much of the footage was especially surprising. Many of them--archival television footage, documentaries, films, commentaries from ordinary people--supported a combination of rugged independence from government while promoting and sometimes practicing a public socialism. This seemed like a dichotomy to me at first, but now it doesn't seem too different from what many tea-partiers are pleading for today; the desire to govern themselves as communities. Of course, the world is different today--I doubt that many hardline republicans would like to live on communal farms, and their predecessors did not place as much faith in the free market or its currency as do their contemporaries.

Pavlov, Salivation On!

Last night I made the dough for these cookies.  Our food processor wasn't really working (much like everything else in the house--go figure) but lucky for me I am the proud possessor of a mortar and pestle.  All I can say is, a dough that is supposed to take 20 minutes to make took me two hours, and I got a nice arm workout out of it, chopping and pounding almonds, and combining them with sugar, butter, flour, and egg yolks.  

The cookies I made are called Ischlers, and according to my taste tester (my mom--I haven't tried them yet.  I can't handle any more sweetness today after licking chocolate ganache off a spoon) they are delicious.   Ischlers are sort of almond-shortbready, and they're filled with jam (usually apricot, but I thought that was weird so I used raspberry) and topped with (what else but)...chocolate ganache!  Making the ganache was much easier than I thought it would be.  I ate a lot of chocolate ganache cake when I was younger, and thought there was something mysterious about it, but it turns out that it's only chocolate and cream.  I must say, however, that finding bittersweet chocolate that I could use for this recipe was difficult.  I walked to Trader Joe's yesterday only to find that they sold bittersweet chocolate in 3-ounce bars for three dollars each.  I needed half a pound (or so I thought--I now have a small pirex-full of chocolate ganache sitting in my fridge.)  They didn't have it at Sprout's either, but they did have it at Ralph's.  I got it in time to come home and watch Emma on PBS.  Woohoo!  I always squirmed when my mom wanted to watch those old English dramas (except the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice--that's six hours of amazing), but they're starting to grow on me.  And what with my house smelling like almonds, sugar, butter and chocolate, and my finding the first season of Pushing Daisies at the library (along with a Juliet Binoche movie--that woman is so beautiful) I am pretty darn contented.  I've also made a pact to go to the beach every day, and so far I've been keeping it.  Seeing the ocean and smelling the salt air will not stop amazing me.  I appreciate it so much more now.  Anyway, I've been rambling.  I took the liberty of attempting to take oddly-lit photos, so feast your eyes on the scrumptiousness (for some reason they're not as bright on Blogger as they are on my computer, but, oh well).

The One Year Mark

It has been more than a year since this man made me cry. I have taken my "Yes We Did" poster down. The Kucinich for President banner is still hanging in my bedroom. A year ago, I watched Barack Obama take his place as President of the United States in suspended disbelief. On November 4th of 2008 I fell asleep in a daze, waking to joyfully cry into my cereal, and to tear up in Calculus as I announced that I could say truly for the first time that I was "proud to be an American." It was a time to be corny and patriotic, for eyes to glisten at what seemed like the holiest of times, the promises in the air tingling.

Maybe it was just the magic of living in New Haven, but much has changed since then. Or, to put it more succinctly, not enough has changed since then. The most magical of times has lost out to reality. How am I to clap my hands as loudly as I can and say "I believe in Obama"? He has more responsibility than Tinkerbell. And more power that he has used illy. He has convinced Congress to pass a bill that frustrated most Americans, and even he is not proud of handing money over, however temporarily, to big business. Health care reform would have been the strongest point of his first year, and he has not done his job, letting a watered-down bill through, and Americans will suffer as a result. His mythology can only take him so far.

Sorry for this...I'm just mad about the whole thing. What is he going to say in his State of the Union Address? He and the media are way past their honeymoon period.

Obsessions?

Hooooooooney, I'm hooooooooooome.

What movie is that from?  I want to say it's from My Blue Heaven, but considering I haven't seen that movie since I was oh, maybe five years old, I could be (probably am) wrong.  Any takers?

So, obviously I haven't written on here in a while.  I'm in a particularly writerly mood today, and while I spent a lot of time this morning writing in my journal by a fountain (and watching little kids throw pencils and pinecones and stones into said fountain), I feel like being all...spontaneous.  Or as spontaneous as one can be on a blog. Evidently, I'm being rather inelegant and I'm in a talkative mood.  Since it is nearly midnight, I am talking to no one in particular, and everyone.  So even though I could be writing about my first day at my internship, or how the girl in my yoga class this morning fainted, I won't.  At least not today. 

Lately, I've been thinking about all the random people with whom I am not associated, but whom I love.  In no particular order, here are the ones I can rattle from my clanking brain at the moment:

PEOPLE NOOR MIGHT MARRY (yeah, not really): INSTALLMENT ONE

1.) Jimmy Carter:

This old man is adorable.  And I know that old people supposedly don't like being called "cute" or "adorable" or just generally be squealed at.  But you know, Carter probably could have been elected to the presidency based on his winning smile alone, K?  Now you may be thinking, Noor's getting ahead of herself.  And her love for Jimmy Carter is the product of either a strange and unhealthy love for octogenarians, or the callouses on her stony heart have been sawed off by those disarming teeth.  Okay that was a weird sentence.  Don't say you weren't warned.  But in any case, Jimmy's not all beauty and no brains!  He was a really great President--in my mind, one of the best America ever had.  He tried to do what was right for his country without being overly concerned about his own popularity (he wasn't reelected), and even now he's keeping himself out there.  Good man.

2.) Kenna

I don't really know how to explain what Kenna is.  He can't be filed under pop or rock or hip hop or electronica, but some weird amalgamation of them all with bits African beats and stuff that seems like it should belong in a Pixar film but that is actually found in his voice.  Whoah.  His music is decidedly better without the music videos, although the one for "freetime" manages to be both cute and disturbing.  Kenna, I do not want to see you being dragged around by police in your underpants.  If You do, however, (you being the invisible people I encompass by sweeping my arms up and around and possibly elbowing someone very visible in the process), here it is:  

3.) The Implicit Association Test Folks

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html

I took the race test, and these guys blow my mind.  I don't really understand how all this works--how do they factor in people like me, who forget which keys my fingers are on and thus press the wrong button?  I won't say what my result was from the test, but I will say it was surprising.  I genuinely believe I hold people of all races equal.  Is there anyone who has ever gotten a "perfect score" in terms of having no bias towards black or white people?

4.) Ralph Nader  

Ok.  So this isn't really any sort of revelation or anything, but I really love Ralph Nader.  I think he could have become president if he just stood a little straighter--he's always stooped, ever since he was a strapping young lad.  And, as much as it pains me to say so, stooping does not project confidence/a presidential aura.  I mean, look at Warren Harding--he only got elected because he looked like a presidential sort of guy.  Yalla, ya Nader. Sit up, stand up straight as the status quo.  Ok, the status quo is crooked.  Rebel against the status quo in your posture.  Why am I addressing this to Ralph Nader, he'll never read this?  And besides, honestly, I like him just the way he is.  And as much as I hate the way seat belts chafe one's neck, I love him for them.  And nutrition facts labels.  And cleaner air.  And...

5.) David Sedaris

This man.  Is amazing.  If he wasn't gay, I would be his stalker.  Ok, actually I wouldn't be, because who really needs to become a stalker when there's facebook live feed or news feed or whatever it is we're being fed, but I would be letting his girlish voice lull me to sleep every night.  Wait.  I already do that.  Just kidding.  I am not quite so attached.  Only every other night.  And I am joking you again.  But seriously, he makes me draw in a huge breath after every essay in When You Are Engulfed In Flames.  His other stuff is excellent, but that is mind-blowing.  And it is the one that drugs figure into least.  Ah, the irony.  Although, his stories in Barrel Fever are quite wonderful; if you're looking for white trash on a more sophisticated level than King of the Hill, that's totally the way to go.  Perhaps the piece that fills me with the most toothy joy is one he wrote for The New Yorker last year on undecided voters; it's the best commentary I've ever heard on the topic, and I think it really hi-lights my favorite thing about him--his abashed subtlety.  If anyone writes to discover, it's David Sedaris.  He's not trying to be the smart guy who shoves his wisdom down your throat.  He's at his best when he's the cynic who thinks noone is as good as him.  And it's wonderful. 

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/10/27/081027sh_shouts_sedaris?currentPage=all

and another fav, from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim:  http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/jun/sedaris/usandthem.html

6.)  Ira Glass

Some people have described Ira's voice as that of an old, obese man.  Others have described its dulcet tones as those of a gay hipster.  To me, it's pure love.  If you've never listened to This American Life...you're missing out.    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

7.) Beck

I've always loved Beck, and now I'm really digging this song...