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Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Ok, this was pretty funny. Sylvia's slightly younger friend Jenny is staying over tonight; they are off in Sylvia's room getting ready for bed while Ellen and I sit in the next room over. Overheard:
Sylvia: You know how Obama's thing is "Yes we can"?
Jenny: Yeah...
Sylvia: Well, (singing) "Bob the Builder, can we fix it, Bob the Builder, yes we can!"
Jenny: (Gasp!) -- They're making fun of Obama!
I'm sure this joke has been made by a lot of people over the past year; it was hilarious to hear Sylvia and Jenny hitting on it for themselves. (And funny, of course, assuming I'm reading Jenny's reaction correctly, to think of the "Bob the Builder" theme song as being a take-off on the Obama campaign slogan.)
posted evening of January 24th, 2009: 2 responses
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I checked out Cien Años de Soledad from the library today -- not sure how far I'm going to be able to get with it, but I'm having fun with it. So far I have gotten to where I can read the first two paragraphs (about 5 pages) pretty fluently; I've been going back over them to try and work the vocabulary into my brain before I move on. I was made very happy by the sentence, "El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo." -- "The world was so new, many things did not yet have a name, and in order to mention them, you had to point them out with your finger." I loved this sentence when I read the book in English but had forgotten it. I am curious about what exactly accent marks do in written Spanish. Are they optional? In these first 5 pages there are several instances of aun and aún, which seem to be the same word and pronounced the same way. Maybe there's a subtle distinction I'm not picking up on. And I seem to recall seeing solo both with and without an accent over the first "o".
 ...Well this page solves at least one piece of the puzzle; accent marks are not optional, and "sólo" means something different from "solo" ("only" vs. "alone") -- it doesn't mention "aun," but I'm assuming there is a subtle difference in meaning between the two spellings. That distinction looks pretty synthetic to me; forcing different spellings for what is essentially a single word, according to how it is used in a sentence. Seems like it must be a pretty common mistake to leave the accent off of "sòlo" or put one onto "solo". ...Okay: this page says, "The word aún means todavÃa or still, while aun means incluso or even." So, problem solved, I guess.
posted evening of January 24th, 2009: 10 responses
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 I've been using the adjective "sensual" to describe the style of writing in Of Love and Other Demons, and I find that I had earlier called a similar quality in Absalom, Absalom! "painterly." Hm: what if I called this quality "Baroque," would that work? I believe the term connotes a lot of what I am trying to communicate. Rich, lush, ornate detail; depiction of extravagant beauty. The shade of meaning I'm trying for is: gorgeous visual/sensory descriptions that point you* toward a feeling of fixed destiny, of an absence of free will. Is that too much work for such a little word to do? Feelin' like Humpty-Dumpty...
Note: I have recently seen the term "Baroque" used in a literary context, if memory serves by Chad Post,** to describe the long, syntactically ornate sentences used by e.g. Saramago or Castellanos Moya. This may be why I'm thinking of the term right now; it is not however the quality I'm seeking to describe. No reason the two qualities couldn't exist side-by-side in the same work; but they seem to me completely independent of one another. Another thought, maybe the term to use is "Baroque tragedy" -- Baroque to betoken the gorgeousness of the descriptions, tragedy for the fatalism. This might work. I see however that this term is already in use.
 * (Somehow: I'm still trying to figure out how this pointing works.) ** Nope: it was Edmond Caldwell. Curse you, memory!
posted morning of January 24th, 2009: 3 responses
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A warning at the top: this post is trying to tie together a couple of disparate strands of thought, and is going to read like a rough draft. I may rewrite it later. I am finding it hard to praise or condemn any of the characters in Of Love and Other Demons, though their actions and thoughts are certainly ones I can find worthy of praise or condemnation. What I mean to get at here: this novel is written from a fatalistic viewpoint. The characters are acting without free will, because they have to perform their parts. This sounds (when I read it) like a criticism of the novel -- like I am saying García Márquez cannot draw characters who I believe to be "fully human," since "fully human" includes "possessed of free will" -- characters who unchoosingly act out parts written for them, are puppets. That is not my intention however. The characters do read as fully human individuals, people I can sympathize with, can imagine myself as being. The Bishop's insistence that Sierva María is possessed -- based on acta written up by the Abbess which he knows to be worthless, and in the face of Father Cayetano Delaura's affirmation that she is sane -- is completely inexplicable to me except as malevolence; but instead of trying to explain it and calling it malevolent, I find that I'm accepting it as the way the world is in this book. I'm wondering how strongly tied in this is to the sensual quality of García Márquez' prose that I identified earlier. Another author whose writing I would characterize as sensual is William Faulkner, and I do remember a similar feeling of fatalism in reading his novels. I don't want to go too far with this though because it can make me feel like a poseur -- I'm not a critic, my understanding of literary style is guesswork cobbled together with stray bits of memory -- and I've gotten the sense that using Faulkner as a point of comparison is easy and meaningless without further explication.
posted morning of January 24th, 2009: Respond
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 Thanks everyone for the kind wishes. The tests were not conclusive -- my peripheral vision is fine in both eyes, meaning there's no nerve damage, which is a relief. But the scan of my optic nerves didn't look quite right to the doctor, in ways which I have no way of quantifying. So: I'm to go back in July and take the tests again, and if the results are just the same as yesterday, then that means my eyes are ok; if there is a change, then I will need to start treatment. The usefulness of yesterday's tests was I guess to establish a baseline.
posted morning of January 24th, 2009: 3 responses
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Friday, January 23rd, 2009
For the last several months I've been thinking I should really get to the optometrist and have my glasses prescription checked -- using larger fonts on the computer than I had been, just generally feeling like I'm squinting too much... Finally made it over there on Tuesday. (I have this weird aversion to medical care, not sure what's up with that -- I need to schedule a routine physical too, which I haven't done for a couple of years.) Well my eyes have indeed changed -- going back today to order my lenses and to take a glaucoma test, which the doctor thought was indicated. Gosh I hope I don't have the glaucomas! Looking forward to the new lenses though.
posted morning of January 23rd, 2009: 3 responses
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Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Just a note: It is annoying and frustrating to me, to realize what a charge I get out of passing cars on the freeway. Seems really juvenile and useless; but somehow every time I pass somebody I just have this nice feeling of having gotten one over...
posted morning of January 22nd, 2009: 4 responses
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Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Strangeness -- last night I dreamt I was smoking up with Chris and Gary Gordon (blast from the past! With his floppy mohawk and everything! The only connection I know of between these two is Louisiana) on the second floor of a duplex apartment, which I believe belonged to me. I looked out the window at the street and saw a police car behaving strangely, driving jerkily in reverse; and somehow without meaning to, made eye contact with the driver. Rats! I heard him stopping down the street, I heard the sound of stalking feet, thought I'd better go down and see if I can get rid of them -- I went down without telling Chris and Gary, opened the door to the knocking cops, and was sort of glad-handing them, good to see they're in the neighborhood keeping watch, everything's fine around here... They went back to the kitchen with me and suggested we ought to sit down and have a beer. I agreed hesitantly but there was no brew in the fridge; instead I pulled out a bottle of water and poured glasses for all, spilling a lot of water on the table as I did -- while I was sponging it up, Chris and Gary came downstairs curious (Gary had a box of freeze-dried soup called "South Georgia Lemon Stew" which he asked me to prepare for his dinner, he was hungry and thought that would remind him of his childhood in Georgia), and meanwhile a lot of other people started showing up with questions and expectations. ...The closing image of the dream is Eva arriving at the door, in a white stretch SUV. I thought at the time that she was driving it, but reconstructing the scene I find that she was sitting in the front passenger seat.
A second dream dealt somehow with Britain and the Falkland Islands, which had however been transplanted to continental Europe north of the Crimea -- this made very little sense to me and I kept pointing at a map with the appropriate regions shaded in and asking how come they would still be called islands when they were now inland. No memory of the context of this dream however.
posted morning of January 21st, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
It's a good day for a new president. Some nice Inauguration Day posts elsewhere:
If you've got any other good links, please leave them in comments.
posted morning of January 20th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, January 19th, 2009
The excellent movie we watched yesterday evening was The Crime of Padre Amaro -- not much to say about it other than it was a great movie, I recommend it highly -- I am thinking about it right now while reading Of Love and Other Demons's description* of a highly religious (and seemingly to me, sincerely so) bishop, and contrasting this with the hideous portrait of the bishop who appoints and conspires with Amaro:
"Come in, Ygnacio," he said. "My house is yours."The Marquis wiped his perspiring hands on his trousers, walked through the door, and found himself under a canopy of yellow bellflowers... The Bishop extended his soldier's hand in a meaningful way, and the Marquis kissed his ring. Asthma made his breathing heavy and stony, and his phrases were interrupted by inopportune sighs and a harsh, brief cough, but nothing could affect his elopuence. He established an immediate, easy exchange of trivial commonplaces. Sitting across from him, the Marquis was grateful for this consolatory preamble, so rich and protracted that they were taken aback when the bells tolled five. More than a sound, it was a vibration that made the afternoon light tremble and filled the sky with startled pigeons. "It is horrible," said the Bishop. "Each hour resonates deep inside me like an earthquake. The phrase surprised the Marquis, for he had responded with the same thought at four o'clock. It seemed a natural coincidence to the Bishop. "Ideas do not belong to anyone," he said. With his index finger he sketched a series of continuous circles in the air and concluded: "They fly around up there like angels."
So -- in a sense he seems detached in a monklike way (or a way that I think of in association with monks and ascetics) from ownership of the world around him -- and earlier he was described as "sincere in his poverty." My initial reaction to that is wait, but he's not poor, he lives in a mansion with his needs attended to, and to think about the Church in a villainous context. But then I find a very sympathetic portrait of the Bishop. (Initially at any rate -- the character has just been introduced. Who knows, what the story will bring -- and see update below.)
 A line in the movie that gave me pause was when Padre Benito said to Amaro, in regards to its being unimaginable that the Vatican would ever drop the requirement of celibacy from the priesthood, that "there will sooner be a Mexican Pope." Huh! Well I can't offhand think of a non-European Pope and I reckon there probably has never been one from Mexico or Latin America. I would not have thought of it as a basis for comparison -- of course I am neither Latin American nor Catholic. Is this exclusion a common point of reference? Or is it being used as a common point of reference among Churchmen -- to emphasize that Benito and Amaro are priests and are concerned with Church politics? (Here is an article from Pacific News Service on the need for a non-European Pope, dated 2005.)
(Update: Hm, well García Márquez' depiction of the Bishop very quickly takes on a negative cast -- a few pages after we meet him he is proposing exorcism of a rabies patient and implying it's all down to the Jews. This is at least a different failing from greed or hypocrisy...)
* And besides this: the number and frequency of points of similarity between the movie and the book are making me wonder if there was conscious imitation going on, either on the part of the movie makers or on García Márquez' part with reference to the novel that was source for the film, which dates from 1875.
posted afternoon of January 19th, 2009: Respond
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