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Saturday, June 25th, 2011
 Filipino-American journalist Jose Antonio Vargas writes a piece of memoir for this week's New York Times Magazine which is astonishing in its audacious bravery. Vargas is coming out for the second time in his life, coming out in a role which could hold very real, dreadful repercussions for his life and his livelihood.
posted morning of June 25th, 2011: 3 responses
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El signo que se cuelga sobre la puerta de la pupuserÃa se destaca verde e oval contra los ladrillos rojos de la pared. He comprado unos pupusas para el almuerzo, pasaba por allà de camino a casa. Aquà tienes una de queso, una de chicharrón para mi. Vamos, creo que tenemos un poco repollo encurtido en la nevera... y tal vez una salsa. Tardes perezosas. El peso de la pupusa en mi boca. La masticación agradable me distrae de lo que me decÃa el médico esta mañana. Es claramente más fácil no pensar en ello, el café sorber, tu presencia sentir... Mirar fijamente al vacÃo.
posted morning of June 25th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, June 24th, 2011
Charles Bonnet said 250 years ago, he wondered, thinking of these hallucinations, as he put it, how the theatre of the mind could be generated by the machinery of the brain. Now 250 years later, I think we're beginning to glimpse how this is done. At a TED lecture from 2009, Oliver Sacks talks about different sorts of hallucinations and what they reveal about neurological functions.Thanks for the link, Basileios!
posted evening of June 24th, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
A lot of writing, and a fair amount of interesting writing, has been done at The Hooded Utilitarian over the past few weeks on the topic of racist images in R. Crumb's work. At the beginning of the month Domingos Isabelinho's strongly negative reference to Angelfood McSpade provoked an enormous, vituperative comments thread. (A large portion of the posts coming from one embarrassingly devoted Crumb fan who will not hear any evil spoken of his object of adoration -- but with plenty of worthwhile thinking as well.) Today, Robert Stanley Martin devotes a lengthy post to the issue, with reference to McSpade, the Cheap Thrills album cover, and Al Jolson(!) And in comments, Noah Berlatsky promises a post of his own about the Cheap Thrills cover.* Well, I'm not sure quite what to make of this... I think of Crumb as a great cartoonist and of the racist and misogynistic imagery as a key, integral part of his work. Certainly worth reading and writing about.
 * Update: Noah's post is here.
Update II: and Sean Michael Robinson's contribution to the conversation.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Chad Post of 3% links to an interview with Sergio Chejfec at Fric-Frac Club (and in translation at Read This Next), which includes a hilarious anecdote about Chejfec's first experience (as "a very and consistently bored child" -- which "was a common thing for my generation, at least it’s what I’ve got to think") writing fiction:
One day, it occurred to me to send a fictitious postcard to my mother : it would be written by a sister she had never heard of, who would announce therein that she had numerous revelations to disclose : a dark and scandalous family past, a very sad past, and so on, a real melodrama. In order that the story seem truer, I had to send the card from another country: Paraguay. During my childhood, Paraguay had been for me an exotic country (it was by way of Paraguay that my parents had come secretly into Argentina, after the Second World War). The text was written and I was ready to go buy the postcard at the corner bookstore, on which to to copy it out. But once there, I realized that they didn’t sell postcards for Paraguay, and more problematically even, that I could not send a card from Paraguay! These obstacles proved insurmountable, I had to resign myself finally to the plan’s failure.
I don’t know if there’s some lesson to be taken from this story, or whether to consider it a major defeat. I think that today I would not assign so much importance to details, which seemed so essential then to the making of a credible story. But it was the first time I wrote a fiction and I still remember my anxiety on the walk to the bookstore, in search of a postcard for Asunción del Paraguay.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Monday, June 20th, 2011
A parking lot I walk by every morning on my way to work prompted this poem, composed on the way to work this morning and revised on the way home this evening.
CrumpledSympathetic gleaming crumpled chassis by the body shop,
I pass her every morning when I'm walking to the train: a shame --
been there two months, I guess she's totalled, looks brand-new...
except for at the front end where her frame is mashed together...
shiny hood is bent in half; bright jet-black paint job powerless
to cover up the damage that's been done.
This parking lot image also had a role to play in shaping my response to Dave Bonta's prompt at today's Morning Porch.
 Update -- another use of the parking lot image.
posted evening of June 20th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, June 19th, 2011
Someone must know Brooklyn, all of Brooklyn, that’s what I was thinking
Riding past the sidestreets that line Red Hook, names I’ve never heard
Like Visitation Pl. and Wolcott, Coffey St., evocative,
Some modern-day Walt Whitman must have walked down all these paths, must know
The neighborhoods from Red Hook out to Sunset Park and Sheepshead Bay,
Canarsie, know the subway stops in Midwood, where to grab a bite
In East New York -- for all the time I lived here, my familiar steps
Are clustered in a narrow strip around Flatbush, long thin fingers running
South down Seventh Avenue and west along Atlantic, when
I think of Brooklyn what I see’s a small part of the borough, pictures
Culled from my meanderings through Park Slope (mostly),
Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill. Today, we rode
Our bikes out to Ikea, it was great to see the borough through
New eyes, see corners foreign to my memories, my expectations,
Corners where a million dreams have played out, dreams of glory,
Where the docks begin, where underneath the pavement are the cobblestones
(They’re coming through in places, makes for shaky riding) -- stones
With memories of wartime and of labor struggles old and new, of
Love affairs between the street lamps, lovers whom I’ll never know,
I’ll never know the neighborhoods I’ve never been to, riding
Down the street here, through the crazy sunlight, colors catch my eye. The sun
Shines on a fading shipper’s sign, a sign down by the waterfront,
Old industry is everywhere, these piers, these cranes, these factories,
These crumbling bricks were witness to the unnarrated histories --
A million rises, unmourned falls (a bright red arrow points the way
To Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies, we ride down there and walk the pier,
Trade looks and salutations with the rows of solemn fishermen) --
This new Red Hook’s delectable, a feast of light, we’re riding back now,
Savoring the wind that blows at angles off the waterfront
And thinking thoughts of driving back to Jersey and the week to come.
We hit Atlantic, now I’m back, the Brooklyn that I know and love,
Stop by Damascus Bakery and buy some bread for lunches
For the week, and every place I set my foot rings through familiar;
What new Whitman will I find to map this borough’s soul for me?
 Eileen, Ellen and Rick
air-fishing on Valentino Pier.
Lady Liberty looks on.
posted evening of June 19th, 2011: 4 responses
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Saturday, June 18th, 2011
I cooked dinner tonight from my very favorite cookbook, one that I've been going back to for more than 20 years now. It was an excellent dinner; and finding that  I've never written about this cookbook on this blog, I feel I should remedy that oversight -- if you're interested in learning to cook this style of food, I can't recommend this book highly enough.
The book is The Spice Box: Vegetarian Indian Cookbook, by Manju Singh. It is a thin book, about 200 pages, filled with terse recipes generally a half-page long or so. The first few pages describe cooking techniques and spice mixtures and repay endless re-reading; with this information in mind the brief recipes are easy to follow and delicious. Singh's genius lies in not over-specifying ingredients and cooking directions. All instructions are simple and to the point; and it is easy to vary the recipes to your own tastes and to use what ingredients you have on hand. Dinner tonight (which was inspired by the need for something to complement the delicious mango pickles Huzefa gave us) was a vegetable curry with cauliflower and potatoes, pink lentil curry, coriander chutney, and an improvised raita; the four dishes took a total of about 40 minutes preparation time.
posted evening of June 18th, 2011: Respond
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 On the first anniversary of José Saramago's death, Pilar del RÃo scatters his ashes at the foot of an olive tree in Lisbon. (The tree was transplanted from Saramago's birthplace, Azinhaga.) image via elpais.com
posted evening of June 18th, 2011: 1 response
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I've been writing a lot of poetry lately (last week or two or three) -- if you've been reading the blog you have probably noticed... I thought I would just post a brief outline of the process I've been following. (Because: a key part of this process has been analysis, trying to understand what I am doing/seeking in writing the poetry, and how I am going about it. My instinct is that this kind of analysis should be stifling to creativity, but that has not been my experience, in this moment, not at all. The more I ask "why" and "how", the more it seems to work...)
Today I was riding my bike, for exercise and to do some errands. (Made it a little farther up Walker Street!) I was over by Vose and South Orange Ave. when a woman walked by and I overheard her saying to her friend, "Oh, I thought that was my car there by the corner -- we need to walk a little farther." This struck me as funny, and turning it over in my head I heard the first line of a silly poem. Riding along I started repeating this line in a sort of sing-song and it started fleshing itself out with more lines and a structure.... And that's basically how it usually happens, flowing out of a single line or couplet that I "hear" -- The composition works best when I am walking or riding bike, the rhythmic movement gives a background for the rise and fall of syllables (hmm: typing seems to do it too, a bit) that serves best as background for the composition process. A side effect of this is that when I'm reading the poem later on, it is easy to fall into that sing-song; the poem sounds better if I avoid this.
So once I've got a rough idea of the poem in mind, I write it out longhand, usually without division into lines -- the homemade notebook I got from Woody and Lisa has been serving me very well. Let it set a few hours or a few days and then I type it up with line divisions, often I will post it on the blog, usually it is nearly complete by that time -- each point of copying the poem, head to paper, paper to screen, screen to blog, involves revisions. And often I will see a couple of light edits that still need to be made after it has gone up on the blog.
Anyways: I am off to have some coffee and write out that poem. I'll post it later on as an update to this entry, assuming it comes together like I'm thinking it will.
Update: Yes -- This one came together very quickly and easily. Little substance but some fun imagery.
Parking Lot
Forgetting where you’re parked, a pleasant exercise, I recommend it,
silly mindless feeling, walk around the parking lot with
bags of groceries, or books, or cat food, hardware that you bought to build
your latest home improvement project,
5# nails are clanking in the bag and in your mind
you see
a silver Nissan, license plate
you’ve seen so many times
the image crystal clear imagined,
in the back seat is the laundry that you mean to drop off yesterday
but didn’t, thought I parked it over here, indeed a car
that looks just like mine from a distance -- but it’s not,
and here’s the owner,
now he’s taking out his keys and starting off, I’m back to square one
and I dig back through my memory, I opened up the door
and as I looked over my shoulder saw a note forbidding tresspassing:
it warned illegal parkers would be ticketed, behind that
was a yellow sign; that yellow’s over this way now, so clearly
I was looking that way, must have been right here -- let’s see...
I turn and orient myself, I’m looking at my car.
↻...done
posted morning of June 18th, 2011: Respond
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