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Friday, September 14th, 2007
Ellen and Sylvia are in the city this evening. So: I get to take a bike ride, have some spicy food for dinner, read some more My Name is Red. Tomorrow after Sylvia's Mandarin class, is the first meeting of the chamber music workshop I'm taking this fall, we will be learning to play the Concerto Grosso #7 by Corelli. And Sunday is Sylvia's birthday party! Taking lots of kids to the Liberty State Science Center for the afternoon. Speaking of Sylvia's birthday, I just found out that a new Orhan Pamuk book is being published; it is Other Colors: Essays and a Story and it is coming out on Tuesday, which is the actual date of Sylvia's birthday.
posted afternoon of September 14th, 2007: Respond
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Thursday, September 13th, 2007
Music often makes me feel nostalgic, and I like that. So what is the feature of nostalgia-geared music compilations that makes me feel so hostile?
posted evening of September 13th, 2007: Respond
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L' shanah tovah!
posted afternoon of September 13th, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
I've had a Google Calendar account set up for about 2 years now. Wonder of wonders! I find that in the last month or so I am actually starting to use it to organize my time, to remind myself what I need to do. This is really a big step for me -- I have never in my life been able to get in the habit of keeping track of my schedule in written form.
posted evening of September 12th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Curriculum Vitæ
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Alex died yesterday. Very famous parrot, this was the first I had ever heard of him. This morning, Sylvia and I watched a really nice video from PBS: Scientific American Frontiers -- the last video listed on that page, titled "Animal Einsteins", is half about Alex and half about chimpanzees learning arithmetic. Utterly charming. When I got home this evening, Sylvia wanted to watch it again.
...And again this afternoon! Sheba the chimp touches the numbers she is looking at and Sylvia says, "Sheba always has to make sure," grinning.
posted evening of September 12th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Sylvia
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Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
(Well, or tangling them up at least.) I woke up this morning with an image from my dream fully formed. A man about my age is at a family gathering -- the crowd includes his parents, brothers and sisters and their families, and his child or children. Maybe some of his aunts and uncles as well. He is stoned and is scribbling random-seeming lines on a large piece of blank paper as he narrates in a kind of vindictive, complaining way. A few people are listening to him, others are involved in their own conversations. He moves on to something else and his son (perhaps nephew), 4 or 5 years old, starts coloring in the scribbles, eventually coming out with a very nice picture of a scene from the fairy-tale "The Frog King". Thinking about this brought to mind Shekure's observations about dreaming from My Name is Red; and that made me suddenly realize that my insight on Friday about bragging and complaining is exactly parallel to Shekure's thoughts -- with the added clarification that what I was talking about was not "ways of thinking" but "ways of narrating" my thoughts, talking about what I am thinking. And that Shekure was not saying she wouldn't tell a dream; she was just pointing out that the relation would be a lie in fundamental ways.
posted morning of September 11th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Dreams
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Sunday, September 9th, 2007
Blackout on Meeker Street! It has not happened all summer -- it's really hot this evening, I guess a lot of air conditioners running. The lights went off from about 9:30 - 9:45 or so. Sylvia was in bed but had not fallen asleep yet, and she was frightened.
posted evening of September 9th, 2007: Respond
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Since chapter 31 of My Name is Red I have been feeling a little at odds with Pamuk's desire to advance the plot, which has been seeming to interfere with the lovely character development and aphoristic nature of the first half of the book. With today's reading however, chapters 43 through 47, he is coming back to the narrative style that I have fallen in love with. Chapter 47 ("I, Satan") is especially nice -- it has been too long since we heard from the coffee-house storyteller, whom I am identifying as Pamuk. He (like Pamuk) obviously has a polemical point -- is not impartial -- but his voice is lovely and seductive enough, and I'm close enough to in agreement with his side of the argument, that I am letting my guard down and just basking in his voice. Here's what his Satan has to say about moralizing preachers: I am not the source of all the evil and sin in the world. Many people sin out of their own blind ambition, lust, lack of willpower, baseness, and most often, out of their own idiocy without any instigation, deception or temptation on my part. However absurd the efforts of certain learned mystics to absolve me of any evil might be, so too is the assumption that I am the source of all of it, which also contradicts the Glorious Koran. I'm not the one who tempts every fruit monger who craftily foists rotten apples upon his customers, every child who tells a lie, every fawning sycophant, every old man who has obscene daydreams or every boy who jacks off. Even the Almighty couldn't find anything evil in passing wind or jacking off. Sure, I work very hard so you might commit grave sins. But some hojas claim that all of you who gape, sneeze or even fart are my dupes, which tells me they haven't understood me in the least. Let them misunderstand you, so you can dupe them all the more easily, you might suggest. True. But let me remind you, I have my pride, which is what caused me to fall out with the Almighty in the first place...
posted evening of September 9th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about My Name is Red
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The Apostropher has posted a mix tape that is better than good. Dig that Al Green.
posted afternoon of September 9th, 2007: Respond
➳ More posts about Mix tapes
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This week, Sylvia has graduated from riding a little bike, low enough to the ground that she can put both feet down flat while she's mounted, to riding a bike that is her proper size (though with the seat set a little lower than ideal). And this morning the three of us rode to town and back, more than a mile round trip!
posted afternoon of September 9th, 2007: Respond
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