Borges

"Hladik had rounded forty. Aside from a few friendships and many habits, the problematic exercise of literature constituted his life. Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned."

- The Secret Miracle, Borges

Some say the mark of a good writer is that they bring to light something that you think you already knew, making reading and writing the art of playing with recognition. Above, Borges has put his finger on one of my greatest fears. Hat's off to you dear sir.

I suggest you also give him a read. In this round of flirtation, I particularly liked Inferno, I, 32, The Witness, Kafka and his precursors, The Library of Babel...

Afghani woman on self immolation

"Don't burn yourself," she said, lying on her hospital bed. "If you want a way out, use a gun: it's less painful."

from here

One of my roomies was signing up to see a shrink. So they asked her a few questions to match her up with someone suitable. They asked, of course, "Do you have thoughts of suicide?" And my roomie told me that she was shocked. Suicide is not even an option, she said.

It's one thing to think suicide is not an option. It's another thing to understand how it would seem like an option to some hypothetical body. It's a third stance to consider it for yourself day in and day out, or maybe late at night when considering what you should do tomorrow. C is not healthy I gather. Is option B toeing the line? And what about that afghani woman? Is there a difference between suicide from depression and suicide as the last and only act of independence?

Either way, sounds like it hurts. BTW I am reading Sylvia Plath.

P.S. Do Jamaicans commit suicide?

The Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

Just finished this book today while stranded in a tunnel on a delayed outbound Red-Line T(rain) ride to Davis. (I'm glaring at YOU MBTA)! I felt a small smug feeling when I found out - in the last chapter - that Gladwell is of Jamaican decent.

Otherwise the book just left me with a feeling of being bombarded with interesting bits of new information, that were arranged in just the perfect way for me to be unable to draw any kind of logical conclusion. What was the point Gladwell? Was it aimed at policy makers; encouraging them to generate more opportunity? Was it aimed at the ordinary man; giving them a way to blame lack of opportunity for a lack of success? Or was it supposed to generate a kind of fatalism? You could be a genius that worked from dawn 'till dusk... Those things are necessary but not sufficient for success... you can still fail, chances are, you will fail. People will still stand in your way, things won't work out, you will be stuck in the drudgery of the everyday... unless you are granted the random opportunity given by luck to those of "good" birth, "good" means, and "good" skin colour.

What am I supposed to do now Gladwell? No answer? Thanks for nothing. Wow, I am a ray of sunshine today.

...for the white man.

"The abilities, the intelligence, the promise of these young men will be squandered in their attempt to eke out a living doing the simplest, most mindless chores for the white man."

-Nelson Madela , Long Walk to Freedom, my copy page 33

This is exactly how I felt working for my last supervisor. Oh snap! Good riddance my friend. ha.

But will I prosper now that he is gone? We make jokes at work all about how the partners are afraid of Office 2007. We make jokes about "partner math" which is simple, slap dash math that latches on to the biggest roundest numbers on a page and yields nothing but broad estimations. Haha! so funny... Does this mean we get more stupid, dated and timid as we move up in this firm?

The more time I spend away from school the more I feel my intelligence is squandered. How do I stem this flow?

BTW I started reading Mandela's book. It was gifted to me two summers ago. It is quintissentially inspirational. Expect more quotes.

Flakes, bookshops and Camus

Visited a great little used bookstore in Harvard Square the other day. One of my friends opened Camus' "The Plague" and found a tax return check for $475. She takes it to the counter and the man there breaks out laughing. "She works here," he says. "She's such a flake!"

I thought about it. That is ridiculous, but exactly the kind of thing I would do. She placed her check -probably as a bookmark - into the book, and somehow, without remembering, shelved it in the bookstore and then - responsibly - filed for a new check, but still...

That woman, is me . I love her, with all her flaws.

Lessons from The Fountainhead, part 2

It seems that this book is still haunting my existence. I am playing with ads by google and one of them popped up about ayn rand. So it seems I should return to my little reflection on The Fountainhead.


My other posts on it are under the 'literature' tab. So here's another installment.

"It was not malice. It was not judgement passed upon his merit. They did not think he was worthless. They simply did not care to find out whether he was good. Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not that his body was exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes." page 99.

So many things come to mind. The most immediate is the art of blogging. You always have the choice of making these thing public. What is worse than people hating you... people not caring. Almost makes me want to shut down on those privacy setting and make it for my eyes only. But then, how would I ever discover if I was good. How would you?

But on a larger note... It's true that people usually don't give you the chance to show that you are good. Many people usually dont care. Few people are willing to take a chance on a stranger. Thats why, in my PSCI class on Social Capital, I thought that sometimes, social capital is a bad thing. It encourages nepotism and closed-mindedness.

Why dont we all take a chance on someone and something new today.

The Souls Of Black Folk

I figured I should find something out about black americans since I am going to be lumped in with them when I move to the States.

A non-black friend of mine was reading this book - I can only imagine to understand his black girlfriend - so I picked it up when I saw it on sale at Strand Bookshop off Union square.

When Saundrene saw me with it, she said that I should be reading some Marcus Garvey - who back in the day considered (and called) Dubois a roast breadfruit (read oreo, coconut, uncle tom). To tell the truth, the first chapter was rather passive and speaks from a point of view wholly outside the direct black experience.

Marcus Garvey is the next read I suppose. Why does it always come back to Jamaicans? :) Maybe our vanity is a little bit justified.

Fun fact : it was a Jamaican Obeah man (boukman ?) who instigated the Haitian revolution. Too bad France made Haiti pay for it's independence (25 billion gold francs) or else they would be the proud beacon of black spirit that they should be.

(all facts taken from my dad the recreational historian. Must remember to fact-check later.)

Lessons from "The Fountainhead", part one

I read the Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) recently. I must say, that I loved most of it. The end got a bit preachy, but either way the book has a lot to offer, philosophically and otherwise. So now that there is some distance between it and me - having read some other books - I will return to some of my favourite quotes/lessons. I hope you enjoy...

"He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgement. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons." page 35

Replace "mother" with any relative you like and it still applies. Even better, if you can, replace "mother" with some relative you don't really know or particulaly like but you are expected to respect. What is this odd combination of dependence, admiration, guilt, debt, trust, obligation ...whatever, that we feel for them? Is this love? Is it that special brand of love that we can only feel for family - blood being thicker than water and all that? Or do we just assume it is because we don't want to be that crass bastard who doesn't love his mother? Is it taboo to even think that your father, your brother, your ageing homely grandmother has to -God forbid! - earn your love? When these same relatives mistreat you, is it petty and premature to just say, "Wow, that person just doesn't love me."

Can we accept this? Is this too hard to bear?

Kafka

If you look back at my old entry Church Bells on the 28th of June I mention retiring one of my 'todays confessions' - found in the sidebar

It read: "I am restless. I am looking for something I cannot name. Is this unhappiness?"

Imagine my surprise when I read the forward (John Updike) of my Complete Stories of Franz Kafka:

'Karfa epitomizes one apsect of this modern mind-set : a sensation of anxiety and shame whose center cannot be located and therefore cannot be placated..."

Jesus. Literature is a beautiful thing. I guess "modernism" is something I should look into. Perhaps it can help me understand my current moods.

But I have only read The Metamorphosis" so far... and I hated it.... all except the ending. I hated every character. I hated the unshocked lightness of the tale. I am sorry that Gregor had to become physical manifestation of his family's pointless, lazy, self-absorbed existence, but I guess we are meant to feel a relief at his awful death. At least,by and through his death his sister, father and mother became real and vitalized people. Being a scapegoat sucks. He should never have returned or visited home, but more than that he should have never facilitated their previously useless existence. I'm no good at analyzing literature, but this is what the story meant to me and I suppose that is all that matters.

Maybe I can make myself read some more.

The Professor's Daughter - Emily Raboteau

I guess I have a lot to say tonight. So for your reading ease, I present the subsections:

Liteature:
...reading this book I found on my grandma's bed-side table. While I was riding the Q one line really stuck with me.

"That's a bullshit word. 'Shy.' That just a pretty word for selfish."

Interesting. Is that true? I always thought that the a shy person was just secretly wracked with fear. What if they are just secretly hoarding all the beautiful insightful things they could be giving us. Everything going in, nothing coming out.

Friends:
A guy friend of mine just admitted something he has been struggling with alone. I don't want to write about him, but I just wanted to say that if he had told us, we would have taken care of him. Some people would say he was dumb for letting it go so long, when it was an easy fix. But he's not dumb, he's proud. I would have done the same in his situation. I wouldn't have liked him any less for caving. I like him all the more for not.

Family:
Anyway, It turns out that my cousin in actually going to have her wedding at my house in Jamaica. Imagine that.

Here in NYC, my grandma is having her operation on Wednesday. She is removing her gallstones. Somehow, it's not going to be an invasive procedure. We prepare for the Hospital stay tomorrow.

Next time I'll try and write a little about The Fountainhead. Today I went to a dance class at the New Dance Group place on 38th and 8th. I love getting sweaty, don't you? I really don't care how unattractive it is. Those endorphines do crazy things to me.

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

So I picked up a copy of the Fountainhead at the Barnes and Noble at Union Square. I was sitting in my friends room keeping her company, reading and eating cheesecake (delicious). She saw what I was reading and asked why I decided to pick it up.

I said something like "I heard it was really good - and it is- and I'm interested in her philosophy." It was perfectly true, but not even half of the real reason. It was a side reason, incidental, icing on the cake when I saw that book in the store and snatched it up.

When I was 16 or 17 I asked my guy friend how you could ever sleep with someone you hated. I was naive at the time and confused at the torrid love affair that was happening between two overly artistic, philosophically and appropriately angsty acquaintances who ostensibly hated each other. My friend turned to me, took me to a bookshelf - we were in the library - pulled down The Fountainhead and said that I should read this and I would understand. Years later I found the book in that bookstore and decided it was time.

I'll let you know if the book enlightens me. Either way, that was the real reason I was reading it. I have no idea why I didn't tell my girl friend that. Was it too personal? Maybe we just arne't that close and I didn't know it until then. Was I sounding the other answer off her? Did I not want to get into it? Is this caught up with me pretending to be other than I am - because I am now sure that I have been doing that?

I have a way of not telling a lie but not saying the thing that is most true. There are so many true things. No reason is ever the full reason. I am large, I contain multitudes. But why did I feel like I was cheating this time when I gave her that harmless answer?

She said that she thought that Ayn Rand's philosophy was impractical and selfish. "Well ... yes. "

Just more angsty food for thought.

P.S. Im going to the premiere of Hancock!

Angst and Friendship in the Brave New World

 "One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies." Brave New World,  Aldous Huxley

Had a massive mood-swing last night. It started out as such a mediocre night, then went to excellent in a heart beat. Then some time around midnight one of my friends was inexplicably angry with me about something - who knew what because the level of anger did not match up with the supposed trespass. I really need to get better at deflecting other people's moods. They end up being my unhappiness way too often. 

On the other hand, I have a good opportunity to avoid that particular set today - until they cool off I suppose - because to day is another friend's happy day:

It's her birthday! But it get's better! She recently found out that she got into Stanford,  Harvard and MIT for grad school. We, her friends, expected nothing less, but it is a great thing to have it all on paper... And so many choices!

Tonight we celebrate! I only hope I can work up the appropriate mood. 

Home at Last

Well, I am home, and I have slept off the fatigue. So tomorrow I will leave the house. Jamaica is such a gorgeous place. A cool 27 degrees celsius greeted me on touch down. God I'm spoilt. It's too bad the country is so politcally and economically messed up. Let's see what we can do about that shall we?

I just finished reading a Libba Bray book and its sequel Rebel Angels. My friend handed them off to me while I visited Smith on my last day in the States. The story is interesting, but they are truly poorly wirtten. It had promise, but it seemed like there was too much happening. She never spent the time to let the reader develop a good picture of what was going on. She never sparked my imagination. But I can never leave anything unfinished. I may just have to read that last of the trilogy.

I must stop my norturnal habits. I'm off to bed.