January 2012
19 posts
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I could tell you what the dark circles under my eyes mean, but words in real time spoken in real space to real people lost so much meaning when we stopped trusting each other so many years ago. The elimination of trust brought with it the elimination of confiding, conversing, confessing, and, over the years, the words written on the page, spoken through characters and about characters, became the...
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identified:
freja beha for free people’s 2012 february catalogue
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I love browsing and following blogs that feature personal photography, particularly analogue, because they make me think, Ah, so this is what the world looks like through someone else’s eyes.
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15 days late, 2011 in photographs [of the sky]
The sky is never the same, is always changing, follows its own moods. I find the sky to be God’s way of reminding us that He’s still around, that He’s still grander than anything man could ever design or build or create, that He’s faithful even when we are not. There’s such a grandiose beauty to the sky that man in his limitations could never even begin to...
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I make coffee on the false ideal that it’ll keep me awake and focused to do my work. I know it isn’t true; the effect of caffeine on me physically wore off long, long ago (it manifests itself from time to time in the form of headaches after a few weeks of intense coffee consumption, but even these have faded into nonexistence months ago); but I make myself coffee in the evenings...
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'the 59th bear', an excerpt
[…]
At that time I had not understood How the death hurtling to and fro Inside your head, had to alight somewhere And again somewhere, and had to be kept moving, And had to be rested Temporarily somewhere.
(Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters)
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'the badlands,' an excerpt
[…]
The canyons cooled. Indigo darkened, Oozing out of the earth like ectoplasm, A huge snake heaping out. ‘This is evil,’ You said. ‘This is real evil.’ Whatever it was, the whole landscape wore it Like a plated mask. ‘What is it?’ I kept saying. ‘What is it?’ As if that might force the whatever To materialize, maybe standing by our car,...
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'9 willow street', an excerpt
[…] We huddled. Me In my black sack striking sulphur matches To find the eyes of Jung’s nigredo. You In a paralysis of terror-flutters I hardly understood. I folded Black wings round you, wings of the blackness That enclosed me, rocking me, infantile, And enclosed you with me. And your heart Jumped at your ribs, you gasped for air. You grabbed for the world, For straws, for your...
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“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I...”
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
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2012
May the new year be rad and bring many blessings to you!
Personally, I’m not holding my breath; 2012 will be whatever it will be. Am I being cynical or philosophical?
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2011 in literary review
Most memorable: The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen; 1Q84, Haruki Murakami 2011, for me, was indubitably the year of Jonathan Franzen, launched with The Corrections, the first book I read in 2011 as well as the first Franzen I read. It took me about a week to complete — a week of doing the bare minimum of coursework and required school reading — and, by the end, I was drained and...
December 2011
29 posts
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“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been — cruel and false. Why did...”
– Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights
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Favourite female authors include the Brontë sisters, Sylvia Plath, Nicole Krauss. [Strongly] disliked female authors include Jane Austen (ugh) & Ayn Rand (double ugh). Do not like romances unless they’ve been touched by the gothic and are sweepingly epic à la Rebecca, and also don’t care for frou-frou, sentimental bullshit or short story collections or commercial/genre fiction. Not a...
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A friend asked the other day how I read: do I skip over words or read every single one? Upon first answer, I said I skipped because I had in younger years, but, upon closer thought, I realise I tend to linger over words unless I’m bored — the experience of reading is as much tied up in the experience of words as it is in the experience of worlds and characters and narratives.
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“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead,...”
– Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Swann’s Way
snowlatte asked: do you like freja with long hair or short hair?
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30 pages in
To Euginedes’ credit (or discredit — I suppose it depends on how you see it), The Marriage Plot thus far feels like I’m sitting in a lit class discussion (which was one of the reasons I initially didn’t want to read it). He captures the mood and feel so well that I’m sitting here steaming in vehement disagreement with some of these students and their takes on...
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“The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after...”
– Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
(What a pithy and lovely way to sum up the term 엄마 [umma]. 엄마 [umma] will always be 엄마 [umma]; as far as I know, 엄마 [umma] is invincible; and this is the point in the book that brought tears to my eyes and made me want to run home to give my own 엄마 a hug.
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“… a book suggests conversation: one person is speaking to another, and...”
– Teju Cole, Open City
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1Q84, thoughts
that melting heaviness that settles over you, your mind, your body once you finish a good book — 1Q84 was nothing i expected and more, an unsurprising reaction considering i had zero idea what the novel was about before i dove into it. i couldn’t explain it to you now, even after it’s been read, except that, at its heart, it’s a love story, a love story i could love...
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considering that proust is next on my reading...
“Thank you. But I think I have everything I need.”
“How about books and videos and the like?”
“I can’t think of anything I particularly want.”
“How about Proust’s In Search of Lost Time? If you’ve never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing.”
“Have you read it?”
“No, I’ve...
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역시.
Cold air leaks into my apartment through poorly insulated windows — constant shivering, constant cold, constant sniffling. This corner of the world was not built to withstand temperatures below 76 degrees Fahrenheit, and how wimpy and weak has that rendered us unfortunate residents!
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wow, talk about an error i keep making ...
RE: my literary wall of shame
I keep thinking Vonnegut wrote A Clockwork Orange, except that was Burgess. Why do I keep thinking Vonnegut wrote it?
misterchu asked: Yes on Sylvia. If you have not read Janet Malcolm's slim volume on her (and it all) you might find it worth your time. Be well. MC
Anonymous asked: What happened to all the scans on your LJ? ):
mauthor asked: Nice tumblr page. Are you on twitter? Are you on goodreads?
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Most times, when I see the world, I see a lot of what I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be that kind of writer. I don’t want to be that kind of student. I don’t want to be that kind of reader, that kind of friend, that kind of person. I don’t want to be. Is that just my way of seeing the world, or is there a dearth of worthy examples in the [in my] world?
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here there good-bye
Spent the day reading 1Q84 and randomly picked up The Bell Jar, skipped ahead to page 117, contemplated the poorly designed cover of my copy — in all honesty, for all my love for Sylvia Plath, I can’t say I hold all that much affinity for her work itself. The Bell Jar brings up sentiments similar to those I hold towards The Catcher in the Rye, except I wouldn’t sink The Bell Jar...
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my literary wall of shame:
Unread Authors:
Vladimir Nabokov: I dare say Nabokov is the one author I’m actually ashamed to admit I haven’t read [yet], partly because I’m convinced for some reason that I’ll love him. To be fair, I did start Lolita a while back, made some progress, but dropped it for some inexplicable reason,* intending, though, to pick it up again soon and make my way through his...
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“Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I...”
– Haruki Murakami, interviewed in The Guardian. (via robotnic
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“Even before having a daughter, years before in fact, I had always thought of my...”
– Ariel S. Winter, The Outlet, 2011 November 30, ‘Literary Artifacts: “This is a Free Book”’
November 2011
29 posts
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