Scale 3: Bird, Deck, Sunflower

A baby in a King Cake inspired this week’s WordPress Daily Photo Challenge: SCALE. Self finds the pictures that accompany the prompt so amusing!

Not sure whether self’s own pictures project SCALE exactly. But anyhoo.

Below: the bird is larger than the silhouette of San Francisco

The Seagull: Port of Richmond, 12 February 2015

Below: a deck jutting into the bay dwarfs the buildings across the bay.

Port of Richmond: Wednesday (Feb. 11, 2015)

And finally, this is a bit of a visual joke: the sunflower is easily the largest plant in the garden in front of the Mendocino Art Center.

Giant Sunflower (made out of metal): Mendocino Art Center

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Twitter-verse

Self gains a reader (or two) and she gets all excited.

She tries to second-guess. What witticisms can she come up with on Twitter? So that her followers are suitably entertained?

Then she loses followers.

After a while, self gives up on trying to be part of a trend. She just writes whatever. Then, the number of followers creeps up.

Self is merely making an observation.

Stay tuned.

2666: “Dream-Like, Epic, Worldly” Says a Reader on Amazon

p. 11 of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño:  “The three met again at a German-language literature colloquium . . . ”

Self is feeling restless. At first she wasn’t sure if she’d wandered into the right novel. Why oh why are we following a bunch of academics as they attend one conference after another and expound on their love of the artist Archimboldi?

Hurry up! She doesn’t have all day!

At first she was rather intrigued by the fact that post-humously famous Bolaño chose to open a 900-page novel with a minute dissection of academics who keep bumping into each other at conferences. Way to go, Bolaño! Self found the tone sly, rather dryly humorous.

But after 11 pages, the novel’s action hasn’t moved forward an inch. We are still in the same milieu: the academic conference (handled very well, but still. There is a reason people refer to universities as ivory towers) And there are 890 more pages to go.

The next book on her reading list is Denis Johnson’s

“American Sniper”

Just saw American Sniper.

You know what? Just go ahead and nominate everybody: Bradley, Clint, even Sienna. Particularly Sienna. Honest, self did not recognize her at all. In the movie she’s thin and colt-ish and might even be a stand-in for Michelle Monaghan. It’s the best self has ever seen her.

SPOILER ALERT!

Oh Clint. She hates your movies generally. They’ve been mostly “message” movies, in the past decade. This one was good, though. She’s so glad the movie included the manner of Kyle’s eventual demise. Mother of all ironies.

Self’s favorite line in the movie was uttered by a bit actor (The same tall dude who’s a colleague of Simon Baker in The Mentalist, the one who’s having a relationship with the sexy redhead. For the life of her, self can’t remember his name). Here’s the line (There is profanity — ha!)

Right side. Damn. Legend. FUCK.

That’s because Kyle just took out an enemy sniper and gave away the SEAL’s position, and the back-up units are still 20 minutes away. Can you imagine if the commander had instead said something like:

You gave away our position, meathead!

or

You’re going to be court-martialed for this! I don’t care if you’re a so-called ‘legend’.

or

You went against a direct order! You think you have all the answers?

And who is that guy who plays a buddy of Kyle’s in the SEAL unit? With his helmet on, he’s a dead ringer for a young Peter Sarsgaard. With his helmet off, not so much. But self loved his insouciant affect.

And Bradley. What can self say? He deserved that Oscar nomination, man! Self was skeptical when it was first announced he’d be playing the lead role, but — that focus! That intensity! That reluctance to “emote”!

She doesn’t have a TV in Mendocino. Alas, she wishes she could camp out in someone’s living room for the night.

BTW, self caught the preview for Mad Max: Fury Road. Hardy, Theron, Hoult. Oh, self can hardly wait.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Scale 2: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

WordPress Daily Post Photo Challenge:  SCALE

“This week, play with scale. Insert something into a scene to highlight size: your two-year-old in a field of flowers. A dime next to a huge cinnamon roll you picked up at the bakery.”

First, Mendocino houses, the sky at sunset:

Sunset, Little Lake Street, Mendocino

Flowers in the Redwood City Farmers Market:

Flower Stand, Redwood City Farmers Market (The vendor’s stall is that white tent behind the flowers)

Ahmanson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art:

“Smoke” by Tony Smith, in the lobby of the Ahmanson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Heartbreaking: Colm Toibin

Self is just a few pages from the end of Brooklyn.  This is truly a great novel. Self’s heart aches for Eilis, the young Irish woman whose story this is.

SPOILER ALERT

She’s emigrated to New York but returns to Ireland for the funeral of her sister, who died suddenly of a heart condition. Apparently, the world is such a small place. Her doings in Brooklyn have already circulated in the Irish town she is from, chief among which is the fact that she’s begun dating an Italian American.

“Oh, don’t try and fool me!” Miss Kelly said. “You can fool most people, but you can’t fool me.”

“I am sure I would not like to fool anyone,” Eilis said.

“Is that right, Miss Lacey? If that’s what your name is now.

“What do you mean?”

“She told me the whole thing. The world, as the man says, is a very small place.”

Eilis, who up to then had been vaccilating about whether to return to New York, and who was starting to see a local man, immediately books passage and starts packing (and in the meantime, self’s heart is breaking into a million little pieces).

A few times after the hours that followed she was tempted to carry up a tray with tea and biscuits or sandwiches to her mother; her mother’s door remained closed and there was not a sound from the room.

Apparently, Eilis’s mother, too, had heard.

Naturally, Eilis is shunned by everyone.  Self quite understands why Eilis can no longer stay in Ireland, but feels terrible on her behalf.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

Scale: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

Self finds this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge — SCALE — very interesting.

She thinks the theme has a lot to do with surprise and contrast. She finds the photograph accompanying the prompt (by Michelle W.) very amusing.

The instructions are to “share a photograph that highlights a size relationship.”

Here are her takes on the theme:

A miniature lamp enlarged self’s childhood imagination (and probably went a long way in determining what she would eventually become: a writer)

Self has had this lamp since she was three or four: a present from her parents. She has it with her in Mendocino, a little talisman. Also, an indication of what work she hopes to do here: an exploration of myth and legends and first life.

Her second trip to Elk was when she finally got to appreciate the view (On her first trip, she was too nervous trying to get out of the way of trucks, buses, etc that all seemed to be crawling up her bumper). Self took this photo from Cottage # 3 behind The Griffin House Inn. A view isn’t a view without something to lend it a sense of scale, and here self used the deck.

Elk, California: View from the Back of The Griffin House Inn

En route to Chicago, last fall

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

How Self Got to Fort Bragg to Watch “Jupiter Ascending” in the Middle of a Huge Storm

The storm hit in the wee hours. Self knows because she’s been up since 4 a.m. The wind was howling.

Then there were these periodic siren blasts.

What does that mean?

At about 4 p.m., self began having major claustrophobia FEELZ. She felt that if she did not get out of the apartment for some fresh air, she would

“Rapunzel”: in The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Edited by Maria Tatar

This fairy tale has always fascinated self because of: the tower; the maiden with the plait of hair; a wife’s insatiable cravings; and a devoted husband who, in attempting to satisfy his wife, brings down ruin upon his family.

In Tatar’s de-construction, the opening sentence — “Once upon a time there lived a man and a woman” — indicates “that the story will center on procreation.” (Always look for the Freudian meanings in fairy tales!)

An excerpt:

As night was falling, he climbed over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily pulled up a handful of rapunzel, and brought it back to his wife. She made a salad out of it right away and devoured it with a ravenous appetite. The rapunzel tasted so good, so very good, that the next day her craving for it increased threefold. The only way the man could settle his wife down was to go back to the garden for more.

As night was falling, he returned, but after he climbed over the wall, he had an awful fright, for there was the enchantress, standing right in front of him.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Depth 5: About Self’s Attachment to Books

Books, for self, are the ultimate uncharted territory.

The depth of her love for books knows no bounds.

She was running low on her copies of Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila and Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas, but her publisher sent a box of those to Mendocino last week and they arrived safely.

Two other books: Mayor of the Roses and The Lost Language, are in Gallery Bookshop on Main Street. Those copies she signed.

Self ordered more copies of her books. They arrived from the publisher last week.

Gallery Bookshop, Main Street, Mendocino: A shelf in the science fiction section (BATTLE ROYALE meets LORD OF THE RINGS)

Gallery Bookshop, Main Street, Mendocino

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.