Everything about me
sends word of your myriad graces.
And yet everything hurts,
everything leaves me dying,
stammering on about I don’t know
what’s what.
— St. John of the Cross, translated from the Spanish by Paul Mariani
Month: September 2017
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Self decided to start reading story # 11 in Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes because a reader on Goodreads called it “boring.” She’s not reading in order. Which is the neat thing about short story collections: you can totally cherry-pick.
It is the most ordinary of Murakami’s seemingly ordinary stories, it’s about the perfect hamburger, what do you know, and it begins with one word:
GREETINGS
Any story that opens like that holds promise.
A few pages in, there is this:
- I realize now that the reality of things is not something you convey to people but something you make. It is this that gives birth to meaning.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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This week, let’s explore the interplay of texture and depth.
— Ben Huberman, The Daily Post
Self’s home is in Redwood City, California. She’s been exploring its nooks and crannies this summer.
She got this nifty display stand about 20 years ago, and every time she needs some validation, she looks at the stand, where most (if not all) of the journals that have published her work over the years are displayed.
On the lowest shelf are two programmes from the New Hampshire Symphony. The opera she collaborated on with Drew Hemenger got its world premiere in New Hampshire, March 2015:
And here’s the interior of a peanut butter & chocolate do-nut from an iconic doughnut shop in Westwood, which she visited in July:
Finally, a keepsake box filled with samples of son’s childhood artwork:
Layers of memory, layers of goodness.
Other examples of LAYERED from around WordPress:
- radhikasreflection
- findingenvirons
- LifeAsABeliever
- FrankJCasella’s Photoblog
- Light Words
- Ostendnomadography
- Candles on the Front Porch
- Layue’s everyday photo blog
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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After the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, people have taken to social media to identify or “dox” the participants in order to shame them. The criticism doesn’t just land at the feet of participants, but often extends to their employers, leading to lost jobs over the exposure. Some people see this practice as violating one’s freedom of speech. Yes, this country is based on freedom of speech, but not freedom of consequences. It’s not a slippery slope. People are marching to intimidate and oppress other Americans.
There’s a real difference between disagreeing over politics and hate speech. No one is obligated to walk on eggshells for those who call for oppression. If you’re concerned with privacy, don’t show up to a public protest spouting racism — and then be surprised if people want to identify you.
— Spencer Whitney, Assistant Editor, San Francisco Chronicle
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Share a snapshot that shows a sense of waiting.
— Cheri Lucas Rowlands, The Daily Post
First, self’s Philippine passport. She is a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States. This passport dates from the time when she first entered the U.S., to begin grad studies at Stanford:
Final picture: Last week, self was in New York for her nephew’s wedding. On September 11, she decided to go to the Whitney on Gansevoort Street, her favorite Manhattan museum. She started at the top floor (the Calders) and worked her way down.
On the top floor, there’s a restaurant with stunning views. She saw the Statue of Liberty:
Sept. 11, 2017: “Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . “ Immigrants. Self was an immigrant once.
Stay tuned.
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Self has no memory of reading any of the stories (except for the one about cooking spaghetti), how odd. If ever a book demanded close reading, it is this one. Each sentence has a precise and very unpredictable effect. For instance, one sentence can say, “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow” and the next sentence will be something like “So I settled on the couch to watch a game show.”
She is totally in awe of Murakami’s unwavering commitment to the absurd.
- I didn’t want to think about plaque on people’s teeth, and I especially didn’t want to hear or think about it while I was eating.
The next sentence is about how the narrator wishes she could just resume reading — of all things — Anna Karenina instead of listening to her husband.
Oh of course! Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train; is Murakami implying that the wife would throw herself in front of a train if she has to spend another minute listening to her husband talk about plaque removal?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Self has moved on from Everlark.
She is still part of the fan fiction universe, only she’s switched allegiances to a new ship, Gendrya.
She is in complete awe of those fan fiction authors who drop Game of Thrones place names (Dragonstone, King’s Landing, Westeros, Highgarden, Casterly Rock, Stormsend, Braavos, The Red Keep, Winterfell, Volantis) as casually as bon bons.
She’s actually attempted doing a one-shot, but her lack of cred is immediately apparent because she’s only read one of GRRM’s books.
She doesn’t like AU Gendrya, it just doesn’t go well with the Bastard identity and Faceless Assassin plot lines. In the meantime, she lurks.
The number of Gendrya fics are about half the number of Everlark fics. But there are new ones appearing every day, because the ending of GoT Season 7 was so inconclusive.
Which brings us to:
The Books section of the Wall Street Journal, 12 – 13 August, 2017.
In Black Ships Before Troy, Rosemary Sutcliff (a rock star in her field) re-tells the Iliad. Now, the 1993 book has been re-issued and so it is with great pleasure that self adds the book to her reading list. It begins:
- In the high and far-off days when men were heroes and walked with the gods, Peleus, king of the Myrmidons, took for his wife a sea-nymph called Thetis.
What. A. Fabulous. Opening. Sentence.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Story # 5 of The Elephant Vanishes: Sleep
(Murakami writes from a woman’s point of view in this one. Self found the effect a bit startling at first)
“I know why you’ve got so many patients,” I always say to him. “It’s because you’re such a good-looking guy.”
This is our little joke. He’s not good-looking at all. Actually, he’s kind of strange-looking. Even now I wonder why I married such a strange-looking man.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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Got a rejection from Oxford American today. Nevertheless.
Self has decided to submit a short story collection to a contest.
Story # 1: The Departure
The Situation: A mom says good-bye to her son, who’s on his way to a college on the coast. Not five minutes after she waves good-bye and re-enters her house, the world ends. The woman wakes up to find that the roof of her house has cracked wide open, and nothing’s working. She decides to check in with a neighbor across the street, who invites her to share some cake (Did self say yet that she writes dark fiction?)
They each took a chair and faced each other across the kitchen table, the cake between them. The cat was still on Julietta’s lap but seemed to show no interest in food. She simply lay there, as if comatose. Through Mrs. Bautista’s kitchen window, Julietta thought she saw wisps of clouds moving backwards. Far off, somewhere, she imagined a whole bevy of airplanes were getting ready to scramble.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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- This is my seventeenth straight day without sleep.
— Sleep, Story # 5 in The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami, translation by Jay Rubin
How many years ago did self first read this collection?
It left hardly any impression.
She loves it madly now.
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 