Home
An Infinite Regress In the Eternal Return. [entries|friends|calendar]
The Word Made Flesh

[ website | Showing Love In the Only Quantifiable Manner Since 1872. ]
[ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ]
[ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

Of Course. [22 Nov 2009|09:47pm]
MS societies in Canada and the United States, however, have reacted far more cautiously to Dr. Zamboni's conclusion. “Many questions remain about how and when this phenomenon might play a role in nervous system damage seen in MS, and at the present time there is insufficient evidence to suggest that this phenomenon is the cause of MS,” said the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada.

The U.S. society goes further, discouraging patients from getting tested or seeking surgical treatment. Rather, it continues to promote drug treatments used to alleviate symptoms, which include corticosteroids, chemotherapy agents and pain medication.
post comment

O you seas of manifest destiny electrons burning mad rubber on the ash-faced streets of night! [22 Nov 2009|05:35pm]
Strom putting cigarettes out on his arm, head bobbing like a bird, talking nonsense about centipedes, musbe the Slav in him, a long history of ironwork in the Pitt filled him of pigskin and a map around pain-corner that and the madcrazy chemicals pumping through oxidized blood, waiting waiting waiting for food, eyeing cops and talking about having kids this isn’t what we had planned, and the spic who gave us the goods for a meal and a free ride starring at the two of us chameleonlike, waiting for intervention or tragedy, not accepting his part in all this.
post comment

[21 Nov 2009|05:53pm]
Longplayer is long.
post comment

Taino. [21 Nov 2009|04:50pm]
I just discovered that Junot FUCKING Diaz is a professor at MIT for their MFA writer's workshop.

I want in.

I never really cared that much about the idea of expressing the Latin-immigrant experience in the states, but there's something incredibly carefree, and for me, resonant about Diaz's style. Oscar's upbringing and life are so similar to my own, down to the mother, the nerdgeekery, and the obesity.

Talking to a friend the other night, I had a spontaneous revelation of sorts. I was trying to figure out what it was about my life in particular that separated me so distinctly from "meu povo". Both of my cousins that made it to America ended up as drop outs with kids, speaking Boston doggerel and hating their own kind. One became a drug dealer who went on to burn down a recording studio. The other, shit, a used car salesman. My sister. My sister is awesome, a great person, really, but uneducated, and a professional stay-at-home mother of three.

I was pretty much an alien in an alien country in an alien family. And then it came to me. I remembered hearing the story of Richard Wright trying to publish Black Boy, then titled American Hunger. The leader of the most powerful book club in America, not satisfied with forcing him to cut the entire third of the "memoir", wanted him to go back and at some point infuse the work with a sense of gratitude for American values of freedom, and the hard work of pro-civil rights white people everywhere. In essence, she wanted him to claim that he escaped the South because of the efforts of whites and the institutions they set up. Through correspondence, he continuously tried to explain that living as a poor black boy in the South, it had nothing to do with any of that. His escape, his education, came through books. In one of the letters he provided an incredibly cosmopolitan list of high literature that made him who he was.

I don't mean in any way to imply that my background is as dramatic, or that I'm fighting some kind of noble struggle, or even that I'm as smart and talented as Mr. Wright, but that in my turning to books as a reaction against the early racism I faced in America, starting at the age of seven, I was socialized by proxy. I didn't take on the worldviews and attitudes of my family; I digested what was predominantly the culture of white men. That's what separates me from the rest of my family, and from many Latinos living in America. Having left Brazil for the country that had supported our homegrown dictatorship; my mind was finally colonized, not with bullets, not with whips, but with words.


EDIT:

Just saw that the program is a one-year program with a focus on science writing. Shame. I'm not interested in one-year programs, and I'm definitely not interested in focusing on science writing. What is it with writers I love teaching at programs that don't interest me. Ha Jin, I'm looking you.
post comment

Cat Lady Needs the Bumpers. [21 Nov 2009|12:09pm]
Bowling night at work? I've never really understood the whole impulse to take my private life and just slambang that shit into my professional life; go out with my coworkers, get tore up, fuck a cougar or two, we'll all have a good laugh about it at the office over tepid coffee and spreadsheets. What gives? I'm sorry Institution of Work and Exertion, no, you cannot have my off time in an attempt to inspire, give, or receive my merriment. I have friends for that. Friends I met through less direct, coercive means, and through some abstract formula known only to the Great Magnet that allows for a veneer of choice.

Bowling night. Shit. I don't even wear the ridiculous (some cases florid, all cases cheap) merchandise you give us to express the hollowness of your appreciation. And you think I'm going to show up to talk to uninteresting, broken people over a game only fat men call a sport?

No thanks. There are like five Dan Brown novels I've never ever read. I have to get to those. Before the rapture. I'm busy, you know?


(I guess if you worked in some really cool place, like CERN, or inside the space shuttle, or a pirate ship, maybe then you'd really get along with everybody. Pirate bowling, I might be down for that.)
1 comment|post comment

Stolen from [info]literaryquotes. [21 Nov 2009|09:48am]
"Everyone one of us is losing something precious to us," he says after the phone stops ringing. "Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."

- Kafka on the Shore
post comment

[21 Nov 2009|07:34am]
Billy Bragg is pretty awesome.

As is this guy:



Protesters were setting off fire alarms, so he just started teaching his class on the walls of the building.
4 comments|post comment

Blunderbuss, or How I Joined the Philo Farnsworth Fan Club. [20 Nov 2009|04:06am]
The girl with the brass neck had an open call and seeing as I have a face made for radio paired with a voice for ever-silent text, I dropped nonsensical words and was awarded valuable non-gold-backed questions. In the spirit of jabbing Chronos in his bastard eyes, lay down a track of "I beseech you, sidelong glance," in the comment section of this waste bin to be re-gifted in kind.

1. Are you still considering a brief stint in the armed services?

Yes. I'm working on losing more weight. Probably another thirty pounds. This wait will close the Air Force to me, but I'll likely proceed with joining the Navy. I'm currently eying Arts & Photography (but maybe News & Media). Originally I flirted with the practical, like doing Nuclear Medicine or MRI Technologist through the Air Force, but every time I try to fight against my childish desire to write, I end up losing. Hopefully I'll see some of the world, finish out my undergraduate, maybe complete a novel, and then apply to MFA programs upon completing the terms of my contract. Ideally, that's how it'll work anyway. Looking beyond that, I'd still like to move to Canada.


2. How many languages do you know?

Know well, two. English (second language) and Portuguese (first). I can read, and understand a moderate amount of Spanish, and could do a lot better at it if I just sat down and dedicated some time to it. I can understand and read the odd bit of French and Italian. I do this mostly through the undefinable powers of the Holy Spirit (and the force that Latin exerts on all those languages).


3. Do you prefer Dostoevsky to George Eliot all of time, or just most of the time?

Pretty much all the time. I didn't start reading good literature until I was getting along in years. Dostoevsky came to me at just the right time to make powerful, lasting impression. It's probably not something to be admitted, but I identify too much with Dostoevsky characters (the angel Nabokov smirks, emanating contempt down upon me from high literary heaven) and their absurd cockroach flaws. Like a goth kid finding the right band, I felt that this fucked-up Christian gambler who made it through a mock-execution really got me. If I were to compare George Eliot to a different but still much beloved Russian, it'd probably be the wonderful Count Tolstoy.


4. Are the Whitest Kids U Know already over, what with the poor reviews of their sophomore season and the debacle of Miss March?

Despite really enjoying quite a few of their sketches, the dilettante in me exerts even more pull in this sphere, leaving me incapable of answering any of that.


5. In the vein of a childish game I love to play elsewhere ("This or That"): Ontario or British Columbia?

I really don't know! I'd be perfectly happy living in either. Culturally, Toronto* probably has more to offer, but British Columbia has the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Just yesterday [info]nom_de_grr and I were talking about rushing up through the old whiskey roads and holding Canada hostage. This is a really hard question, but in the spirit of the game, it'd be unfair not to choose. I'm going to say British Columbia. I'd love to go to the writing program at UBC if I could afford it.


*I know there's more to Ontario than Toronto. Hamilton by itself is the size of Boston, but we never hear anything of humble Hamilton. But for now, when I consider Canada, I'm always pitting cities against one another, and the two cities are pretty much always Vancouver v. Toronto -- two cities enter, only one will leave.

4 comments|post comment

[18 Nov 2009|01:38pm]
FROM:

Pfo. K. Vonnegut, Jr.,
12102964 U. S. Army.

TO:

Kurt Vonnegut,
Williams Creek,
Indianapolis, Indiana.

Dear people:

I'm told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than "missing in action." Chances are that you also failed to receive any of the letters I wrote from Germany. That leaves me a lot of explaining to do -- in precis:

I've been a prisoner of war since December 19th, 1944, when our division was cut to ribbons by Hitler's last desperate thrust through Luxemburg and Belgium. Seven Fanatical Panzer Divisions hit us and cut us off from the rest of Hodges' First Army. The other American Divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks: Our ammunition, food and medical supplies gave out and our casualties out-numbered those who could still fight - so we gave up. The 106th got a Presidential Citation and some British Decoration from Montgomery for it, I'm told, but I'll be damned if it was worth it. I was one of the few who weren't wounded. For that much thank God.

Well, the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep to Limberg, a distance of about sixty miles, I think, where we were loaded and locked up, sixty men to each small, unventilated, unheated box car. There were no sanitary accommodations -- the floors were covered with fresh cow dung. There wasn't room for all of us to lie down. Half slept while the other half stood. We spent several days, including Christmas, on that Limberg siding. On Christmas eve the Royal Air Force bombed and strafed our unmarked train. They killed about one-hundred-and-fifty of us. We got a little water Christmas Day and moved slowly across Germany to a large P.O.W. Camp in Muhlburg, South of Berlin. We were released from the box cars on New Year's Day. The Germans herded us through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't.

Others get killed, Vonnegut does not. )
post comment

American Apotheosis, [17 Nov 2009|04:00pm]
post comment

[15 Nov 2009|08:53pm]
This, in the end, will stop nothing.

Technology is an unstoppable force. Where can anyone draw the line? It's the only God we know, and as with any other god, It is both beautiful and monstrous. We fashioned It from our fears, the label of God, we will apply retroactively. Asimov, for his part, called it as he saw it.
post comment

The Body Electrified [15 Nov 2009|07:53pm]
In discussing O'Connor's Wise Blood with her class, Amy Hungerford separates the depiction of body, specifically the female body as being a thing all parts and no whole, from a Christian framework and places it within a feminist one. I think this is a grave mistake. They are related, but the feminist view needs to be rooted within the staunch Catholicism that O'Connor espoused. This depiction of grotesqueness, as something which causes aversion, that makes us want to shrink away, that in certain cases conjures the images of parts on the floor of butcher shop or a murder scene is a sort of warning about sexual power. Sexual power, within the context of art, culture and religion, is something that has historically been almost exclusively female. It's why in Christian Evangelical revival communities, women wear shapeless sacks, or why Muslim women cover themselves up -- the power of their figure to excite is something both selfishly cherished (to be shared only with the husband) and something to be feared, because it leads down the devil's path. A women doesn't lead an army, but lust can make a general do crazy fucking things. So we're getting a viewpoint of the body, as say, Pope Innocent III would have us view it:

Man was formed of dust, slime, and ashes: what is even more vile, of the filthiest seed. He was conceived from the itch of the flesh, in the heat of passion and the stench of lust, and worst yet, with the stain of sin. He was born to toil, dread, and trouble; and more wretched still, was born only to die. He commits depraved acts by which he offends God, his neighbor, and himself; shameful acts by which he defiles his name, his person, and his conscience; and vain acts by which he ignores all things important, useful, and necessary. He will become fuel for those fires which are forever hot and burn forever bright; food for the worm which forever nibbles and digests; a mass of rottenness which will forever stink and reek...

----------

Man is conceived of blood made rotten by the heat of lust; and in the end worms, like mourners, stand about his corpse. In life he produced lice and tapeworms; in death he will produce worms and flies. In life he produced dung and vomit; in death he produces rottenness and stench. In life he fattened one man; in death he fattens a multitude of worms. What then is more foul than a human corpse? What is more horrible than a dead man? He whose embrace was pure delight in life will be a gruesome sight in death.

Of what advantage, then, are riches, food, and honors? For riches will not free us from death, neither food protect us from the worm nor honors from the stench. that man who but now sat in glory upon the throne is now looked down on in the grave; the dandy who once glittered in his palace lies now naked and vile in his tomb; and he who supped once on delicacies in his hall is now in his sepulcher food for worms...


This, I think, is how we should look at O'Connor's work, and not, at least primarily, through the lens of myriad ritual and abuses to which southern women had to subject themselves to in order to attain the cultural trappings of beauty.

I think Hungerford gets back on track when she starts talking about O'Connor's fight with lupus, and the distortion of her own body.

Blah blah blah.

If that made any sense, I'll give myself a star sticker later.
post comment

Sacred Heart, Wise Blood [15 Nov 2009|06:53pm]
The manifold narrative of our lives isn't so much composed of threads but long, perilous branches spiraling incomprehensibly helix-like, narrowing here, widening there, forcing us into uncomfortable, and more importantly, uncontrollable situations.

I'm twenty-seven, older now than I was yesterday, and more ignorant yet than when I was five. I think I understood more then, and there certainly was a hell of a lot more magic in the world. That magic's now governed over by some shadow council of unseen mages, for I still understand little, and have no one to petition for the redress of grievances other than the impotent core of some dimly seen and only half-asserted self.

But I guess there's always the Ellsworth philosophy: Here I am, beholden to no human cocksucker.

Had the single most disturbed night of sleep in ages. Going mad at work. Re-reading old entries from a year ago. Here's one.

Also: Modern American Novel.
4 comments|post comment

Chi-City Christmas Giveaway! [15 Nov 2009|11:59am]
4 comments|post comment

Planetwalker [15 Nov 2009|09:19am]
post comment

[15 Nov 2009|08:20am]
post comment

The word crosswise has a cameo. [14 Nov 2009|10:58am]
Tired at work. Feel really out of it. Trouble focusing, definitely not at the top of my game. But, in the intermezzos of boredom, I occasionally will shit something out, for no reason other than a shameful love for an ignorant internal voice:

... ... ... --- . )

(Really thrown together, so, if I feel like it in a few minutes, it'll probably change, a lot, become unrecognizable, or, I'll lock it up in a basement like an unwanted child and starve it of attention, affection, and the faculty of human speech, until its a full grown mockery of something that passes for human.)
post comment

Brazen Copyright Violations. [14 Nov 2009|07:43am]
The other day [info]toddzombie recommended the David Young translation of the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke. I'm sure most of it is being lost on my excessively dull mind, but I'll share the bits of it that strike me. The first I'll share (Elegy #10) is my favorite thus far (though it is only so by a very slim margin when compared to certain segments of the other elegies.)

Pardon, but there's no way for me to retain the form of the poem here, so just having the line breaks will have to do. I've also added an extra break between the periods, because without the format, and without breaks, it'd be a gigantic block of texts that would be much harder on the eyes.

Duino Elegy #10 )
3 comments|post comment

Pomplamoose [14 Nov 2009|06:11am]


Nature Boy.
post comment

Mouse, Ever Popular Cat Drama. [14 Nov 2009|12:25am]
post comment

navigation
[ viewing | most recent entries ]
[ go | earlier ]