Quotes from Recent Reading that I love

This quote which is from Pierre Bourdieu's Logic of Practice, is one I wish I had committed to memory for the past 4 years. I first read it my second year of undergrad when I was 19. Bourdieu's influence on me I knew had been strong, but being such a dense work, I had never taken the time to go back and re-read the work once I had matured. Obviously, it would've been helpful in many of my discussions with colleagues over my uneasiness with "Science".

In context of a discussion about Structural Anthropology in a section entitled "Objectification objectified" Bourdieu quotes a passage from Wittgenstein (one of my faves!) and follows the passage with this:

"To slip from regularity, i.e. from what recurs with a certain statistically measurable frequency and from the formula which describes it, to a consciously laid down and consciously respected ruling (reglement), or to unconscious regulating by a mysterious cerebral or social mechanism, are the two commonest ways of sliding from the model of reality to the reality of the model."

While the mathematician may have greater awareness of the fallibility of her models, those in general who conduct themselves in the service of Science, I would argue fall prey to Bourdieu's common slide.

and on the importance of historical action: "To make transcendent entities, which are to practices as essence to existence, out of the constructions that science resorts to in order to give an account of the structure and meaningful products of the accumulation of innumerable historical actions, is to reduce history to a 'process without a subject', simply replacing the 'creative subject' of subjectivism with an automaton driven by the dead laws of a history of nature."

Bourdieu puts a final nail into the coffin of objectivity as rule.

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"It is necessary to reverse the common opinion and acknowledge that it is not the harshness of a situation or the sufferings it imposes that lead people to conceive of another state of affairs in which things would be better for everybody. It is on the day that we are able to conceive of another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our suffering and we decide that they are unbearable." - Jean-Paul Sartre

Subjectivist!

"The fact remains that one cannot rationally pursue the project of founding belief on a rational decision without being led to ask reason to collaborate in its own annihilation in belief, a 'disavowal of reason' that is supremely 'in accordance with reason'. To move from the decision to believe, which reason can induce, to a durable belief that can withstand the intermittences of consciousness and will, one has to invoke other powers than those of reason." -Bourdieu pg 48

Prop 8 is a traveling show: Ref-71 in Washington State

A great quote to remember as we approach November in Washington State:

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

-attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller

The Energy Crisis and Seven Year Olds

While my sister read her new library book, I came across an article in the Independent about the oil crisis. When she asked what I was reading I said "A scary article about oil".

She laughed and asked how oil could be scary. I told her that everything we do depends on oil and that we're running out.

Can't we make more?

Well, that's the problem Lilly, we can't make more, we have to find it.

Why doesn't God just put more in the world?

I don't think God's going to do that.

Why? He doesn't want to help his people?

....

We're bad people.

Yeah, Lil' we are.

-- we then spent 20 minutes talking about how all sorts of everyday things use oil. --

There are some people who are trying very hard to think of ways to make things without oil.

Do sleighs use oil? Like Santa's?

Well, no I don't think so, Reindeers pull that sleigh.

What about the toys?

I think the Elves make the toys and they use their hands so, I think the toys don't use oil.

What about computers?

Computers use a lot of oil.

Well, I got a computer from Santa.

....I think Santa bought that computer, Elves didn't make it.

Eighth Grade Sentence Diagrams where are you?!

new challenge:

teaching sentence structure to a 7 year old.

and an old maxim that came unbidden to my lips from my past: Answer questions in complete sentences.

Conversations with a Seven Year Old

"Lilly, I want you to practice more breathing while you swim. Pull your head up and take a breath in between some strokes."

"No, I don't want to. Maybe at the end of the summer."

"Well I think you're capable now. Let's just try it a little bit at a time."

~~10 minutes pass~~

"Why do people need air?"

"Well there is an element in air called Oxygen that our cells need to do their jobs."

"But why do we need it? Why do people have to go around breathing? Why can't they just not breathe?

"Well, when we get home, let's get out your giant sketchbook and we'll draw a story telling why we need air."

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A common phrase I hear: out of frustration "Why did mom have to bore you?!"

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"Are you glad you don't have a sister who likes Jonas [brothers]?"

"Why would I be glad you don't like Jonas?"

"If I liked Jonas, would you think it was bad?"

"I'd be upset if you spent a lot of time watching it and wanted to be like them."

"Well I don't like Jonas."

"Why?"

"Because their show is just weird. I don't like them."

Reform Liberal Arts Education

oh the last post was a reaction to reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore's Dilemma.

so F-ing stupid, to listen to food scientists, and nutritionists and all the idiot "experts" literally piece by piece try to retell us what for centuries we've already known and known better. if only we gave any credit to things such as story, and myth, and culture, and convention, and freaking intuition.

We are NOT stupid creatures. We already know how to live in this world. Grow up science and stop being so dang angsty.

plus, progress is not only achievable by science. so don't go accusing me of extreme conservatism.

Sometimes I can't believe how mad I am at Science.

as a kid i remember being so excited and curious and fascinated by science. it taught me about the world, and all the amazing things within it. i had this large picture book of earth science teaching me about rocks and how they were formed, and i took chemistry that taught me why certain things reacted the way they did and it was all magical and amazing.

but then i grew up.

i often feel as though people involved with science, turned on by science, passionate about science are stuck in a twilight zone teenage adolescence.

or perhaps i just relate it to my own life and then pass judgment. I grew up with religious education too. And it was boring, and had nothing to offer me on how I should live my life even though that was its express purpose. The metaphysics of religion seemed hopelessly out of touch (although it was Catholicism *wink*). Moralizing about this and that and generally just blabber.

but then i grew up.

I'm not saying I'm reverting to Catholicism and I'm not saying I'd never listen/trust/or become fascinated by science. But I feel as though I learned the limits of both science and religion. And by religion I mean so many many things. Plus, I don't want this to be a science vs. religion discussion because who gives a shit. (about that debate)

"Religion" for me changed when i went to college. i continue to use the word religion because religion for me has become a clear embodiment or institutionalization or way of communicating all that I associate with the word which could be communicated via these words: culture, history, myth, story, tradition, ethics. In a certain sense, "religion" for me changed to include "humanities" in college. The whole chunk of academia seemed appropriately "religious" hence, my leaning toward and eventual unbridled passion for Religious Studies at Pomona College.

And so, as I continued to learn via science in my courses along that route, and now after college continue to encounter in reading books written in, or criticizing against the scientific paradigm that rules the West, I am becoming increasingly annoyed at the adolescence of science.

Reading science stumble forth in its explanation of the world around us, and reading the history of science in its quest, it no longer has anything to offer me in how to live my life. How quaint science is.

How I live my life comes from culture, tradition, ethics, story, myth, and religion. These explain the world to me in a sense that is relevant. (we also see more and more 'hard science' disciplines growing offshoots prefaced by the word "applied" my reaction: yeah, no shit) what is relevant to living my life comes not from science but from humanities.

Aggravated by the ills science has caused (correction: people fighting under the banner of science), I get all worked up in a huffy and can't stand to have anyone operate under that idiotic ideology. And then, I hear my opponents decrying the ills of religion! How ghastly the crimes of religion! So then it hits me: science, ideology, group of people fanatically although disinterestedly following a pattern of life that sometimes is beautiful sometimes wreaks destruction, really means. Science is made up. And is just like the humanities and there's no dichotomy and to think that Science has any superiority to comparative literature or anything else is just bogus and I can spend all my time and talent decrying an ideology I think is dangerous and manipulative.

And so continues the process of demantling science's ideological remains from my mind.

A List of Things I like (not all inclusive)

thinking about things I like, sitting in the spring sun.

-fingernails clink on fired ceramic
-bookcases and bookends
-reflections in lukewarm coffee
-a well-tailored pant
-yellow lamp light
-succulents
-water in wine bottles
-bitterness and sweetness (dark chocolate, coffee with berries, campari and cake)
-tile
-a nice heavy combed wool blanket
-a good tan
and an unexpected phone call.









spring is coming.

so it's been a while again. its amazing how time passes by. I still feel like it's May. Seattle got slammed with snow leading up to Christmas and it would be difficult to confuse December with May now, but for some reason I never moved past May.

The months slip by and I can't really see anything that would upset this process, time that is. I had always thought of the phrase "Time is on my side" as simply an artful way of saying you've got loads of free time, but I understand it in a new light when i feel as though Time is so adversarial and not in a battle to accomplish errands, but Time as a personal attack. An oppression of monotony and immovable force. Even something as "momentous" as the holidays, rolled over and past me with little effect.

Across my street a team of 3 utitlity workers with the aid of a large truck are putting up a new ?telephone? (i suppose there are multiple technologies beside telephone these days) pole. It makes me think of society at large, but that's nothing new. Sometimes I think Henry Ford and Industry are some of the worst things in the world. I just don't like how specialized everything's become. Ohp, there's 4, one was operating the truck. i think you can pull off cities without industry.

i have nothing more. i'm not in the mood.

No no no!

I don't want to be done. I just suck at discipline right now.

A good friend of mine made a comment the other day that stuck with me as another one of those "ah ha" moments of struggling with new found adulthood. I had been doing what I often do: ranting and complaining about things I just never really do anything about. The realization was that many of the issues of the past year that we've been struggling with, things we've felt to be personal crises are really just things that normally occur all the time. Which is perhaps relieving? but also really scary. How unprepared are we? I know that's all very vague but I didn't want to get to into it.

What I did want to write about was this scene that recently struck me. I had the opportunity to spend an extended weekend in Laguna Beach. And so I did.



The late winter sun threw long rays against the sky and the hills even though it remained high and proud in the sky. and I sat in my chair. The young eucalyptus outside the window tossed it's thin locks of leaves from one side to the other like a young woman behaving with planned carelessness. and I rocked in my chair. The edges of the window, trees, sky and my face blushed with a light pink. The sun slowly sank, inching it's way behind the house in front of me. The wind continued to blow it's cool breath on the warm hills. The air was dry. Winter in the south. I hugged my knees tighter. My face creased into a smile as the young eucalyptus with a flippant toss of it's highest branches began to shudder and shake with indignation. The Sun was slowly leaving her and the scene was turning dark. I sat in my chair. I caressed the tree with my water tinged eyes, I loved the tree. But calm didn't come to those beautiful branches. The light pink that had once graced our group now turned to a darker angrier red. i couldn't help but laugh at the poor eucalyptus' futility. The tantrum slowly ceased and became rhythmic dancing sobs. The thin long leaves brushing across large swaths of reddish purple sky. And before I knew it, my beautiful tree became nothing but a silent beautiful silhouette. And when I heard my name called, my attention broke and I got out of my chair.

i enjoy harvest moons.

i also enjoy campari.

yes. i'm still here. barely. but i've been feeling more motivated lately. so perhaps one of these days I'll actually post something.

i'm amazed. living alone, at the amount of mess a single person can make. but at the same time. making pancakes at 3 in the afternoon on a Thursday is precisely the reason i live alone. Not that one couldn't do that with roommates. but it makes more sense alone.

but then there're the nights when i sit and stare at the wall, the ice cubes slowly melting in my jar, and i wish it would just talk to me. that'd be nice. i suppose that's why they invented TV.

autumn. it's a good time. too short, as a customer pointed out the other day. yes, i said, winter always comes too quickly and lingers too long.

a random couplet i wrote

yes. exactly indeed it's true
just distractedly misconstrue

The coffee isn't even bitter...

So i said the drought was over and then another week goes by. Heeh heeh. A thought just occurred to me and interrupted me. I'm thinking about it because my wireless speakers are cutting in and out from the music i'm listening to over my laptop. It's annoying the hell out of me. Well so I'm getting to the point of wanting to plug the speakers directly into my laptop, so as to eradicate the skipping. But then, I realized that the speakers would be right in front of me. and what I enjoy, what I think sets the mood about listening to the music over the louder speakers is precisely that they are not by my laptop. They're in the other room. And music coming from another room sounds fantastic and great and I love that. And then I thought, why do we obsess over entertainment systems/houses that put speakers in every room? No. Put speakers in a few places but then let the music flow through the place and listen to it from another room. It's great.

Anyway, so it's been awhile and i'm guilty. But to be slightly fair to myself I came down with a viral infection (good sign) that knocked me out for the better part of a week (thursday to tuesday). Why is a viral infection a good sign might you ask? Well, I always get sick when I've let go in a vague general personal life sense. I'm sure other people are like this too, you get sick on holiday or right after school lets out or whatnot, it's the i'm stressed i'm stressed i'm stressed ok it's all over and now i'm sick. Well it was one of those things I think. And now finally, I'm getting over being sick. So hopefully this battered caterpillar is on his way to being on kick ass moth (do moths metamorphosize?) to use a heart warming and long cherished metaphor.

I think it's fun that this blog is over a year old. Because, it's fun to remember back, and read what I was posting today a year ago. So many changes in a year...so many. And even in the past 7 days a fair amounnt of change has occurred. Well maybe not visibly so. But I think it has.

So here, on this cold, blustery grey wet rainy summer day in Seattle, I've committed a year of my life. (i'm already close to six months in, but another 12 at least). I signed a lease to a wonderful studio apartment. It's something I'm unbelievably excited about. Hence the above photo. I'm sitting here staring out at the grey in a half-moved out apartment (doesn't living in a half moved out place suck? a friend of mine asked me yesterday). I hope that this marks a departure from my life of the past six months. Head in the sand would be an apt description of this past half year.

So I've received some virulent messages about my slacking on the blog and I appreciate it so much. because sometimes i need external motivation.

My new place is equidistant a stone's throw from a park and a liquor store. I don't think it could be more perfect. And hopefully I'll begin to write more. So I guess this post is more of an update post and not so much a whatever else i write here. But it's good to have some fresh air in one's life.

I read this new fantastic book recommended to me by a very well trusted source. So, I'm not surprised it was fanastic. It was the English translation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It's a series of short descriptions of various fictitious cities. it's one of those books where you got, "Oh! Damn!" because it's this brilliant book, that's written brilliantly, with brilliant ideas, but is also sort of ingenious where you go "Oh! Shit! I could've written this" well that's how I felt about Cities. It's fantastic check it out. Thanks Meg!

I wrote this on an altogether different summer day. And with full intention of continuing it, but perhaps I"ll post it here now. and write more on it later.

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The music moves slowly. With the fan. And the air. Languidly on a summer night that stretched out lazily across the city. But I see none of it now. In a small room. With no windows and only one door. A small fan hums consistently, while I hum softly along in short bars to the crooning low female voice. The sweat slowly gluing my bare thighs to the down. Too heavy for this heat. The laptop adding its heat. But at this temperature, knowing the futility of hoping for coolness, I am careless about everything. I am looking through the silhouette of my toes at the candle across the room. It’s soft glow illuminating my make shift bookshelf (the floor) and spine after spine of countless (54) texts to be read another countless times. The soft scent from the candle reawakening it’s fallen brethren in my sheets, the clothes, the books and the walls.

The music pauses in between songs and the droning of the fan continues solo. My cellphone sits silently at my side. An odd Friday night to say the least. I haven’t had one like this in the longest time, which is a phrase people utter when they’re too lazy to search their memory. And on a night like this, I am certainly too lazy to search for a memory that probably doesn’t exist. I don’t have any food in the pantry to eat raw, and the thought of turning on a stove in this heat is enough to keep me put and my tummy lightly complaining. Funny though, how some memories come to you without any searching at all. I think I read that somewhere. (another phrase people use when they’re too lazy to recall). Watching the tiny flashes from the city’s spire across a surrealist Northwest sky at dusk, I couldn’t help but think of Murakami and his memory. Or at least his protagonist’s memories. He captures it so well, but then again, plane’s have always been great places to get a good view. The memory of leaving comes to me again. By leaving, of course, I mean a year ago almost to the date. When, as a 22 year old I left my mother for the first real time. I wrote about it, but as things tend to do in this digital age, it was lost to some misplaced article of dust or broken chip. Perhaps I should try to recount it. A lot has happened since then. Almost too much to tell. Never did I think, so much could fit into one tiny year, especially with the rate they go by these days.

Anyway, stories from another place for another time I suppose. But remind me to tell you about leaving my mother and her mother.

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Happy Hump Day.

It's been more than a year

Isn't it funny, when one goes to get one's hair cut that we sit in front of a mirror? I was in a funk, along with the weather, on monday. It was my second day off in a row and after walking around Capitol Hill in a daze looking for the miracle apartment to fall into my lap, I decided I needed to get a haircut. Walking into an uber hip salon recommended to me, I had stylist who was also stuck in slow motion. Seated in the vinyl chair, staring at myself in the mirror and the yellowish orangish headed short woman slowly and meticulously moving from one side of my head to the other and back again, I thought I might be falling asleep. My expression looked blank. And my reflection stared at me, rudely, I might add. I couldn't do anything but stare back, locked in a dazed gaze trying to focus on anything. The stylist slowly drew another two fingers full of hair up to it's perfect snipping height and slowly clipped from fingertip to hand.

Ziggy Stardust played over the stereo.

I haven't blogged in a long long time. Like seriously blogged and that's a problem. But. Perhaps the end of my long drought is over. I have been unbelievably stressed out. Like more than ever. But now, it's raining and the darkness in my apartment now matches the darkness outside the windows. And perhaps now, things are more congruous. Nina is on the stereo and the peppermint tea is lukewarm. My favorite temperature for tea.

I spent a fantastic evening a few days ago, leaning halfway out my apartment windows at 4 in the morning watching lightning reverberate through the clouds. Reverberate. That's impossible. Lightning doesn't reverberate. It does something else. Gimme a second. Stutters. Stutters and Shutters. across the sky. silence. too. no thunder, just the shuddering shuttering faint light through thick clouds at the quietest time of the day. On my elbows (the sill is low) and kneeling on the floor, conversation floats out to the city. And with a smile stretching my tired cheeks, I remembered how much I liked and how much I missed, talking, writing and reading. Reading, talking and writing, writing reading and talking. I missed it.

i had sunday off and I went to the lake. standing at the edge of the high dive off the shore on the dock, I swayed with the dock up and down, side to side over wave and through trough. Standing precariously up above the water, I swayed. giggling somewhere silently inside, I felt life swaying, slowly, shaking me to pieces. Swaying on the precipice. I kicked the lolling board, made my body rigid and sliced the incoming crest. And it's about time too.

I'll write again tomorrow. But right now, my tea is gone and I'm still in my work clothes. Plus, the rain is demanding my attention.

i just finished another book. i need to write about it. but i have a soccer game to play. it's rainy and cold in seattle, in july, because why would I deserve a summer all year round?


i feel something coming. who knows what the next few months will bring.

Wow, Remember when I blacked out?!

Sorry for such a long hiatus. Things, have been well. I'm trying to recorral my creative life. Here was an exercise in "making mistakes" by which I mean, becoming comfortable with creating things regardless of whether they are "up to my standards" simply to get things moving. I watched a great video about creativity and schools. If you don't want to watch the video, my take away from it as it pertained to my personal life was the important message that fear of mistakes kills creativity. And, looking at myself, I knew this to be true. One of my main blocks in trying to write a lot of what I think would make great writing is a fear and doubt in my ability to accurately render great writing or great ideas. I'm so damn afraid of writing shit, and most of what I write I already think is shit, that I can never get my foot out the door. So, this charcoal sketch was the beginning step in creating something that I might not be happy with and letting that be okay. And gosh darn, it's working, I don't feel bad about this sketch at all. And I made it without fear. I also then wrote a six page personal essay that hopefully, will get printed in a literary journal operating out of Portland. I'll let them do the publishing, not me.

here's the sketch:

Pond Frogs.

Ruuhhh, ruuhhhh. the bullfrogs are still here. on the cape, across the pond. I can hear them clearly because we keep the windows open. It's very humid here out on the cape and after living in the desert, well, never mind, i've always reacted poorly to humidity. Tossing and turning barely letting the cloth sheet drape over one shin as token sleep cover. the humidity weighing more heavily on me than anything on my mind.

ruuhhh, ruuuhhh. I stifle a laugh because my cousin is sleeping across the room. i'm thinking about humans making that noise to attract one another. the sleezy guy leaning on the bar groaning, ruuhhhh, ruuuhhh at a elegant lady. stupid i know, but funny enough, combined with the thought that I thought about that at all. enough to stifle a laugh.

i feel like i've let a lot slip lately. it's been an interesting time these past few weeks. letting some things go, trying to pick up others. a sort of general reshuffling of affairs, values stances. interesting time indeed. spring cleaning, cliche. but still, i'm a sucker for cliches because every so often i'm struck (almost physically) by the genuineness of cliches. they do, at the outset, capture something profound. sometimes it's easy to forget all their baggage. sometimes i'm struck by cliches. and the past few weeks, or hell, maybe months, have felt like rummaging through boxes of old stuff. But oddly enough, none of it has had anything to do with the past. well, i suppose that's not entirely accurate. nothing to do with the past? what an absurd notion. anyway, that's another path. but this spring cleaning has such freshness to it. It's all new. it's just me that feels old. what's up with that?

Before hopping the bus up to the Cape (i had previously thought (being from the West Coast as I am) that boston, cape cod and the state that houses them were between New York and DC) I had been waltzing my way around New York by the lead of a friend from brooklyn. new york. i like it. large, dirty. a real city. and yet, so livable. i felt so alive amongst all those people. even though i felt as though i was a temporary sojourner floating by. lead around by a local i still was stray, not there, but there. feeling the people, the closeness. not relating, just feeling. and encapsulating and conceiving in cliches. i'm just feeling it man. yeah. groovy.

the frogs are still at it. endlessly ruuhhh, ruuuhhhing out into the darkness. hoping for someone to respond, someone to keep them company. there, in the pond. i have a tennis match in the morning with the family. a tennis match, on the cape. sucker for cliches. sometimes you live a story and sometimes you fill your blog with cliches.

but ah what the hey. i'll polish some of this someday. and who knows if it'll be any good. if I need any motivation, I only have to read more Dave Eggers. His novels read like my blog I feel like. It's like a Vonnegut style without much of the well thought out creativity.

well, tomorrow is here.

Some Like it Hot

Somehow I got nominated as spokesperson. it wasn't the best choice. good thing I had some help.

Summer Evening in Seattle

Dusk and Dawn are the best times for thinking.

the lights of the city slowly blinking on like the thoughts in my mind. here, there in no way connected save for the impending darkness.

the hill and sky blur with only the words "Olive Tower" remaining clear in their white and mustard yellow.

piano and violin unwind the contortion of the day.
3 lonely tea candles, clustering for light. profile me against the white wall.

The last sounds of thunder rolling quietly out to sea.