Not fair that individual people can have such huge effects on me. I guess there's nothing to do but choose carefully who I associate with.

Where's my tiger?

A friend posted this on facebook, tagging it as being from beatonna.livejournal.com

Back in the parlor

One of my classes actually assigns me books that are short enough to be read in the time that I have available to devote to them-- this is of course a huge advantage for everyone involved.





Recently we read Salon de Belleza, which is one of those books that upon finishing you immediately want to read again. What struck me most about it was how it cut right to the bone without really being aimed at my particular bones to begin with. By all rights I really shouldn't relate to the storyline at all, but the way that it's written and the points of life that it brings out really resound with me and unify me with the communities represented.





The book is about a man whose beauty salon has become a moridero, which basically means 'place to die', for men in the final stages of a disease (presumably AIDS). The treatment of life and death, isolation and community, repression and resistance is truly compelling. One scene in particular strikes me as encapsulating the whole novel:

The narrator has set up all of these fish tanks in his salon so that he women
can come out feeling rejuvenated, as if they've just stepped fresh from a pond.
As the moridero fills up and guests die, he becomes frustrated with the fish
that die for no reason and he doesn't have time to care for the other tanks
properly. At one point he stares at a tank completely clouded with algae,
such that he has no idea how many fish are in the tank, and imagines it as this
primordial habitat brimming with life. He puts his face to the surface of
the water, inhaling the air and the oxygen emanating from the algae, and
imagines himself filling with the essence of that life.

I don't know if I explain it well here, but the solitude and the yearning to be filled with life (youth, health, energy, all that) is really striking. Trust me...?

Sort of makes me wonder about what I can really gain from reading about people I don't understand (but then who do I really understand in the first place?), a similar feeling I get when I read Invisible Man; the authors seem to be referring to people who don't understand them or who are outside their part of reality, but for some reason I feel like that's not me? How can that be a good rhetorical mechanism? I suppose it makes you not want to be 'one of them' but rather 'one of us', but that doesn't change your mindset. In fact it's almost more dangerous because it makes you seem like you don't need to-- after all, you're already included, right?

So far it seems like the only answer is to keep "reading" in an effort to understand.

Forget Everything I Just Said

So, my comprehensive exams for my M.A. degree have been staring me down since January, and I've been too "busy" (read: intimidated) to really get started studying for them. I should have started like, when I entered the M.A. program, but instead I'm starting now... heh. hehhhh.

First I toyed with the idea of taking them in the fall, like one of my friends did. That way I could get finals out of the way and study all summer. (Yeah right. I'm gettin' the hell out of here.) Then I thought I could just... not take them. I've got the knowledge, I don't need no stinkin' diploma. (This logic would work if anyone else on the planet subscribed to it, and if I were inherently a quitter. As it stands currently, I and the world are pushing me to not only take the exams, but pass them.)

I tried not to think about it, thinking constantly that "next week I'll really get crackin'... no excuses!" but then I of course made excuses and did not in fact get crackin'. What ever that means. I assume it has to do with corn, and someone named Jimmy that I don't care about.

But yesterday! Yesterday, this rather annoying woman named Montserrat (which would be a great name if she were a vintage wine, or a fancy watch) asked me how they were going. (Double annoying, Montserrat. You shut your mouth) We talked for a while about them, because apparently she took them fairly recently as well, although now I think she's a professor at some technical college in Ohio. I told her I thought that in all seriousness it was too much information for me to thoroughly study before May. And she said:

"Una palabra? Mejor que nada. Te lo digo: Una palabra-- mejor que nada."

So simple! So true! So helpful! "One word? better than nothing. I'm telling you: one word- better than nothing." HELL YES MONTSERRAT [WHO I WILL CALL MONTY IN MY HEAD TO MAKE HER MORE LIKEABLE]. So that night after gym I went to the library, got a lot of anthologies that I will skim for starters (just to know how much I don't know... diagnostics thus far reveal that amount to be hovering between one metric shit ton and four standard boatloads).

I am determined not *just* to pass, which previously was a comforting mediocrity for which to strive, but to pass with flying colors and kick this school in the face for being so damn unhelpful. That's about how I felt after I did so nicely on my main paper last semester, and I would absolutely love to see that look on a particular person's face again. Followed by immediately re-insisting on not going into the PhD program here.

That said, if you're looking for me I'm probably reading. Nothing fun, though, unfortunately.

Right now: Gerald Martin's Journeys Through the Labyrinth.

Currently Reading

What's on the shelves these days...

For school I'm reading a book called On Christian Doctrine, by St. Augustine, and The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell (who is some kind of genius).
For fun I'm reading Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, and Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis. More on that later.

I just got rid of a bunch of books, either giving them to people I thought would like them or donating them to the library, and it helped me focus on which books I had and really wanted to read in the near future. Of course this led to me starting two books rather than one, and I bought a few more.

Recent purchases I can not *WAIT* to read: The Watchmen, All the Pretty Horses, and (thought I've already looked at the first part) Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.*

I've also signed up on Goodreads.com, which gives me lots of ideas and recommendations. Just going to the bookstore makes me glad I don't try to keep a running list like some people I see with tiny notebooks. There's no way you could write down everything you want to 'look into' and keep it prioritized-- I think it's easier, but if you have a different system, I'd love to hear about it!


*My bike's a hybrid, but I got this one because it discusses shocks and suspension, which my bike has.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Uh, I made this blog because I was confused about the requirements for posting on someone else's blog, but now I'd like to actually post thoughts on it. I'm hoping most of them will have to do with books I read. I used to have a crafts blog, but now that I don't have internet at home, I'm never able to post pictures and that seemed silly to sustain. I do like the blogging community and plan to continue contributing.

Thoughts for today:

I just finished Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for a book club of which I'm a fairly delinquent member. This month I was meant to host the discussion, which meant several things:
- I could choose the book selections
- I had to read whatever we picked
- I had to show up

So the choices I offered were the following thinly-veiled attempts at incorporating my school work into my social life (hey, at least I suppressed my usual need to incorporate physical activity... jogging book clubs aren't as popular as they should be):
1) Pedro Paramo-- Juan Rulfo
2) El Aleph-- Jorge Luis Borges
3) Conversation in a Cathedral-- Mario Vargas Llosa
4) The Savage Detectives-- Roberto Bolano
5) The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao-- Junot Diaz
6) In the Time of the Butterflies-- Julia Alvarez
I still want to read all of these; I chose them because they are seminal works that (to me) are fascinating. The first is a classic work about the Mexican identity, the second is a collection of short stories by the master of 'magical realism', the third is by one of the more prolific Latin American authors (especially of those translated into English) who also dabbled in politics, the fourth I have actually started and is not only an interesting tracing of Latin American literature but also a fun experiment in format, and the sixth is a historical (fiction? i think? but based on a true story) account of the Mirabal sisters and their rebellion against Trujillo.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, besides winning some prize called the Pulitzer or something, was recommended to me by a Dominican friend and by another fellow student of Latin American politics. At first I had a hard time getting into it. Being interested in immigrant identity and in Latin America, you'd think it'd be right up my alley, but the gangsta narration couched in sci-fi/fantasy allusion seemed a little gimmicky to me. Combine that with a helpless and somewhat repulsive protagonist and a conflict-laden slate of other characters, and you've got an unpleasant book. By half-way into the book, I was a lot more interested. The development of Oscar's sister and mother really turns the story around, makes it less about Oscar and more about the family; less about the family and more about Dominicans; and less about Dominicans and more about resilience.

How does this novel stand out from other books on the Trujillato, Trujillo's regime in the Dominican Republic? First, by not being *about* the Trujillato. Like other recent novels set in the DR, the Trujillato forms a backdrop, a lens through which all of the events are to be understood. A lot of this book takes place in the U.S., and it never presumes an understanding of Dominican politics-- the footnotes and exposition are more than enough to grasp the situation. I'd say that of the books I've read, this is a sort of cross between La Fiesta del Chivo (Feast of the Goat) and Papi, both of which are worth reading and supplement an understanding of the DR.
Second-- and this is actually a separate thought I had, but it follows as reasoning for my point above-- this book manages to go beyond the situation of the DR or the idea of dictatorship. I can think of a lot of books with similar endings, which I won't give away, but in particular this book made me think of The Stranger. Frustrated with the "ironic"-cum-apathetic-cum-noncommital attitude of most of my generation, I see this book (maybe only by wishful thinking) as a confirmation or promise that people want to feel passionate, and that when they do feel that passion it will fuel them through anything. The most unlikely of events can spark a fire within that draws people to it, even on the brink of society, with a kind of magnetism that shows just how rare and special that fire is.