Sunday, January 21, 2007
2:56 PM
on mozarello and other artists
So at 3 a.m. the other day, as I was being lulled to sleep by Pound's Cantos (we had to read cantos I-LI for one class, roughly 207 pages of dense, fragmented, highly allusive stuff), one fragment jumped out at me -- about the inelegant death of Mozarello, a 16th century Mantuan poet who was murdered by villagers: "...Mozarello
Takes the Calabrian roadway, and for ending
Is smothered beneath a mule, a poet's ending,
Down a stale well-hole, oh a poet's ending."
If only there were more moments of levity in the Cantos, between the sections of heavy-handed preaching and historicizing that sometimes feels like an extended exercise in alienating the reader. We had a good discussion in our Limits of Attention class, though -- about why many political poets are accused of being anti-lyrical; about our era's obsession with internal moods as opposed to passions that have a stronger capacity to effect ethical change; about the quality of difficulty in poetry; about how Pound compels attention by accumulating details and trusting the reader to make connections between stories and Cantos. Ah ewan. Basta I'm not a fan of Pound; and can now say I've actually read him. On to the Pisan Cantos next week...
* * *
Despite the antisocial tendencies, I'm starting to enjoy talking to strangers who turn out to be interesting, creative people. Last night, at Laura's birthday party, I met Hamutal, who's taking her Ph.D in Philosophy and has the saddest eyes I've ever seen on a woman, and her childhood friend Arieh, a photographer and blogger. Here's his shot of a typical Toronto subway car with red seats, empty as Morpheus' dream train.
* * *
The other night, I watched Lars von Trier's Five Obstructions with Richard, and was both amused and blown away. The premise is simple, if a bit sadistic (yes, coming from the director who made Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville -- probably the most disturbing and "thoughtfully disgusting" film I've ever seen): von Trier asks his film idol and teacher, Jorgen Leth, to remake a short film, Perfect Human, Leth made in 1967. The catch is that he has to remake it five times using restrictions von Trier formulates (ex. remake it as a cartoon, or using just 12 frames per edit, or set in "the most wretched place on Earth" -- which, to Leth, is the red light district in Bombay, shown here in the picture behind a transparent screen). It's a wonderful film about creativity blossoming under restrictions, about amorphous mentor-student relations, about an artist's need to risk failure. The fifth "remake," written by von Trier from Leth's point of view and spoken by Leth but making fun of von Trier, is a deliciously layered exercise in perspective, and a moving reflection on art. At the end, I found myself wishing someone would push and impose those sort of restrictions on me, to jolt me out of this complacency.
* * *
Great late night music: Yo La Tengo's The Sounds of the Sounds of Science, -- eight tracks the band composed to accompany underwater documentaries by Jean Painleve. Dreamy, textured, ambient layers of music with such titles as "How Some Jellyfish are Born" and "The Love Life of the Octopus" make me want to dive under the duvet and sink deeper into the calm ocean of sleep.
Labels: books, movies, music, photographs, school
Monday, January 08, 2007
9:56 PM
Christmas Eve Couch Potatoes
I'm pretty sure the space beside my mom on the couch was (unconsciously?) reserved for me. Thirteen hours later...
... on the other side of the world, I was sitting on another couch, eating strawberries and ice cream with lovely housemates before our DVD fest.
Labels: house, photographs
Monday, January 01, 2007
5:27 PM
So this is the new year...
My New Year's Eve was straight out of a Beckett play, like a scene from Waiting for Godot. Due to unforeseen circumstances, all the other housemates were out partying or out of town, so the only people left were me, my favorite German housemate Carina, and her boyfriend Robert who'd just arrived from Munich the day before. (We don't count the couple in the basement, who have their own little world.) We'd intended to greet the New Year drinking on the roof (perhaps not the brightest of ideas), but since it had been raining all day and the roof was slippery, that plan was shot. So we finished a bottle of wine, moved the couch in front of the huge window in Ben's room, and stared at skeletons of trees against a pinkish-grey sky. With cans of beer in hand, we waited for midnight to roll around. Five minutes before the stroke, the city was still quiet. One of us opened the window and listened.
"Why is nothing happening?"
"No firecrackers or fireworks?"
"Do Canadians celebrate New Year?"
"Maybe they'd rather stay in bars than light fireworks?"
"I have no idea; we're not from around here, remember?"
"Maybe everyone's staying inside because of the rain."
"Maybe our clocks are wrong and we're actually an hour early."
"Maybe our calendars are warped and we're actually a day early."
"Maybe we should call someone."
Carina called Nilo who assured us Canadians did indeed celebrate New Year. But that she had leftover sparklers in her room we could help ourselves to just in case we didn't see any fireworks. So five minutes after midnight, after concluding that our window-watching idea was useless, we opened our beers, lit our sparklers, and did little jigs of joy. Three foreigners in a quiet city, ushering in 2007 with whirling lights and much floor-creaking.
* * *
I've loved my previous New Year's Eves too. I remember drinking passionfruit vodka at the Marikina Riverpark with Kael, EJ, and Mitzie to greet 2004. And having champagne and focaccia with Elmo and his mom for 2005. And spending a cold night watching fireworks from the funeral chapel with my family and the Soncuyas for 2006. This time last year I was sitting in limbo, in an eclipse, all my plans up in the air. Now I'm where I want to be, still slightly homesick, but drinking in every last drop of this experience.
* * *Pictures and mini-stories:
The Smee Casualty Board! We use the kitchen whiteboard for chore reminders, school and job updates, basic info (we realized after 2 months that we had no idea what each other's last names were), and a tally board for mice. We thought we only had one -- who'd eat only whole wheat bread and sunflower seeds -- and affectionately named it Smee, in a pirate-y mood. Then we discovered we had a family. One mouse entered through the space under my door (one disadvantage to living next to the kitchen) and found its way to my bed (no, I'm not that desperate...yet). Carina and Nilo caught it with an upside down trash can, stuffed it along with my blanket in a garbage bag, and we trekked to the park a block away to "set Smee free!" Except the tame little rodent kept snuggling in my blanket. We had to shake it off...and I had to wash my sheets. Twice. We waged war on Smee's relatives, though, who were only assigned numbers, not names. We caught SIX on sticky paper a month ago, and fervently hope we caught them all. I still have dreams about mice, which I assure you aren't as delightful as the rats dancing in the Nutcracker ballet.
The Gingerbread House! One December night before the term ended, Ben wanted Christmas cookies, and Nilo decided she wanted to make a gingerbread house. So we all chipped in -- my contribution was gladly setting aside my unfinished 20-page paper (on notions of privacy and the female outider in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Lillian Hellman's The Autumn Garden) and making a literal midnight RUN (with running shoes and jogging pants) to the supermarket to buy...food coloring. The baking took two hours, and the house smelled exquisitely sugary at 2am. Notice how the gingerbread roof rests precariously on the walls and uncooked spaghetti supports. With the leftover dough, we made a tree, a cat, a bike, the number 62, a heart, a woman, and a man -- which they let me eat, head last.
Ok, no real story here. Just a cute picture by the front door, of me and Carina supposedly saying goodbye to Adam. Me in pigtails, days before I cut my hair short again and dyed it "chocolate cherry -- just a fancy name for burgundy brown (and yes, I share Kate Winslet's character's fascination for haircolor names in Eternal Sunshine, among other quirks). I love how you can see the stark trees as well as the hallway light above our heads. We're there, smiling, with the liquid glass blurring what's inside and what's outside, just within reach.
(More photos coming soon!)
Labels: house, life, photographs
