Wednesday, February 21, 2007
2:53 PM
1. Along with his copy of Von Trier's Five Obstructions, Daniel lent me his DVD of Chris Marker's 1982 film, Sans Soleil (Sunless), saying it reminded him of what I've been trying to do with my poetry. A compliment, really -- unless we emphasize the word "trying."But it's true, I LOVE this film that looks like a travelogue and reads like a letter and feels like watching a stone skipping across a pond, sending multiple, overlapping ripples to the edge. I'm not even talking about the seamless marriage of the images with the script -- even just the script itself is gorgeous. From the perspective (an unseen woman reading the letters and observations of an itinerant filmmaker) to the concerns (memory, history, survival in both the city and the wilderness, the function of cinema) to the lyrical language ("Tokyo is a city crisscrossed by trains; tied together with electric wire, she shows her veins"), to its obsession with people's faces looking back at the camera, the film, like the list of Sei Shonagon mentioned in it, "quickens the heart." I WISH I HAD WRITTEN IT."When spring came, when every crow announced its arrival by raising his cry half a tone, I took the green train of the Yamanote line and got off at Tokyo station, near the central post office. Even if the street was empty I waited at the red light—Japanese style—so as to leave space for the spirits of the broken cars. Even if I was expecting no letter I stopped at the general delivery window, for one must honor the spirits of torn-up letters, and at the airmail counter to salute the spirits of unmailed letters. I took the measure of the unbearable vanity of the West, that has never ceased to privilege being over non-being, what is spoken to what is left unsaid."
2. A Lesson in Other-ness:Last Tuesday, the class workshopped 5 poems from my "Lost and Found" series. One poem mentions the common street sign: Bawal magtapon ng basura dito. Despite the footnote with the English translation, Prof R asked me to read the Tagalog phrase and explain its context. So I did, and said there would almost always be a mound of garbage thrown defiantly under or near those signs. She stared at me with a hand against her cheek, fascinated. "Say it again," she said. So I did, more reluctantly this time. "One more time, please. Your language is so beautiful. Humor me." My classmates and I exchanged looks. She must've been high on something again. But I did anyway.And THEN, after a thorough discussion of the poems, she turned to me and said, "Can you say something about the weather in Tagalog?" I raised my eyebrows, and said, with exaggerated shoulder shivers: Oo, malamig ang panahon. Sawa na ako sa snow. Pero tutal, hindi mo naman naiintindihan ang sinasabi ko ngayon -- pwede kitang tawaging tanga o mataba o ... ewan, basta, nawiwirduhan ako sa yo. Ba't ang kulit mo? "Wow," she says, "your language is so melodic. Why not, one of these days, write an erotic poem to your language?" Anobayaaan...
3. I bought myself a small pot of ivy with Summer last week after our Valentine lunch at Thai Basil and last-minute shoe-shopping. The potted plant perches on my window sill, leaves happily outlined in a spring green lighter than the color of their hearts. I want to keep it alive at least until spring thaws all the ice and I see sprouts instead of snow in gardens. Spring better hurry -- a few leaves are already beginning to brown, despite all my efforts and lambing. I've taken to calling the ivy by name. Violan. Haha.Someone asked me how being in this country, away from family and most friends, has "improved" (oh, I hate that word) me lately. I could reply by talking about my apparently stubborn streak of optimism, the resilience (again, maybe just another form of stubborness), the willingness to be patient and find delight in the present even when disappearing seems easier. Or I could just say, I have a plant now.
4. The past week was horribly taxing, from Papa's hospital scare and other emotional events that felt like more than one rug was being pulled out from under me. The fantastic news is that Papa is recovering quicker and better than anybody expected, with the only complication being a manageable diabetes -- which means he won't be seeing ice cream over crepes anytime soon (this picture was taken at Cafe Breton, where my family celebrated my birthday last year without me). Otherwise, the doctors are saying he could be released as early as this Friday!I found myself saying Thank God a lot, wondering how empty that expression really is to me. I found myself saying I love you to family and friends, and meaning it. Again, I'm amazed by the generosity of people who came over to hold me and buy phone cards to call home with, who sent their e-mails of support, who let me finish their wine and sleep in their beds with other friends, who let me cry and talk myself out at the kitchen table one morning. You are all awesome.
5. Please, Spring, come soon. Let me write an erotic poem to you, bwahaha -- though nothing I write will surpass Cummings' spring poems:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Labels: family, love, movies, poetry, school, spring
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...
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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
Saturday, January 13, 2007
5:06 PM
back to school
(The grey building with the red tower is the English department, in winter)So the first week of winter term classes just ended, and I'm excited about getting into the rhythm of work again, after being lazy and winter-mopey for weeks. Last Tuesday, I had my first (free!) beer of the term with three Creative Writing buddies after class -- and Helen told us funny stories about a couple of writers she knows who spent 3-4 months in the wilds of Alberta to be forest fire-watchers while working on their respective novels. Daniel and I contemplated this career option, and he promised me Bloody Caesars during his launch/reading on Thursday for sending copies of his poetry book, Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method, to the Philippines. At the launch, I got to talk to poet Don McKay, who graciously allowed me to join the poetry writing seminar he's conducting as part of his Writer-in-Residence job.
(This is the same view of the English Department, in summer)For my Limits of Attention class, we're going to read from Pound's Cantos, Ginsberg's Collected Poems, Ashbery's Flow Chart, and Stein's Making of Americans to...umm...test the limits of our attention, and pay attention to the encyclopedic impulse of these poets. And for my Postcolonial Lit and the World on Paper class, we're going to read at least 9 interesting novels by Achebe, Soyinka, Naipul, Brodber, Danticat, Ondaatje, Marechera, Vladislavic, and Kincaid. Looks like the next 12 weeks of the term are going to be reading-heavy. Here we go!
==> And this is Robarts Library, where I borrow most of my books. Looking at this picture cheers me up -- how can you not admire the talent and humor of an architect who designs a major library in the shape of a turkey/peacock?
* * *
On another note, I've been thinking about how amazed I am when encountering generosity in others. How generosity has less to do with class and resources, and more to do with spirit -- and how the experience of it inspires the recipient to be generous in turn. Generosity has gifted me with Calvino's Hermit in Paris and Auster's The Red Notebook. Generosity has allowed me to borrow and to share Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express. Generosity has baked me fish and made me salads and left me milk in the fridge. Generosity had me running around different shops in search of the perfect journal. Generosity shakes the cobwebs from childhood stories, reawakens the fingers' talent for backrubs, and lets you sleep in just a few minutes longer on a lazy Saturday morning.
Labels: books, love, school
