Sunday, May 19
Thursday, May 16
thoughts occasioned by a carpark
all the cars and trucks in that carpark between the library and the dorms don't stay there all the time. just school and workday hours, mostly. and then they drive away, to another temporary resting place in someone's garage or carport or driveway. the temporariness of those vehicles seems pretty high. they move a lot. that is what they are for.
for other things, it's different. the carpark itself? it doesn't move or change much... unless you're counting the shifting gravely dust and crawling bugs. I suppose a few cracks crop up, and weeds and dirt and dropped sodas and things like that happen, too. compared to the cars though, the carpark has a very low rate of temporariness.
would it be fun to map some kind of spectrum? develop a coding scheme and plot everything from the most temporary blips to the most seemingly stolid, immovable, foundational slabs? and which direction would such a map flow? temporary on the left stretching over to permanent on the right? or could we make it a counter-clockwise loop?
I suppose the leaves on the few scrubby trees on campus, since they usually stay a little longer than the cars, would be somewhere in the middle. all the buildings will probably be there for many decades, so they'd go further down the line; the books and furniture and people, circulating about at various speeds, might not even stay put on this map of ours. we might need another dimension, for temporality now versus temporality later.
some things seem pretty static. places themselves... they seem to always be there. to always have been there. but even here wasn't quite how it is now, once upon a time. this town and all the other collections of civilized life had to start somewhere. the static only seems static as a backdrop for all the movement and life and craziness. relatively. somewhere recently I read this quote from Stanley Eveling: "An object is a slow event." if any of my readers knows which of the fellow's writings that's from, I'd love to know.
but a forest is not completely static either. do trees only make better homes for these animals because they don't have wheels? their temporality is low enough for more highly-temporal creatures to work with? live in? I guess there are other reasons trees make squirrels happier than automobiles do. but this temporariness (or apparent lack thereof) seems important too.
what about me? how to calculate my own rate of temporariness? I've been here, in this quiet West Texas town, for a few months shy of two long (and yet not very long at all) years. then again, this is the third Lubbock residence I've called home. neither that trio of man-made spaces nor my transitory self have proven very steady in terms of long-term commitments.
that word, home. it has such weight in it. to call a place home... that feels übermeaningful. you need to let this space be part of you. you need to be part of it. is that what home means? my very clever sister wrote some very nice words about this once upon a time. for squirrels or birds or humans, home usually needs to be more permanent than a parking space. or does it? I can't spend my life on a street corner or in this coffeeshop or even in the beautiful low-ceilinged stacks of that library. but must home have such a feeling of permanence? nothing is really permanent. nothing can be. new people will change the spaces they meet. foreign spaces will shape the people within them.
the summer ahead of me is promising all kinds of change. weather and scenery, latitude and purpose.
so I will change too.
Sunday, May 12
Thursday, May 9
skull and crossbones
I have begun reading Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism. the book got thrown in a pile of copyright-related texts when I was putting together a literature review last fall. I skimmed it then. now that school has almost released me from its clutches, I want to read it in a more leisurely fashion.
(the pile of copyright-related texts is still around, by the way. I have until June 10 when my library books are due to finish reading them all. wish me luck.)
much has changed in the world since I last read (or talked about having read) any Helprin. for one thing, the author's website has been redesigned. for another thing, I'm about to graduate from this place called Tech, and I almost feel like a completely different person. different? new? more enlightened? more free?
some stuff, though perhaps not much, hasn't changed.
2 + 2 still seems to make 4.
Mark Helprin can, as ever, write smooth and evocative stories.
Digital Barbarism is gorgeously written. it also sounds pretty crazy in a lot of ways. Helprin manages to come across as a very articulate and composed but thoroughly angry, sickened older gentleman sitting on a fancy veranda somewhere, grumbling beautiful insults at the hooligans of the internet. I haven't finished the book yet, so I won't attempt to sum its message into any small handful of sentences. over here you can read what the author (or his publicists, whoever) and a few reviewers have to say about it. a "passionate defense of author’s rights," one says. another compares copyright to a trampoline.
in the essay I just wrote and rewrote and rewrote for Dr. Rice about the cultural shifts among so many readers and writers and digital natives when it comes to the ownership and authority of intellectual properties, I go back to the 60s and quote this Roland Gérard Barthes fellow:
Thomas Jefferson is not French, nor known as a theorist, but he was at one point the US Minister to France. so there is a connection. Barthes's above musings on the death of the author reminded me of this, a quote that Libertarians and copyleft enthusiasts throw around all the time in defense of the freedom of ideas:
some day I will have more to say about them both.
today I have to finish two essays and a small mountain of grading.
(the pile of copyright-related texts is still around, by the way. I have until June 10 when my library books are due to finish reading them all. wish me luck.)
much has changed in the world since I last read (or talked about having read) any Helprin. for one thing, the author's website has been redesigned. for another thing, I'm about to graduate from this place called Tech, and I almost feel like a completely different person. different? new? more enlightened? more free?
some stuff, though perhaps not much, hasn't changed.
2 + 2 still seems to make 4.
Mark Helprin can, as ever, write smooth and evocative stories.
Digital Barbarism is gorgeously written. it also sounds pretty crazy in a lot of ways. Helprin manages to come across as a very articulate and composed but thoroughly angry, sickened older gentleman sitting on a fancy veranda somewhere, grumbling beautiful insults at the hooligans of the internet. I haven't finished the book yet, so I won't attempt to sum its message into any small handful of sentences. over here you can read what the author (or his publicists, whoever) and a few reviewers have to say about it. a "passionate defense of author’s rights," one says. another compares copyright to a trampoline.
in the essay I just wrote and rewrote and rewrote for Dr. Rice about the cultural shifts among so many readers and writers and digital natives when it comes to the ownership and authority of intellectual properties, I go back to the 60s and quote this Roland Gérard Barthes fellow:
"We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing. No doubt it has always been that way. As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins."you can read some Barthes for yourself if you want. he's one of those French literary theorists there seem to be so many of.
- Roland Barthes
Thomas Jefferson is not French, nor known as a theorist, but he was at one point the US Minister to France. so there is a connection. Barthes's above musings on the death of the author reminded me of this, a quote that Libertarians and copyleft enthusiasts throw around all the time in defense of the freedom of ideas:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."has anyone put these two quotes together before?
- Thomas Jefferson
some day I will have more to say about them both.
today I have to finish two essays and a small mountain of grading.
Sunday, May 5
Friday, May 3
secret recombinations
tofu.
and potatoes.
with a garlic, mustard, lemon not-quite-sauce.
this was my taking-a-break-from-crazy-final-essay-writing kitchen adventure this week. you can find the recipe I messed with linked here on Pinterest, where it links to this dietician's blog, which you can then follow back to this food and travel writer, who got it from this vegan guy, who saw the recipe in a magazine next to a wine advertisement. pretty much all of those sites display much nicer tofu photographs than mine.
it was pretty neat to be able to trace this recipe so far across the internet. (or would the more fitting metaphor be 'so deep'? or should I ditch spacial metaphors and just say 'so many clicks'?) it's always good to see bloggers crediting wherever they got their ideas, for some reason.
other interesting thing is how much the recipe changed, or didn't. travel writer ditched the leeks. Vegan Dad himself admits, "The original recipe calls for sweet potatoes, which would be quite good, but I had none on hand. It also called for chicken, which I didn't have either." the dietician left out the vegetable stock and pre-baked the tofu for extra crispiness. me? I used the wrong sort of mustard and added onions and garlic instead of paprika. I also sprinkled bacon on some of the leftovers yesterday, which might make the vegan guy cringe--but ah well.
a week or so ago, the following offhand, asynchronous conversation happened:
Carl: Excited to be making some shrimp tacos with mango slaw tonight.
me: Carl. start a food blog. post all these recipes you make. I would be a great fan, if you did.
Carl: All the recipes I use I basically find on the internet. That's my only barrier to starting a food blog: a lack of originality.
me: whatever. your cooking the thing will infuse plenty of originality. that is what food is all about. ultimate remix culture.
all the recipes anyone ever uses these days are probably found on the internet. so what? as evidenced by my chain of recipe links above, food really does seems to embody the ultimate remix culture. even if you use the very same recipe and measure everything precisely, your dijon potatoes with tofu will not be the very same as anyone else's.
and the especially good news is that friend Carl has decided to embark upon a food/music blog, the concept of which I think is most awesome. lovely Tolkien quote and everything.
and potatoes.
it was pretty neat to be able to trace this recipe so far across the internet. (or would the more fitting metaphor be 'so deep'? or should I ditch spacial metaphors and just say 'so many clicks'?) it's always good to see bloggers crediting wherever they got their ideas, for some reason.
other interesting thing is how much the recipe changed, or didn't. travel writer ditched the leeks. Vegan Dad himself admits, "The original recipe calls for sweet potatoes, which would be quite good, but I had none on hand. It also called for chicken, which I didn't have either." the dietician left out the vegetable stock and pre-baked the tofu for extra crispiness. me? I used the wrong sort of mustard and added onions and garlic instead of paprika. I also sprinkled bacon on some of the leftovers yesterday, which might make the vegan guy cringe--but ah well.
a week or so ago, the following offhand, asynchronous conversation happened:
Carl: Excited to be making some shrimp tacos with mango slaw tonight.
me: Carl. start a food blog. post all these recipes you make. I would be a great fan, if you did.
Carl: All the recipes I use I basically find on the internet. That's my only barrier to starting a food blog: a lack of originality.
me: whatever. your cooking the thing will infuse plenty of originality. that is what food is all about. ultimate remix culture.
all the recipes anyone ever uses these days are probably found on the internet. so what? as evidenced by my chain of recipe links above, food really does seems to embody the ultimate remix culture. even if you use the very same recipe and measure everything precisely, your dijon potatoes with tofu will not be the very same as anyone else's.
and the especially good news is that friend Carl has decided to embark upon a food/music blog, the concept of which I think is most awesome. lovely Tolkien quote and everything.
Sunday, April 28
Wednesday, April 24
out of your head, on paper
the semester is just over enough that I can start getting reasonably excited and anxious and breathless about the next one. I am emailing people about registering for Fall classes. I am scrounging around internet classifieds and such for somewhere lovely to live in this new place. I have another shiny, empty .edu email address. my fourth, I think. unless I had one in England? I surely did. but I cannot remember. I suppose it might have been .ac.uk anyhow...
hm. remembering things seems like an important skill. but is it that, or is it knowing which things to remember? knowing which things need to be remembered and finding a good way to remember them... that is difficult. perhaps impossible. and perhaps that is why we invented writing and google.
speaking of writing and google and remembering things, I cannot remember how I came across this guy named Craig Oldham or his art project all about handwritten letters. it was probably through one of those british blogging designer folks I still have in my google reader. Ben Terrett or Russell Davies or someone (and no, Brandon slash any other Dr. Who lovers, not that Russell Davies).
anyways. the link to this handwritten letter project has been sitting here as a thing to be blogged about for months, along with...
thoughts on Roland Barthes + Thomas Jefferson
connections between Shakespeare + The Cardigans' "Lovefool"
discussions of God, syntax, + David Hume
something about Marc Chagall + 2 Corinthians 13:1
...and a few other random lists, memories, and photographs. (maybe I should try for a blogger drafts collection of zero this summer, or something.)
now I am blogging about the handwritten letter art project. yeah. I like it. handwritten things are lovely and I think making space for them in all the non-handwritten parts of our lives is very neat.
it would be cool to embark on my own letter-writing project. one year it was a resolution of mine to write one letter every week. not getting responses made it sort of a sad, short-lived project though.
the 'share this' link Mr. Oldham has included on his page about handwritten letters opens a printable letter form:
isn't that amusing and backwards and perfect?
on the project's about page Mr. Oldham describes his project as part of "a visual narrative on the cultural transition in which we find ourselves." hmm. visuals are cool. transitions are cool too. connecting things and people and ideas and stories... I like it.
and as a completely random post-script, the same artist fellow has apparently created this very, very convoluted and strange but intriguing something else. I'm not sure what to make of it other than those adjectives.
hm. remembering things seems like an important skill. but is it that, or is it knowing which things to remember? knowing which things need to be remembered and finding a good way to remember them... that is difficult. perhaps impossible. and perhaps that is why we invented writing and google.
speaking of writing and google and remembering things, I cannot remember how I came across this guy named Craig Oldham or his art project all about handwritten letters. it was probably through one of those british blogging designer folks I still have in my google reader. Ben Terrett or Russell Davies or someone (and no, Brandon slash any other Dr. Who lovers, not that Russell Davies).
anyways. the link to this handwritten letter project has been sitting here as a thing to be blogged about for months, along with...
thoughts on Roland Barthes + Thomas Jefferson
connections between Shakespeare + The Cardigans' "Lovefool"
discussions of God, syntax, + David Hume
something about Marc Chagall + 2 Corinthians 13:1
...and a few other random lists, memories, and photographs. (maybe I should try for a blogger drafts collection of zero this summer, or something.)
now I am blogging about the handwritten letter art project. yeah. I like it. handwritten things are lovely and I think making space for them in all the non-handwritten parts of our lives is very neat.
it would be cool to embark on my own letter-writing project. one year it was a resolution of mine to write one letter every week. not getting responses made it sort of a sad, short-lived project though.
the 'share this' link Mr. Oldham has included on his page about handwritten letters opens a printable letter form:
on the project's about page Mr. Oldham describes his project as part of "a visual narrative on the cultural transition in which we find ourselves." hmm. visuals are cool. transitions are cool too. connecting things and people and ideas and stories... I like it.
and as a completely random post-script, the same artist fellow has apparently created this very, very convoluted and strange but intriguing something else. I'm not sure what to make of it other than those adjectives.
Sunday, April 21
Wednesday, April 17
fragmented histories
I've mentioned before that I get a bit obsessed with notebooks. most of the blank ones I mentioned way back when are still empty, accompanied now by several new empty notebooks. I'd be happy to acquire more, even at the risk of running out of shelf space. currently, my journaling is nearing the last few pages of a nice little red one with a quote from Marjorie Hinckley embossed on the front: "Everything you are learning now is preparing you for something else."
I guess that must be true. this MA in Technical Communication? it's just a little stepping stone. the PhD in Rhetoric and Composition will be a slightly bigger stepping stone. and then what? we must wait and find out. the other side of that stepping stone is a long way off still.
a while back, colleague Angela, knowing my interest in copyright and the digital world, pointed me in the direction of one Dr. Brendan Riley, who writes this seemingly eclectic blog called Digital Sextant. he does reviews, talks about zombies, throws in occasional amusing photos (some in German?), posts about copyright controversies in the news, and every week or so compiles all the things he's lately posted on twitter.
all my notebooks (the paper kind and the non-paper kind) are just as eclectic, probably. some of them are easier to flip through than others. some of them reveal more of just what was going on in my life at certain times than others. there can be a kind of game in looking back. what sorts of things made it out of my head and onto the page one year ago? or two? is it useful to look for patterns?
so call this a crossover digital notebook flipbook flashback. yes, of course this kind of recycled post is a symptom of my end-of-semester busy-ness. yes, parts of me might feel a bit lame and self-absorbed using this space to puzzle publicly over her very own cryptic past. so what?
courtesy this searchable little javascript trick, built by one Felix Turner (way cool name, that), I've dug around in the past four years and plucked out a medley of past and present Aprils. (I did this lazy sort of thing a few years ago, but in June. maybe medleys-of-past-[blank]s will become a recurring thing. maybe.) I've put the longest-ago bits first, even though that may seem backwards compared to the standard bottom-up chronology of blogland. you may notice some themes. pizza. quotes. pointlessness. questions.
April 2009 - Seattle, Washington
(with a detour through Southern Utah and then California)
shaking the sand out of all my delusions Apr 23
reveling in placelessness Apr 19
i am about to encounter the absence of my grandfather in a house where he has always been Apr 16
"For a divine moment he had poised on the brink of revelation, and now it was gone, as miserably inglorious as a failed sneeze." Apr 16
what are the most important things to bring with you on a trip to california? hmm. answer: notebooks. lots of notebooks. and pens too. Apr 15
who the heck came up with this idea of resumes anyway? Apr 15
nobody told me there was seafood pizza... where can i get some? Apr 14
April 2010 - Salt Lake-ish, Utah
this day feels like three days all wadded together. Apr 19
naptime? Apr 19
to idaho and back in approximately sixteen hours. don't let me forget my toothbrush. Apr 19
lying awake. reliving dreams. Apr 18
i might eat this whole pizza. would that be bad? Apr 17
scanner, why won't you function? Apr 17
still sleepy. dreaming about oceans. Apr 17
i need ice cream. Apr 16
i wonder when this 'woah, the earth is not totally solid' feeling will leave. Apr 16
April 2011 - Salt Lake-ish, Utah
'in such a world... where every connection is so fragile & often so temporary... it makes me wonder how we make promises at all, to anyone.' Apr 18
rainy day retro-blogging. http://plaidsicle.blogspot.com/2006/09/do-or-die.html Apr 18
life. pain. sigh. Apr 18
something just sucked all the optimism out through my nose. what is up with that? Apr 15
eek, as i pace back and forth between precarious what ifs. Apr 13
April 2012 - Lubbock, Texas
what about the costs of inclusion? hmm? Apr 20
i'm going to get pouty and existential from time to time and start saying everything is pointless. just to warn you. Apr 19
so many emails. Apr 17
pajamas. japanese food. yoga. Apr 14, 2012
the anticipation is occasionally just a little bit electrifying. Apr 11, 2012
April 2013 - Lubbock, Texas
hmm. do all essays at this stage feel utterly forced and artificial? or is it just this particular one? Apr 17
i do not really know what this is for in the long run, but: a survey about salsa: https://t.co/BkvQdH7Muc Apr 17
thank you, universe, for this song: "Scandalous" by Hanneke Cassel. Apr 15
this friend-of-a-friend's startup is cool 'Periods can be lame--we're striving to make them a little more enjoyable.' http://t.co/mqecLPczjt Apr 15
so hungry. Apr 15
small car wreck. yay for that. will it turn out to have cured me of this string of awfully pointless-seeming days? we shall see. Apr 15
okay. intercultural values and authorship and plagiarism and copyright. sort yourselves into a brilliant essay-- ready set go. Apr 14
laundry and lunch and procrastinating alltheotherstuff. Apr 12
ich liebe. Apr 12
I guess that must be true. this MA in Technical Communication? it's just a little stepping stone. the PhD in Rhetoric and Composition will be a slightly bigger stepping stone. and then what? we must wait and find out. the other side of that stepping stone is a long way off still.
all my notebooks (the paper kind and the non-paper kind) are just as eclectic, probably. some of them are easier to flip through than others. some of them reveal more of just what was going on in my life at certain times than others. there can be a kind of game in looking back. what sorts of things made it out of my head and onto the page one year ago? or two? is it useful to look for patterns?
so call this a crossover digital notebook flipbook flashback. yes, of course this kind of recycled post is a symptom of my end-of-semester busy-ness. yes, parts of me might feel a bit lame and self-absorbed using this space to puzzle publicly over her very own cryptic past. so what?
courtesy this searchable little javascript trick, built by one Felix Turner (way cool name, that), I've dug around in the past four years and plucked out a medley of past and present Aprils. (I did this lazy sort of thing a few years ago, but in June. maybe medleys-of-past-[blank]s will become a recurring thing. maybe.) I've put the longest-ago bits first, even though that may seem backwards compared to the standard bottom-up chronology of blogland. you may notice some themes. pizza. quotes. pointlessness. questions.
April 2009 - Seattle, Washington
(with a detour through Southern Utah and then California)
shaking the sand out of all my delusions Apr 23
reveling in placelessness Apr 19
i am about to encounter the absence of my grandfather in a house where he has always been Apr 16
"For a divine moment he had poised on the brink of revelation, and now it was gone, as miserably inglorious as a failed sneeze." Apr 16
what are the most important things to bring with you on a trip to california? hmm. answer: notebooks. lots of notebooks. and pens too. Apr 15
who the heck came up with this idea of resumes anyway? Apr 15
nobody told me there was seafood pizza... where can i get some? Apr 14
April 2010 - Salt Lake-ish, Utah
this day feels like three days all wadded together. Apr 19
naptime? Apr 19
to idaho and back in approximately sixteen hours. don't let me forget my toothbrush. Apr 19
lying awake. reliving dreams. Apr 18
i might eat this whole pizza. would that be bad? Apr 17
scanner, why won't you function? Apr 17
still sleepy. dreaming about oceans. Apr 17
i need ice cream. Apr 16
i wonder when this 'woah, the earth is not totally solid' feeling will leave. Apr 16
April 2011 - Salt Lake-ish, Utah
'in such a world... where every connection is so fragile & often so temporary... it makes me wonder how we make promises at all, to anyone.' Apr 18
rainy day retro-blogging. http://plaidsicle.blogspot.com/2006/09/do-or-die.html Apr 18
life. pain. sigh. Apr 18
something just sucked all the optimism out through my nose. what is up with that? Apr 15
eek, as i pace back and forth between precarious what ifs. Apr 13
April 2012 - Lubbock, Texas
what about the costs of inclusion? hmm? Apr 20
i'm going to get pouty and existential from time to time and start saying everything is pointless. just to warn you. Apr 19
so many emails. Apr 17
pajamas. japanese food. yoga. Apr 14, 2012
the anticipation is occasionally just a little bit electrifying. Apr 11, 2012
April 2013 - Lubbock, Texas
hmm. do all essays at this stage feel utterly forced and artificial? or is it just this particular one? Apr 17
i do not really know what this is for in the long run, but: a survey about salsa: https://t.co/BkvQdH7Muc Apr 17
thank you, universe, for this song: "Scandalous" by Hanneke Cassel. Apr 15
this friend-of-a-friend's startup is cool 'Periods can be lame--we're striving to make them a little more enjoyable.' http://t.co/mqecLPczjt Apr 15
so hungry. Apr 15
small car wreck. yay for that. will it turn out to have cured me of this string of awfully pointless-seeming days? we shall see. Apr 15
okay. intercultural values and authorship and plagiarism and copyright. sort yourselves into a brilliant essay-- ready set go. Apr 14
laundry and lunch and procrastinating alltheotherstuff. Apr 12
ich liebe. Apr 12
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