Some favorite quotes from Zadie Smith's essay Speaking in Tongues:

"... I haven't described Dream City. I'll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither-this-nor-that beige of your skin—well, anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues."

"Throughout his campaign Obama was careful always to say we. He was noticeably wary of I. By speaking so, he wasn't simply avoiding a singularity he didn't feel; he was also drawing us in with him. He had the audacity to suggest that, even if you can't see it stamped on their faces, most people come from Dream City, too. Most of us have complicated backstories, messy histories, multiple narratives. (...) how many Americans, in their daily lives, conjure contrasting voices and seek synthesis between disparate things. Turns out, Dream City wasn't so strange to them."

"It's amazing how many of our cross-cultural and cross-class encounters are limited not by hate or pride or shame, but by another equally insidious, less-discussed, emotion: embarrassment."

"A hesitation in the face of difference, which leads to caution before difference and ends in fear of it. Before long, the only voice you recognize, the only life you can emphasize with, is your own. (...) I believe that a flexibility in voice leads to a flexibility in all things."

"[Obama] He seems just the man to demonstrate that between those two voices there exists no contradiction and no equivocation, but rather a proper and decent human harmony."

Speaking in Tongues
Changing My Mind
Zadie Smith

I really enjoyed this essay, as I don't often seek out or read pieces about being multicultural, biracial, w/e. I might start reading more about it, as it was an issue that was stirred in me at PSO.

it was unseasonably warm, blue, + sunny. so, of course i came home and ate strawberry banana sorbet outside.

i love sorbet (i so under appreciated it!). i'd eat a whole quart by myself, if i didn't have to share (or know that i'll have a stomach-ache later).

reading patti smith's Just Kids memoir. i sort of got it impulsively at costco when i was home visiting in december. i had caught the tail-end of a review on NPR, and must admit that i hadn't listened to smith since my teens ('cause i'm an old man now!). she writes about her experiences and relationships without any sense of show-offy-ness or pretension. she just tells you about her life and the magic she imbued it with. i like this description of her getting read to visit Charleville, France to visit Arthur Rimbaud's hometown/grave:

" Robert took me shopping for a proper hat, and we chose one of soft brown felt with a grosgrain ribbon [...] On the Bowery I found an unconstructed raincoat of kelly green rubberized silk, a Dior blouse of gray houndstooth linen, brown trousers, and an oatmeal cardigan: an entire wardrobe for thirty dollars, just needing a bit of washing and mending. In my plaid suitcase I placed my Baudelaire cravat, my notebook; Robert added a postcard of a staute of Joan of Arc. Sam gave me a silver Coptic cross from Ethiopia, and Judy Linn loaded up her small half-frame camera and showed me how to use it. Janet Hamill, who had returned from her own journey to Africa, where she had passed through the region of my dreams, had brought me back a handful of blue glass beads - scarred trade beads from Harar - the same beads that Rimbaud had traded - as a cherished souvenir. I slipped them in my pocket as a good-luck tailsman.

Thus armed, I was ready for my journey."

objects as art and ritual - kinda like playing dress up and make believe as a kid.

hurray! yesterday my BAGGU arrived. not pictured, but all my stuff has somehow gone from being pink to blue: my cell phone, camera, MP3 player, & water bottle.
I dig this bag with this wallet (pictured).
I started reading breaking open the head: a psychedelic journey into the heart of contemporary shamanism. It's really engaging & I did not realize going in that the author was going to pull in all these theories & ideas. Woo, Walter Benjamin! Makes for a good, solid read. Here's a good tidbit:

"For those who tried the tribal hallucinogens without proper preparation, the results could be disastrous. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, took mescaline in Paris during an experimental clinical trial in 1935. For over a week, long after the physical effect of the drug had worn off, Sartre found himself plunged into a lingering nightmare of psychotic dread and paranoia; shoes threaten to turn into insects, stones walls seethed with monsters. He was bewildered, terrified- the physical sickness and psychic anguish may have inspired his novel La Nausee, in which the writhing bark on a single tree reveals what he saw as the mechanistic horror of nature."

a quote from the Dalai Lama's autobiography:

"Then at four, tea was served. If there is anyone who drinks more tea than the British, it is the Tibetans. According to one Chinese statistic I came across recently, Tibet imported ten million tons of tea annually from China before the invasion. This cannot possibly be true as it implies that every Tibetan drank almost two tons per year. The figure was obviously invented to try to prove Tibet's economic dependence on China, but it does give a indication of our fondness for tea."

His voice is great to read. At once it is humorous, kind hearted, and objective.
I just finished House of Leaves last week. It was good. It's hard to pin point one or another thing to say about it- eerie, suspenseful, well researched, long. I didn't really have any favorite quotes other than the use of the endearment, "My little eye sack." eww.

I suppose I should watch the Oscars, since I was in Kodak Theater last week anyways.
More to come on roadtrips to L.A.

the call of the wild. jack london. some quotes.

i'm trying to save parts of the books i read because otherwise they quickly become distant memories of something i might have read. plus, i rarely talk about books with people... so it's hard to take away anything if i don't write it down.

"With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. [...] It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery."

London's views on evolution and instinct are interesting. So invested and convinced of these exact theories, that there is no other side. He writes about them in an elementary sense, giving the reader concise and non-reputable examples. Not to say I disagree with him, it's just weird to me that anything should seem definite & unquestionable. Guess that's the point, animals don't question.

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."

beautiful, complete. London starts this paragraph referencing the call that lures men from cities to the woods, these two impulses chase each other like he says (the need to feel life and then feeling it in absence of all else).

"... the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. [...] Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells;"

I like the imagery & how tangible London makes the wilderness in descriptions of moss & earth. Yup, it draws me back to camping & mts.

some quotes i've liked thus far in the unbearable lightness of being.

"In spite of their love, they had made each other's life a hell. The fact that they loved each other was merely proof that the fault lay not in themselves, in their behavior or inconstancy of feeling, but rather in their incompatibility: he was strong and she was weak."

i struggle with the division of concepts into dualities, like weak and strong. duality is a way to simplify, to me, and it often isn't simple at all. also, i haven't quiet disarmed all the connotations that "weak" has as relating to the female gender. but anyhow, the female character is weak because of her total dependence on another human being in a foreign country (they emigrated). it's a horrifying situation to come to depend solely on one human for everything (love, empathy, social interaction, whatever else). it's really easy to get that lazy in relationships, etc. the worse part of it is the question of do you stay together or not & why.


"She had the overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.

The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, 'You don't know how happy I am to be with you.' That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express."

the difficulty of communication. we can't express what we mean.


"Try as she might to intensify the longing, summon it to her aid, lean on it, the feeling of distaste only grew stronger."

falling out of _____.

i finished the jungle a couple days ago & got around to the library today after class. i decided on the unbearable lightness of being. this led me into the czech republic section which has the most beautiful books both in size, shape, & cover design. i picked up valerie and her week of wonders solely because of the quality of cardstock the cover was printed on along w/ its pattern of tiny bright orange dots. it's a bizarre sounding story. the summary reads about vampires, girls coming of age, a modern gothic novel, surrealist dream elements. hm.

wandering sea horses. i decided i'd check it out because of the illustrations. from what i can tell the story is about a father looking after his young son. a stay at home father, like sea horses - ho ha. mundane, quirky, apathetic is the tone i get. i scanned some of my favorite images.
also, how beautiful is the way the page numbers are done?




so cute, so weird.


we're all the same.

adulthood this way.

vladimir jiranek did the illustrations. wikipedia tells me he is an illustrator, film director, cartoonist, animator, ect. he studied journalism in prague & was part of the 1989 velvet/ gentle revolution. i love non-violent, student demonstrations & revolutions! i didn't read up too much on it but basically it was to overthrow the communist government.