Foxwoods Fiend or Foodie at Fifteen.
1. I had never smoked. I'd heard it's addictive, that once you start you never stop. Supposedly it relaxes you, makes you feel good. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. I'm talking about smoking on a grill.
2. I realize that a place like Masa isn’t really trying to achieve the same meal experience as Nobu and that the appeal of Masa is more in its subtle flavoring and amazing cuts of fish (something as over-the-top flavorful and decadent as the Nobu miso cod lettuce wraps, for instance, would be very out of place). But still, I think that there were too many items on the menu that just didn’t really do it for me.
3. So here I am, sitting at my computer, deep in food coma. I'm back where I was last year, and the year before- asking myshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifelf if I really needed that extra helping of pie. As I contemplate Thanksgiving, I determine the answer to be yes. My life wouldn't be the same without that gooey mess of fat and sugar that is pecan pie.
4. I lost credit card roulette and the bill was $3400. $3400 for 4 people. Ansky, Krantz, and I got the ome beef which was an extra $140 per person (definitely worth it) and we had a ton of sake, but the bill was still ridiculous.
5. He told me he could only eat one duck confit leg, but he could eat a whole turkey. "I've accepted duck confit. I know it, and I'm over it" he said. "I guess I don't know it, I could eat five duck confit legs" I said. "Yea well you still get hard-ons in math class." I told him I get hard-ons when I eat duck confit.
6. I got the call from the dean of admissions as I was picking up my pizza at CPK in the airport, so between getting into HLS and getting to eat a Thai Chicken pizza it was definitely one of the better layovers in recent memory.
Answer Bank: Foxwoods Fiend, Foodie at Fifteen
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
recess!
I wasn't fired per se, but my employers chose not to continue their relationship with me; hard times. En plus, I'm out of local lemongrass, and the Greenmarket, cruelly, sold all its kabochas to Thomas Keller. On the plus side, I'm not nonplussed. I embrace opportunity, I apply to all the cocinas mexicanas refinadas in a two-block radius of my apartment (there are three). I bought expensive leggings that look like fish scales, is that kosher in this economic climate? I should scale back.
I'm going to LA to convalesce from the valence I've constructed these past few weeks. Provisional itinerary includes walking to and from the Valley, running up and down hills, reconnecting with my roots however rhizomatic, circumlocuting with Abram, making a circuit court of the city...I think that's it.
I'm going to LA to convalesce from the valence I've constructed these past few weeks. Provisional itinerary includes walking to and from the Valley, running up and down hills, reconnecting with my roots however rhizomatic, circumlocuting with Abram, making a circuit court of the city...I think that's it.
Monday, December 1, 2008
empty november
At work, I learn the "dance." I stand at the "pass," I get my wet wipes, I scan for fingerprints or stray sprays of "périgourdine." When I "drop," I "hug" the guest warmly between quotation marks. I come home truffle-infused.
In this (sous-vide) pressure-cooker environment, I try to inject levity as artfully as "sauce Mornay" is piped into pâte à choux:
Artless Kitchen Server: So the "tagliatelle" is basically blanched celery root sliced into "ribbons," so it looks like pasta, then...
Me: So it's not tagliatelle per se...
AKS: Well it's the "celeriac tagliatelle"...
I've quickly learned this is not a good idea, and to focus instead on my "intensity" and "finesse." The confidentiality agreement I signed, while not per se invalid per se, I'm pretty sure amounts to nothing; what if I just always put the restaurant's name in quotes, so as to differentiate the real restaurant from my own interpretation of it?
In this (sous-vide) pressure-cooker environment, I try to inject levity as artfully as "sauce Mornay" is piped into pâte à choux:
Artless Kitchen Server: So the "tagliatelle" is basically blanched celery root sliced into "ribbons," so it looks like pasta, then...
Me: So it's not tagliatelle per se...
AKS: Well it's the "celeriac tagliatelle"...
I've quickly learned this is not a good idea, and to focus instead on my "intensity" and "finesse." The confidentiality agreement I signed, while not per se invalid per se, I'm pretty sure amounts to nothing; what if I just always put the restaurant's name in quotes, so as to differentiate the real restaurant from my own interpretation of it?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
no mas
Motherfuckers at Mas(farmhouse) never called me back; was it because I dropped the bread? Now I drop resumes on the daily, still jobless but feeling less like Job. I sent an inquiry to Thomas Keller's restaurant, though I'm not "qualified," per se. I apply myself gradually. I state my purpose all day, but it always ends up more of a question.
At my local vegan coffee shop everyone wears their hats. The fat man tutors Spanish, often says "Muy bien!" The redheaded counterperson wears suspenders. A girl with socks higher than her boots requests a Steamed Pumpkin Soy Soother, conscientiously capitalizing. But whenever you offer a soothing suggestion to someone kranky for rheumatic reasons, you end up just steaming them.
Leah: You should boil quince pits and drink the water, it heals the respitory system.
Krank (cruelly): Oh yeah that's perfect, because I have quince growing in my garden at home!?!?!?!
Puns: What a quinceodince!
He hated that. But I wasn't trying to be funny, it's just that when's the last time "coincidence" coincided with another word? I realize this is unacceptable; I'm working on more Leah content.
At my local vegan coffee shop everyone wears their hats. The fat man tutors Spanish, often says "Muy bien!" The redheaded counterperson wears suspenders. A girl with socks higher than her boots requests a Steamed Pumpkin Soy Soother, conscientiously capitalizing. But whenever you offer a soothing suggestion to someone kranky for rheumatic reasons, you end up just steaming them.
Leah: You should boil quince pits and drink the water, it heals the respitory system.
Krank (cruelly): Oh yeah that's perfect, because I have quince growing in my garden at home!?!?!?!
Puns: What a quinceodince!
He hated that. But I wasn't trying to be funny, it's just that when's the last time "coincidence" coincided with another word? I realize this is unacceptable; I'm working on more Leah content.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
eastville west
I've been in America about a month. I work at a restaurant called Mas, more or less. I've learned to serve bread with makeshift tongs fashioned of two forks, to align the silverware slate with the napkin ring, but that may not be enough. At home I cook kale & hearty soups and apply to hedge fund jobs. My mom alerts me to news items relating Wall Street to high modernism. I hone my communication skills. I self-start.
In these lean times I mince my words, I hedge my puns. I'm reading a book about text messaging, as if anyone read books anymore. New York puts one in mind of verticality; nowhere else are the metaphors Up and Down so literal. Little value is placed on simultaneity, on repetition. I feel hedged in. Maybe I'll become more of a quant, or obsessed with death (again).
In these lean times I mince my words, I hedge my puns. I'm reading a book about text messaging, as if anyone read books anymore. New York puts one in mind of verticality; nowhere else are the metaphors Up and Down so literal. Little value is placed on simultaneity, on repetition. I feel hedged in. Maybe I'll become more of a quant, or obsessed with death (again).
Thursday, July 31, 2008
miracle at canna
Every day I go to work, twice. I am reprimanded for failing to say Bonjour, Bonsoir, Ca Va to each member of the equipe individually, for using the passive voice. Yesterday I ate most of a small early pumpkin. Today I ate lunch in a mosque…I have the profound sense I don’t do anything.
And yet I traverse great distances, I wind up on staircases. I carry bags of bread from the bakery, tourists point and tell each other, “Look! Very Traditional.” The ground around the arena is blanketed with rotting leaves, soccer balls pound against the walls, bugs bite me and I feel I am becoming part of this pit of History. Various members of the equipe don’t understand how I drink 10 1.5 litre bottles of Vittel a day, I don’t understand how they don’t. I used to just fill up the same bottle from the robinet, I hate wasting plastic, but it tasted too animal, vegetable, my neural pathways needed something more, and it is precisely this sense of profligacy that makes water a little more like wine…it’s Leah’s birthday, what cann I do?
And yet I traverse great distances, I wind up on staircases. I carry bags of bread from the bakery, tourists point and tell each other, “Look! Very Traditional.” The ground around the arena is blanketed with rotting leaves, soccer balls pound against the walls, bugs bite me and I feel I am becoming part of this pit of History. Various members of the equipe don’t understand how I drink 10 1.5 litre bottles of Vittel a day, I don’t understand how they don’t. I used to just fill up the same bottle from the robinet, I hate wasting plastic, but it tasted too animal, vegetable, my neural pathways needed something more, and it is precisely this sense of profligacy that makes water a little more like wine…it’s Leah’s birthday, what cann I do?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
jardin de l'internet
I've made little progress. I do yoga. At work when no one's looking I pique some pickled ginger and it piques right back, my body-mind commits speech acts all day but I remain the abject object of my own affectation. I use the internet at an ancient Roman arena where now kids play kickball. But I've transcended the internet...it's not even real. These days I'm more interested in virtual internets, like the restaurant. I have recurring dreams the premise and promise of which is repetition; three chefs turn out plate after plate in the Jardin du Luxembourg as I run laps, pausing every so often to set paper napkins on bread plates.
Dear Abou's gone to New York to become an avocat, my cabinet is empty, and if no one comes to me chercher at midnight tonight my Coach might turn into a kadu. Mao pouts her red lips, promises "ça va aller, chouchou," offers me a chocolate. I smear red cabbage with avocado. The (black) kitchen staff asks me if I know Barack Obama, if I would like to visit Africa in October, shut up I'm busy setting paper napkins on bread plates.
Only two weeks left of work, praise be to Allah or ardor, it adds up. I amble along Rue Monge, Adderall-addled, I mange almonds, apples, avocados, all AB. I feel awesome sometimes, awful full-time. I'd assign my body-mind the name Brother Assonance, barring bad associations, adding bar associations (to set, to raise, to pass, to drink).
Dear Abou's gone to New York to become an avocat, my cabinet is empty, and if no one comes to me chercher at midnight tonight my Coach might turn into a kadu. Mao pouts her red lips, promises "ça va aller, chouchou," offers me a chocolate. I smear red cabbage with avocado. The (black) kitchen staff asks me if I know Barack Obama, if I would like to visit Africa in October, shut up I'm busy setting paper napkins on bread plates.
Only two weeks left of work, praise be to Allah or ardor, it adds up. I amble along Rue Monge, Adderall-addled, I mange almonds, apples, avocados, all AB. I feel awesome sometimes, awful full-time. I'd assign my body-mind the name Brother Assonance, barring bad associations, adding bar associations (to set, to raise, to pass, to drink).
Friday, July 4, 2008
chaque matin, pour gagner mon pain
Paris is Paris, business is business; I've spent the last week and a half tying bundles of nine napkins up with a tenth. I work at a cozy cafe with a bibliophilic bent and an archetypal staff. To give only one example, the soi-disant Madame Martine celebrated her last day before (forced?) retirement by making off with a client's sparkly shoes and belting out, hands in air, head thrown back, "C'est la luuuuut-te finale!" To give another, the Marseillais chef with the mane and snarl of a wild horse of Camargue sings slightly vulgar folk ballads and speaks only in improvised aphorisms. Everyone treats me like a strange animal whose genetic proximity to humans is unclear, handling me very gently and with only an optimistic expectation of sentience. At the same time I have the sense that someone has paid them to entertain me, with the predictable effect of skewing my perception of subject/object relations. We can see the Eiffel Tower from our window. At night it blinks wildly or turns blue...why?
Sunday, June 1, 2008
sex ex post facto
These past few weeks I've been negotiating the fragile economy of the familial and the strange. I barely know my extended family but lately I've being seeing them a lot, relatively. My mother has dreams that someone is suing us, they just keep suing us, it's unreasonable, what does it mean? After my grandmothers go to bed we have long talks about marriage, tax, how women can't have it all. I know the entire corpus of community property.
Last night we saw "Sex and the City" with my cousine gamine. Mom liked it because the girls are Just Like Us: they buy expensive shoes, but they check out library books! After her nth glass of wine I was as short of temper as she was short on temperance and unleashed a half-hearted but full-throated invective about how the film was nothing but a delivery system for commodities (clothes, bodies) and how Miranda failed to "read Steve like a text," because people aren't made up of pros and cons but rather of prose and cons ("aw sweetie you made a little joke! good for you!"), i.e. texts and performances...at which point my mom muttered, "Everything is a text to you, isn't it," in the same tone in which she said I wouldn't appreciate "Eat, Pray, Love," because I haven't lived enough. Tomorrow I'll probably see the movie again and try to take a surreptitious camera phone picture of Warren Buffett's house, again.
Now on to sports: Lakers and Celtics, like the old days!
Last night we saw "Sex and the City" with my cousine gamine. Mom liked it because the girls are Just Like Us: they buy expensive shoes, but they check out library books! After her nth glass of wine I was as short of temper as she was short on temperance and unleashed a half-hearted but full-throated invective about how the film was nothing but a delivery system for commodities (clothes, bodies) and how Miranda failed to "read Steve like a text," because people aren't made up of pros and cons but rather of prose and cons ("aw sweetie you made a little joke! good for you!"), i.e. texts and performances...at which point my mom muttered, "Everything is a text to you, isn't it," in the same tone in which she said I wouldn't appreciate "Eat, Pray, Love," because I haven't lived enough. Tomorrow I'll probably see the movie again and try to take a surreptitious camera phone picture of Warren Buffett's house, again.
Now on to sports: Lakers and Celtics, like the old days!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Last Lecture
On the bus between Gatwick and Heathrow I talked to a Texan married to an English accountant living in Romania, which is full of feral dogs; she has to walk with a stick.
For Mother's Day I went to Minnesota, where my mother made a whole set of chip and vegetable dips and then tried to make an "Obama Girl" of my father's 88-year-old mother from Mississippi. We did women's work: cooking, cleaning, and worrying in hushed tones over my grandmother. My cousin came over with his babies, who have the biggest heads. My estranged aunt took me shopping; she's on the blood type diet.
LA has been subject to some wacky weather. Hydration is my ardor and my arbor, but when I drink coffee the task becomes all but arduous. I sit on the floor of my room amongst all the wreckage I've accumulated in my life, begin to sort through it, and, overwhelmed by a heavy feeling that it's all too easy to go home again, break into heaving sanglots de fou. Costco brand green tea's got me trippin like ritalin, when it's ready it looks like a swamp. In each package, underneath the nylon sachet, lies an excess sprinkling of fine green powder, I rub it on my gums.
For Mother's Day I went to Minnesota, where my mother made a whole set of chip and vegetable dips and then tried to make an "Obama Girl" of my father's 88-year-old mother from Mississippi. We did women's work: cooking, cleaning, and worrying in hushed tones over my grandmother. My cousin came over with his babies, who have the biggest heads. My estranged aunt took me shopping; she's on the blood type diet.
LA has been subject to some wacky weather. Hydration is my ardor and my arbor, but when I drink coffee the task becomes all but arduous. I sit on the floor of my room amongst all the wreckage I've accumulated in my life, begin to sort through it, and, overwhelmed by a heavy feeling that it's all too easy to go home again, break into heaving sanglots de fou. Costco brand green tea's got me trippin like ritalin, when it's ready it looks like a swamp. In each package, underneath the nylon sachet, lies an excess sprinkling of fine green powder, I rub it on my gums.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
ma petite non
With the boys off at the front, Manon and I are spending some time entre filles this weekend...so far I've subversively eaten some of her taboule orientale and turned up the TV while she was on the phone; maybe tonight we'll have a soirée pyjama. She resembles more and more the little Russian countesses in War and Peace, shrieking and clenching her tiny fists when she doesn't get her way, or wandering the apartment with big, empty eyes, mouth slightly agape. She doesn't even seem to get any pleasure out of her music anymore...the blasts from her clock radio at all hours are technically correct, but lacking in feeling. I've learned a lot about the human condition from reading Tolstoy, and I think she's probably upset because not one of the young men who frequent our apartment has proposed to her. She's not a brilliant match, but...she has such nice eyelashes, and a dainty little brain, and it can't be denied that elle fait un effort:
Aujourd'hui
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 10:26
Damien Irving
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 10:26
Simran Paras
Manon a ajouté l'application Who Has The Biggest Brain?. 11:18
18 avril
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Daniel Holms
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Webster MsG
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Damien Irving
15 avril
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Sudhanshu Verma
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Don Cooney
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Adrien Poitou
13 avril
Manon voted for these friends on Most Eligible Singles. 14:58
Schoebel Vincent
Manon a changé sa photo du profil. 14:58
Manon a ajouté l'application Most Eligible Singles. 14:47
I tell her every day, "Ma puce, marriages are made in heaven," but she insists that they are made on the Internet, which, she reasons, is shaped like heaven.
Aujourd'hui
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 10:26
Damien Irving
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 10:26
Simran Paras
Manon a ajouté l'application Who Has The Biggest Brain?. 11:18
18 avril
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Daniel Holms
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Webster MsG
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 20:48
Damien Irving
15 avril
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Sudhanshu Verma
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Don Cooney
Manon voted for these singles on Most Eligible Singles. 19:44
Adrien Poitou
13 avril
Manon voted for these friends on Most Eligible Singles. 14:58
Schoebel Vincent
Manon a changé sa photo du profil. 14:58
Manon a ajouté l'application Most Eligible Singles. 14:47
I tell her every day, "Ma puce, marriages are made in heaven," but she insists that they are made on the Internet, which, she reasons, is shaped like heaven.
Friday, April 25, 2008
phonophage
Without the Internet in my apartment, my life is only mediated a medium amount, but I make do with metalanguage. A viellard sold me a weathered one-euro copy of Ulysse for fitty cent, because "vous êtes jeune." I watch Le Mépris most nights.
Last weekend Jennie, Jen, Alexandre and I made vegetarian meals à la provençale, tanned on the terrasse, and (almost) went to a beautiful island. Jen and I struggled nightly with the clic-clac:
Me: Clic!
Jen: Clac?
Me: Did it clic?
Jen: Yeah but…how do we make it clac?
Alexandre: Mais putain, hit recline!
I told my kids my “un œuf” joke, once they unscrambled the French and the English they seemed to get it. Then they offered me one of their own; unfortunately, l’anglais a effacé l’anglais:
Man arab meets woman english, he dit, he says, You want do party with me tonight? She says, Never! He says, I cannot do never, but never et demi?
Eventually I got the pun on “never”/“neuf heures,” but...it was too late. Soon after this a friendly feud broke out between two boys who usually agree on everything (“We have already fuck,” “Sometimes we like films pornos,” etc):
Subira: I am African!
Mel: I am Asian!
Subira: I am African!
Mel: …
…I think that was it. My girls meanwhile were doodling, giggling, as I approached covered their paper but begged me, “S’il te plait, dessine-nous un sexe, on n’en a jamais vu!” I drew them one…it was beautiful, perfect color.
You can never go home again, but Romain has gone to Rome again (so homonym), meaning I will never see him again until he joins Facebook. On the way to our romaintic farewell dinner which we let Marwan come to, he remarked how there was no one around at night in Marseille, and feeling this was a good time to parody/perpetuate racism, I dutifully and ominously replied, “Sauf les Arabes!” Romain loved this, and, feigning fear, warned, “Y a des Mabouds partout!”, which Marwan (not Arab) loved too.
Last weekend Jennie, Jen, Alexandre and I made vegetarian meals à la provençale, tanned on the terrasse, and (almost) went to a beautiful island. Jen and I struggled nightly with the clic-clac:
Me: Clic!
Jen: Clac?
Me: Did it clic?
Jen: Yeah but…how do we make it clac?
Alexandre: Mais putain, hit recline!
I told my kids my “un œuf” joke, once they unscrambled the French and the English they seemed to get it. Then they offered me one of their own; unfortunately, l’anglais a effacé l’anglais:
Man arab meets woman english, he dit, he says, You want do party with me tonight? She says, Never! He says, I cannot do never, but never et demi?
Eventually I got the pun on “never”/“neuf heures,” but...it was too late. Soon after this a friendly feud broke out between two boys who usually agree on everything (“We have already fuck,” “Sometimes we like films pornos,” etc):
Subira: I am African!
Mel: I am Asian!
Subira: I am African!
Mel: …
…I think that was it. My girls meanwhile were doodling, giggling, as I approached covered their paper but begged me, “S’il te plait, dessine-nous un sexe, on n’en a jamais vu!” I drew them one…it was beautiful, perfect color.
You can never go home again, but Romain has gone to Rome again (so homonym), meaning I will never see him again until he joins Facebook. On the way to our romaintic farewell dinner which we let Marwan come to, he remarked how there was no one around at night in Marseille, and feeling this was a good time to parody/perpetuate racism, I dutifully and ominously replied, “Sauf les Arabes!” Romain loved this, and, feigning fear, warned, “Y a des Mabouds partout!”, which Marwan (not Arab) loved too.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Le problème avec Leah
Who said it?
Peter Brooks or "Norman Bronzino."
1) "Je suis convaincu qu'il n'y a pas de pédagogie sans érotisme...il me semble qu'on n'apprend vraiment bien que des professeurs dont on est amoureux."
2) "I want to talk mainly about bodies emblazoned with meaning within the field of desire, desire that is originally and always, with whatever sublimations, sexual, but also by extension the desire to know .... The desire to know is constructed from sexual desire and curiosity."
3) "J'ai écrit un roman. [...] Personne ne me reconnaîtra: je pouvais tout dire. Et c'est plein du sexe."
4) "Katie, the only problem with this paper is, I want to know more..."
Answer bank: Peter Brooks
Peter Brooks or "Norman Bronzino."
1) "Je suis convaincu qu'il n'y a pas de pédagogie sans érotisme...il me semble qu'on n'apprend vraiment bien que des professeurs dont on est amoureux."
2) "I want to talk mainly about bodies emblazoned with meaning within the field of desire, desire that is originally and always, with whatever sublimations, sexual, but also by extension the desire to know .... The desire to know is constructed from sexual desire and curiosity."
3) "J'ai écrit un roman. [...] Personne ne me reconnaîtra: je pouvais tout dire. Et c'est plein du sexe."
4) "Katie, the only problem with this paper is, I want to know more..."
Answer bank: Peter Brooks
Männersmittel
The later capitalism gets, the more I realize das Leben ist kein Ponyhof, die Honig-Waffeln sind Honig-Waffen, and my Hosen have Hosen (for real...Berlin was at times cold enough to warrant two pairs of pants). But I'm embracing the modern media of mediation, whether it's delicious Antioxidantsmittel ("medium for transmitting antioxidants") or my Gesichtebuchmachine ("computer"), either bei Thorsten or at the post-pretentious cafe that, despite its best intentions, is quite the Ponyhof. What kind of mediation-savvy idiot-savant goes on vacation just to go on the Internet, right?
Jamie: i think i'm in the right place
as soon as i entered the ponyhof, i heard someone say "normativo" in italian
2:14 PM me: hey i need to get off my facebookmachine
where should i go?
Jamie: ok===you should leave kreuzberg
go to the holocaust memorial
me: where is that?
Jamie: its right near the brandenburg tor
on a road that goes south perpindicular
2:15 PM to the tor
its actually on hannah arendt straße if i remember coorectly
then you go see some other cool stuff
and definitely check out Dussmann
2:16 PM its the four storez book / music store
me: ohhh hannah ARENDT strasse
At the Holocaust Memorial children were playing a game of cache-cache (not cacher!). Jamie and I capitalized on the generosity of a German Jew ("Not many left you know! All in America! Universities! You want coffee?") in his trendy boutique.
Ron: You like this store? Or you think it has changed for bad?
Jamie: No, it's super!!
Ron: Thanks God!
Me (loudly, looking at shoes): Jamie I love this Shoah!!
Jamie: I think you mean Schuhe.
When we left, skinny jeans in tow, he said with a conspiratorial flash of rotting teeth, "You come back, we have party." Disconcerting, because his skin was so clear, and the whites of his eyes so white...also, I don't even like to have party.
To make sure gender roles stayed normativo, I again provided Lebensmittel for the Männer, who earnestly but not without the aid of webcomics sought to understand the economies...now when my kids ask me "Madame, c'est quoi le subprime mortgage crisis?", I'll know what to say.
Chris: With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.
Jamie: But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?
Me: Can I have some more wine?
Chris: It really started in 1998, when large numbers of people decided that real estate, which still hadn’t recovered from the early 1990s slump, had become a bargain.
Me (sotto): Make it schloss, make it schloss, make it schloss am dem Hose...
Jamie: Bubbles lead to busts. Busts lead to panics. And panics can lead to long, deep economic downturns, which is why the Fed has been taking unprecedented actions to restore confidence.
Me: Hey do you guys ever feel like women are just vessels for homosocial relations between men?
Back in Marseille I’m feeling better, like neither a phage nor a vessel, but I’m eaten up by a deadening self-referentiality, my (literal [physical] and literal [textual]) body become both subject and object. Metaphor’s a metaphage, it consumes itself to the point of anorexic finitude….what’s all this meta for, anyway?
Jamie: i think i'm in the right place
as soon as i entered the ponyhof, i heard someone say "normativo" in italian
2:14 PM me: hey i need to get off my facebookmachine
where should i go?
Jamie: ok===you should leave kreuzberg
go to the holocaust memorial
me: where is that?
Jamie: its right near the brandenburg tor
on a road that goes south perpindicular
2:15 PM to the tor
its actually on hannah arendt straße if i remember coorectly
then you go see some other cool stuff
and definitely check out Dussmann
2:16 PM its the four storez book / music store
me: ohhh hannah ARENDT strasse
At the Holocaust Memorial children were playing a game of cache-cache (not cacher!). Jamie and I capitalized on the generosity of a German Jew ("Not many left you know! All in America! Universities! You want coffee?") in his trendy boutique.
Ron: You like this store? Or you think it has changed for bad?
Jamie: No, it's super!!
Ron: Thanks God!
Me (loudly, looking at shoes): Jamie I love this Shoah!!
Jamie: I think you mean Schuhe.
When we left, skinny jeans in tow, he said with a conspiratorial flash of rotting teeth, "You come back, we have party." Disconcerting, because his skin was so clear, and the whites of his eyes so white...also, I don't even like to have party.
To make sure gender roles stayed normativo, I again provided Lebensmittel for the Männer, who earnestly but not without the aid of webcomics sought to understand the economies...now when my kids ask me "Madame, c'est quoi le subprime mortgage crisis?", I'll know what to say.
Chris: With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.
Jamie: But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?
Me: Can I have some more wine?
Chris: It really started in 1998, when large numbers of people decided that real estate, which still hadn’t recovered from the early 1990s slump, had become a bargain.
Me (sotto): Make it schloss, make it schloss, make it schloss am dem Hose...
Jamie: Bubbles lead to busts. Busts lead to panics. And panics can lead to long, deep economic downturns, which is why the Fed has been taking unprecedented actions to restore confidence.
Me: Hey do you guys ever feel like women are just vessels for homosocial relations between men?
Back in Marseille I’m feeling better, like neither a phage nor a vessel, but I’m eaten up by a deadening self-referentiality, my (literal [physical] and literal [textual]) body become both subject and object. Metaphor’s a metaphage, it consumes itself to the point of anorexic finitude….what’s all this meta for, anyway?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Sonnenstudium
Je hais les dimanches, but daylight savings last Sunday provided for an hour less day and an hour more sun. Monday was l’Annonciation, when Marie gave her fiat, c’est-à-dire son “oui” libre, sans contrainte ni réserve, a text tantamount to sex, for in nine months’ time the Son was born (Romain, I’m sure, views his Fiat in similar terms). True or false: if Marwan provided this exigesis for his Catholic girlfriend, who is named Marie, she would realize that the prohibition of premarital sex is not necessarily catholic, and she can make an exception. Answer: True, because Marwan is Actually a God.
I'm in Berlin now, pursuing my career as a digital performance artist (literally), i.e. constructing my identity on the internet until my digits bleed. I cooked dinner for Jamie and Chris while they swilled red wine and discussed mediation, gender roles, how godlessness will get you nowhere and other Stuff Aristocratic Liberals Like. They've gone off drinking and won't be back until late capitalism. My interactions with Thorsten, the landlord, have been limited but rich.
Thorsten (breathing heavily behind me): Hallo!!
Me (turning quickly as fear turns to joy): Oh...hi!
Thorsten (toothy): Hi!
Me: So...lot of rain, huh? I'm trying to be positive, but...I could really use a trip to the Sonnenstudio.
Thorsten: Ja! Sky like porridge!
The Girlfriend: Hallo, I'm The Girlfriend, Dogma. Do You have everything for Your comfort?
Unclear whether she meant "I'm Thorsten's girlfriend, my name is Dogma," or "I am The Girlfriend, not just a girlfriend. I'm no positivist...I'm the girlfriend: [this is] dogma"...we could have sworn her name was Teresa.
I guess I should profiter de Berlin, but it just makes me miss the Hohepunkte and Cocktails-To-Go I enjoyed that summer with kleine Hannah...during my days I just follow the wall, fall into a daze and hear, italicized, in my head, nostalgie, ostalgie, faux-stalgie, ho-stalgie, lost-algie...
I'm in Berlin now, pursuing my career as a digital performance artist (literally), i.e. constructing my identity on the internet until my digits bleed. I cooked dinner for Jamie and Chris while they swilled red wine and discussed mediation, gender roles, how godlessness will get you nowhere and other Stuff Aristocratic Liberals Like. They've gone off drinking and won't be back until late capitalism. My interactions with Thorsten, the landlord, have been limited but rich.
Thorsten (breathing heavily behind me): Hallo!!
Me (turning quickly as fear turns to joy): Oh...hi!
Thorsten (toothy): Hi!
Me: So...lot of rain, huh? I'm trying to be positive, but...I could really use a trip to the Sonnenstudio.
Thorsten: Ja! Sky like porridge!
The Girlfriend: Hallo, I'm The Girlfriend, Dogma. Do You have everything for Your comfort?
Unclear whether she meant "I'm Thorsten's girlfriend, my name is Dogma," or "I am The Girlfriend, not just a girlfriend. I'm no positivist...I'm the girlfriend: [this is] dogma"...we could have sworn her name was Teresa.
I guess I should profiter de Berlin, but it just makes me miss the Hohepunkte and Cocktails-To-Go I enjoyed that summer with kleine Hannah...during my days I just follow the wall, fall into a daze and hear, italicized, in my head, nostalgie, ostalgie, faux-stalgie, ho-stalgie, lost-algie...
Friday, March 28, 2008
passé simple
Across the street from my apartment is a bar ouvrier, always ouvert, which makes me feel less bougie without having to bouger to such vivant milieux as the poor immigrant neighborhood of Noailles. Once, as I was panting up the final hill of a long Mistral-whipped run, a burly arm stretched out from the patio to offer me a full glass of pastis...why didn't I take it? Today, thirsting for authenticity, I dropped in to ironically (?) caffeinate my nascent nihilism and entertained several auditions for the blog.
These days the blog game reminds me of the crack game, which reminds me of Flaubert's cracked cauldron and my stress-fractured foot (I ran too hard, droit au but), which stresses me out...also, as they say in France, I don't care, particularly. But, desperate to go home again, I succumbed to a soi-disant apocalyptic poet whose clichés matched my coffee and cigarette. He asked what I was writing in my carnet; "Je me considère comme bloggeuse..." Nonplussed (literally [conventionally] but not literally [à la lettre]...he could, in fact, have withstood bien plus), he waxed poetic about his own poetry, "lourde, lourde! et noire, noire comme le charbon," because "le cœur de l'homme est dur comme une pierre," and "l'homme est un loup pour l'homme"...he and he alone is on "le bon cheming." Putaing! Though he repeatedly posited that he was "positif," he was positively no positivist: "Les hommes imitent les femmes, les femmes imitent les hommes," he intoned, and this is why the world will end pretty soon ("Bombe! Bombe! Bombe!"). "Mais la sexualité est un continuum..." He just squinted one-eyed into the sun, and muttered something like "la fin du monde viendra avec un clin d'œil"...which is a metonym, I think.
Confronted with such fatalism, I donned dark glasses, lit another cigarette, cocked my head in a cute way, and couldn't help but wonder: what (besides no panties and jeans, no bra with that blouse, etc.) is really so necessary? I find simplistic fatalism makes a fat out of you, you might as well argue the essential link between l'être and la lettre, but enough...I should really stop smoking; je fume, tu fumes, nous fûmes...
These days the blog game reminds me of the crack game, which reminds me of Flaubert's cracked cauldron and my stress-fractured foot (I ran too hard, droit au but), which stresses me out...also, as they say in France, I don't care, particularly. But, desperate to go home again, I succumbed to a soi-disant apocalyptic poet whose clichés matched my coffee and cigarette. He asked what I was writing in my carnet; "Je me considère comme bloggeuse..." Nonplussed (literally [conventionally] but not literally [à la lettre]...he could, in fact, have withstood bien plus), he waxed poetic about his own poetry, "lourde, lourde! et noire, noire comme le charbon," because "le cœur de l'homme est dur comme une pierre," and "l'homme est un loup pour l'homme"...he and he alone is on "le bon cheming." Putaing! Though he repeatedly posited that he was "positif," he was positively no positivist: "Les hommes imitent les femmes, les femmes imitent les hommes," he intoned, and this is why the world will end pretty soon ("Bombe! Bombe! Bombe!"). "Mais la sexualité est un continuum..." He just squinted one-eyed into the sun, and muttered something like "la fin du monde viendra avec un clin d'œil"...which is a metonym, I think.
Confronted with such fatalism, I donned dark glasses, lit another cigarette, cocked my head in a cute way, and couldn't help but wonder: what (besides no panties and jeans, no bra with that blouse, etc.) is really so necessary? I find simplistic fatalism makes a fat out of you, you might as well argue the essential link between l'être and la lettre, but enough...I should really stop smoking; je fume, tu fumes, nous fûmes...
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Marthaseille
My parents are here, which makes me feel alternately like a long-suffering native and an insufferable tourist. I've spent all week shuttling, à la marwanienne, between their bourgeois enclave in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, weakly weaving the threads of my life for their benefit and letting them unravel as I go back towards the looming beacon of Notre Dame de la Garde.
Before I went running last week, I joked to Marwan that I was going to smoke immediately afterwards, pour équilibrer, and by that gesture which inverts Romance to Realism, a gesture that, pour équilibrer, is itself Romantic, he literally had a perfect pétard waiting for me when I came back. This gave me a dangerous sense of my own power over him, such that these past two weekends when he has stood up me and my parents to go to work at Quick Quality Burger Restaurant, I'm more than un peu deçue, mostly because this conversation will never happen:
Marwan: Hello mister how are you yes I am fine, you do what in your life??
Dad: Well Marwan, I'm an employment lawyer.
Marwan: Sérieux?
My linguistic relations with my mother and everyone else remain emphatically phatic, and the longer I live in a foreign country and the more I watch this video the more I'm convinced that contentment lies in communicating without content, or at least devaluing content, and eating organic vegetables. I understand my students' extra-academic exchanges only when they turn meta, when someone thinks to whisper "Mais chuuuut, elle comprend ce que tu dis!", and, by an operation of metonymy, I can pretend that this is true. I asked young Yasmine if she knew what the message emblazoned on her t-shirt, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HOOKERS, meant; she mimed the action of hanging a coat on a hook, repeatedly, despairing that I would never grasp the concept...after a while I said Yes, Exactly.
Before I went running last week, I joked to Marwan that I was going to smoke immediately afterwards, pour équilibrer, and by that gesture which inverts Romance to Realism, a gesture that, pour équilibrer, is itself Romantic, he literally had a perfect pétard waiting for me when I came back. This gave me a dangerous sense of my own power over him, such that these past two weekends when he has stood up me and my parents to go to work at Quick Quality Burger Restaurant, I'm more than un peu deçue, mostly because this conversation will never happen:
Marwan: Hello mister how are you yes I am fine, you do what in your life??
Dad: Well Marwan, I'm an employment lawyer.
Marwan: Sérieux?
My linguistic relations with my mother and everyone else remain emphatically phatic, and the longer I live in a foreign country and the more I watch this video the more I'm convinced that contentment lies in communicating without content, or at least devaluing content, and eating organic vegetables. I understand my students' extra-academic exchanges only when they turn meta, when someone thinks to whisper "Mais chuuuut, elle comprend ce que tu dis!", and, by an operation of metonymy, I can pretend that this is true. I asked young Yasmine if she knew what the message emblazoned on her t-shirt, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL HOOKERS, meant; she mimed the action of hanging a coat on a hook, repeatedly, despairing that I would never grasp the concept...after a while I said Yes, Exactly.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Anatole France Nightmare
Asked "What would you do if you had one day to live?", my Asiangs were the most vocal respondents:
Jianjang: I would...rechercher...wanted! a boyfriends
Chinois: I shoot M. LeBoulaire, I shoot him him him, I rape many girls, I rob bank, I go in supermarket and voler video games, I apport them au ciel!!
Jianjang: I would...rechercher...wanted! a boyfriends
Chinois: I shoot M. LeBoulaire, I shoot him him him, I rape many girls, I rob bank, I go in supermarket and voler video games, I apport them au ciel!!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
oui-dire
I'm trying to be more positive...at the risk of sounding positivist, I've afforded every utterance a physical, mental, or literal "yes", a sort of sic (sick!) to affirm the existence of language qua language, irrespective of the validity of its content.
I tried to parlay this attitude to my students with a game of gradual linguistic distortion called Telephone, or téléphone arabe (their words, not mine), but the orthodoxy of errancy upset my littlest ones. To my delight my older kids quickly began to treat the game as an opportunity to commit varying degrees of speech acts, and pretty little Khadidja slyly modified "I Love You" to "I Fuck You." Khadidja was already my favorite, because during a pre-Valentine's Day speed-dating activity she insisted--just to be sexy--on dating girls, but with this affirmed commitment to sexual and textual errancy I want to lock her in my room until she causes me unspeakable epistemological agony (sorry BA, not feeling the Proust content?). But enough, this is beginning to sound like my senior essay...
To help my 13-year-olds with their pronouns I made them ask each other, "What do you want me to do?", which got pretty freaky:
"We want Olivier to dance on the chair!"
"We want Juliette to do striptease!"
"We want Julien to kiss Katie!"
"We want Chinois [not his actual name, I'm pretty sure] to do math calculation!"
"No striptease?!? Mais Madame...!!! OK, we want Juliette to montrer son torse"
Incidentally French children are slightly worse at asking to go to the bathroom than they are at understanding "Do You Understand?", and it was all Olivier could do to request "please go Ladies and Gentlemen?" I let him go, but only after explaining that apparently his chair-dance routine, rather than deconstructing the Lacanian Ur-binary of gender difference, had only reinforced it with the absurdity of its inversion. But enough...
I'm trying to dire "oui" with my roommates, too. I got them T-shirts, which they loved, because the French don't even have a word for T-shirt. The other week I think I heard, out of context, Marwan reassuring a tearful Manon that the things you overhear are sometimes "hors du contexte"...but this is all just ouï-dire, and yesterday she even invited me to a dinner party entre filles; she's making couscouscouscouscouscous
I need a job post-fin avril, possibilities suggested by my students in a game of Categories include Bitch, FBI, Superman, Stripteaser...what do you want me to do?
I tried to parlay this attitude to my students with a game of gradual linguistic distortion called Telephone, or téléphone arabe (their words, not mine), but the orthodoxy of errancy upset my littlest ones. To my delight my older kids quickly began to treat the game as an opportunity to commit varying degrees of speech acts, and pretty little Khadidja slyly modified "I Love You" to "I Fuck You." Khadidja was already my favorite, because during a pre-Valentine's Day speed-dating activity she insisted--just to be sexy--on dating girls, but with this affirmed commitment to sexual and textual errancy I want to lock her in my room until she causes me unspeakable epistemological agony (sorry BA, not feeling the Proust content?). But enough, this is beginning to sound like my senior essay...
To help my 13-year-olds with their pronouns I made them ask each other, "What do you want me to do?", which got pretty freaky:
"We want Olivier to dance on the chair!"
"We want Juliette to do striptease!"
"We want Julien to kiss Katie!"
"We want Chinois [not his actual name, I'm pretty sure] to do math calculation!"
"No striptease?!? Mais Madame...!!! OK, we want Juliette to montrer son torse"
Incidentally French children are slightly worse at asking to go to the bathroom than they are at understanding "Do You Understand?", and it was all Olivier could do to request "please go Ladies and Gentlemen?" I let him go, but only after explaining that apparently his chair-dance routine, rather than deconstructing the Lacanian Ur-binary of gender difference, had only reinforced it with the absurdity of its inversion. But enough...
I'm trying to dire "oui" with my roommates, too. I got them T-shirts, which they loved, because the French don't even have a word for T-shirt. The other week I think I heard, out of context, Marwan reassuring a tearful Manon that the things you overhear are sometimes "hors du contexte"...but this is all just ouï-dire, and yesterday she even invited me to a dinner party entre filles; she's making couscouscouscouscouscous
I need a job post-fin avril, possibilities suggested by my students in a game of Categories include Bitch, FBI, Superman, Stripteaser...what do you want me to do?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
stds could build up mind-maps
The other day I missed Heath Ledger so I decided to celebrate Australia’s fête nationale, which marks not the independence but rather the colonization of Australia...my kind of party. On my way home the denizens of the poor immigrant neighborhood of Noailles (I prefer to think of it as “vivant”) started pointing at me in glee, the way we usually objectify and aestheticize them, and I was like yeah yeah I know franchement je suis ravissante but then I remembered I had Australian flag tattoos plastered on my face.
The next day, hungover and overcome with nausea, I skipped my private lesson, which considering my stated state should garner near-catholic sympathy; I duly protested when John questioned my work ethic. I'm really out of ideas for lesson plans. The ESL website I most frequent abbreviates "students" as "stds"...why?? The truth is the only thing I can stand to do with my students is teach them bad words, so they think I'm cool, or make them write and perform skits in which the sexual dynamics of the class will inevitably play out. For example, even after a casting announcement on the board titled RECHERCHE: BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, with fields for NAME, HEIGHT, POUNDS, SEXY OR NO?, and PRETE A AVOIR DES ENFANTS?, Yannick and Medy were forced to modify their script about UFOs:
Humain: Why you come in Earth?
Alien: For meet beautiful girls and make babies and some films.
Humain: OK, but only if I come too!!!
[...]
Humain: I am sorry, there are no beautiful girls. You want candys?
Meanwhile Manon, to help put that je ne sais quoi back in our relationship, has been leaving me little notes on my desk:
The messages warrant re-writing, literally, as they are not quite à la lettre:
“Nettoyer le bol de MANON! Ce n’est pas un cendrier”
“Faire la vaiselle [sic], tu n’est [sic] pas toute seule!”
I washed the stupid bowl, and am debating whether, risking sounding like an old gramaphonemanon, to re-post the notes with corrections and/or point out that the second note is doubly redundant: she's already told me to do the dishes, and evidently I don't live alone; see, the leaving of notes in and of itself establishes that. For revenge I ate one of her precious manondarines...when I peeled it the flesh was flecked with red striations, a veritable mandarine sanguine, which if not for my sanguine disposition might have struck me as ominous.
The next day, hungover and overcome with nausea, I skipped my private lesson, which considering my stated state should garner near-catholic sympathy; I duly protested when John questioned my work ethic. I'm really out of ideas for lesson plans. The ESL website I most frequent abbreviates "students" as "stds"...why?? The truth is the only thing I can stand to do with my students is teach them bad words, so they think I'm cool, or make them write and perform skits in which the sexual dynamics of the class will inevitably play out. For example, even after a casting announcement on the board titled RECHERCHE: BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, with fields for NAME, HEIGHT, POUNDS, SEXY OR NO?, and PRETE A AVOIR DES ENFANTS?, Yannick and Medy were forced to modify their script about UFOs:
Humain: Why you come in Earth?
Alien: For meet beautiful girls and make babies and some films.
Humain: OK, but only if I come too!!!
[...]
Humain: I am sorry, there are no beautiful girls. You want candys?
Meanwhile Manon, to help put that je ne sais quoi back in our relationship, has been leaving me little notes on my desk:
The messages warrant re-writing, literally, as they are not quite à la lettre:
“Nettoyer le bol de MANON! Ce n’est pas un cendrier”
“Faire la vaiselle [sic], tu n’est [sic] pas toute seule!”
I washed the stupid bowl, and am debating whether, risking sounding like an old gramaphonemanon, to re-post the notes with corrections and/or point out that the second note is doubly redundant: she's already told me to do the dishes, and evidently I don't live alone; see, the leaving of notes in and of itself establishes that. For revenge I ate one of her precious manondarines...when I peeled it the flesh was flecked with red striations, a veritable mandarine sanguine, which if not for my sanguine disposition might have struck me as ominous.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
epiphony
Newly branchée, the ethernet cord queuing from the living room to mine, I came home to find my cord curled up, forlorn, under the stairs…this happened several times. I prepared a speech to Manon, undoubtedly the architect of my unhappiness: “Je sais que ça te derange, mais…” Before I had a chance she explained that the WiFi didn’t work when I was plugged in, which sounded suspiciously impossible but I believed her like an idiot, though I mumbled “Mais je comprends pas…” just like my idiot students. Then Romain revealed that it was, in fact, a weird lie, and we gossiped about how chiante she is becoming…she is, he agrees, probably just hungry.
My salad days with Hannah were super cool, riche en noix and lubricated with Klonopin that may or may not have been lubricated with lube (sick!). After our daily salad we ate anana after hananah and fearfully used Manon’s hair straightener behind huis clos. In Paris we partied with Jennie and her set of diplomats’ sons, and Josh and Josh, homonymic if not homologous, shared a strawberry mojito and giggled over Josh K’s musical masterpieces (no homophony). Now Hannah’s gone, along with the rest of my ananas, and life is lacking in puns, palindromes, and antioccidental antioxidants. I bore some gâteau des rois from my school’s epiphenomenal Epiphany party and ate it on Rue des Trois Mages just for the sake of synchrony.
I’ve suffered an epitarsal injury and I can't even marcher to the marché, so I’ve been reading Ulysse gramophone with Manon’s frozen aubergines draped over my ankle, which would upset her so much if she knew. Derrida, though not nearly as good at puns as Hannah, or at nicknames as Liz, has indirectly inspired the surnom Phonemanon, for while Manon is only arguably le phénomène comme phonème, she is certainly on the phone a lot, and this excerpt from Finnegans Wake seems to aptly describe her babelistic, paralinguistic reign of terror in our once-happy home:
…and, moguphonoised by that phonemanon, the unhappitents of [12 bd Paul Claudel] have terrerumbled from firmament unto fundament and from tweedledeedumms down to twiddledeedees...
Mais non, she really is just hungry…I should offer her a Luna Bar, except I want them all for myself.
My salad days with Hannah were super cool, riche en noix and lubricated with Klonopin that may or may not have been lubricated with lube (sick!). After our daily salad we ate anana after hananah and fearfully used Manon’s hair straightener behind huis clos. In Paris we partied with Jennie and her set of diplomats’ sons, and Josh and Josh, homonymic if not homologous, shared a strawberry mojito and giggled over Josh K’s musical masterpieces (no homophony). Now Hannah’s gone, along with the rest of my ananas, and life is lacking in puns, palindromes, and antioccidental antioxidants. I bore some gâteau des rois from my school’s epiphenomenal Epiphany party and ate it on Rue des Trois Mages just for the sake of synchrony.
I’ve suffered an epitarsal injury and I can't even marcher to the marché, so I’ve been reading Ulysse gramophone with Manon’s frozen aubergines draped over my ankle, which would upset her so much if she knew. Derrida, though not nearly as good at puns as Hannah, or at nicknames as Liz, has indirectly inspired the surnom Phonemanon, for while Manon is only arguably le phénomène comme phonème, she is certainly on the phone a lot, and this excerpt from Finnegans Wake seems to aptly describe her babelistic, paralinguistic reign of terror in our once-happy home:
…and, moguphonoised by that phonemanon, the unhappitents of [12 bd Paul Claudel] have terrerumbled from firmament unto fundament and from tweedledeedumms down to twiddledeedees...
Mais non, she really is just hungry…I should offer her a Luna Bar, except I want them all for myself.
Monday, January 14, 2008
zeitlos
Lately the Light is back in Provence but I, having adopted certain conceits of the 19th-century English novel, am still misty-eyed and of dampened spirits. I’ve been suffering from a general fever of the nerves, as if Schubert’s mother’s ghost had come back from the grave and told me to stop being so relaxed. Last week in class I attained such an appalling pallor as to faint, I’m told, at the blackboard; today I wore my hair in peasant braids. I can’t help thinking I was the only one uninvited to the Facebook event of the season, “Feting Corie’s Anniversaire,” because my tainted history makes me unfit for such society…I would have made her a bomb-ass cake too, but for my delicate constitution.
I’m getting better at transliterating fragments of speech, but my character is still as graven as writing. The Mistral has lent my days a lyrical bent. I sleep at odd hours, even ones too...most of them, really. The infirmière at the lycée, perilously infirm herself, asked, “Tu t’es couchée de bonne heure?” and in my time-addled delirium I could only reply, “Longtemps…”
Meanwhile je me brouille avec mes brouillons brouillés…I can’t seem to get my stories straight. I spent my weekly arugula allowance on Stendhal’s De l’amour, so I’ll be living on love for a while. I can’t wait till Hannah comes so we can roast rabbit with the flavors of Provence and discuss the particulars of the Schengen states with Liz.
I’m getting better at transliterating fragments of speech, but my character is still as graven as writing. The Mistral has lent my days a lyrical bent. I sleep at odd hours, even ones too...most of them, really. The infirmière at the lycée, perilously infirm herself, asked, “Tu t’es couchée de bonne heure?” and in my time-addled delirium I could only reply, “Longtemps…”
Meanwhile je me brouille avec mes brouillons brouillés…I can’t seem to get my stories straight. I spent my weekly arugula allowance on Stendhal’s De l’amour, so I’ll be living on love for a while. I can’t wait till Hannah comes so we can roast rabbit with the flavors of Provence and discuss the particulars of the Schengen states with Liz.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
confessions (remix)
My holiday was of Barthesian proportions. Every Christmas Eve Norwegians indulge in the same meta-text, a 1920s British sketch of which the premise is ridiculous repetition. My Norwegian friends were dismissive of its aesthetic value...I was like "Those who only read a text once are condemned to read the same text over and over," they were like "Please, have some more Munchkügel."
In Vienna, keine kleine Eisbär, for that matter keine Kleine; but I'll have her soon enough. BA and I drank my favorite young grünern Veltlinern...ummm beautiful. And I learned to appreciate classical music; so relaxing! After not seeing the sun for a week, my seasonal affective and social anxiety disorders in full sad swing, I landed in the literally littoral Nice airport, the snow-capped Alps in crystalline view...then it started to rain.
Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville, so I've been reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles to the point of abstract distraction. It's slowly killing me with vague waves of guilt. Why must we confess?
witchiewoman_4 asks: Do you believe that a confession frees your soul from guilt?
thugsta_c199313 asks: it makes you feel better
thugsta_c199313 asks: i think its called guilt
Peter Brooks: A confession CAN free you from guilt-- it depends on the situation, and who it's made to.
girl_of_your_dreams_16 asks: hey what kind of confessions are we making in this room??
squishyboobies69696969 asks: i must confess i'm 11 and is pregnant cz i have been sexually raped
Sexycoolchic asks: I am in love with a man... he has a wife.
ctv_will: It seems people are almost eager to confess to some things. Do you agree? To what do you attribute this eagerness?
Peter Brooks: People are eager to confess. Confessions of all kinds now take place in public situations-- on TV, for instance.
Why? I think it's linked to that question of individual personality-- we don't feel we're real, authentic beings unless we have some secrets to confess.
In this sense, our modern culture of confessions develops from Rousseau and the Romantics, who first claimed that they had to expose their souls in order for us to know them fully.
In this spirit I asked my 13-year-olds for their New Year's Resolutions, which included to get married, to drive a Porsche, to get a good beautiful boyfriends, to smak [kiss] Zac Efron, to get in touch with my avocats...I was like good, great source of monounsaturated fats. My pathos was stirred by one little girl who wished for the New Year that her boyfriend would stop calling her "duck in sugar"..."He trouves it funny," she explained, pained, "but I do not."
I'm going to California in a month because I miss Starbucks...not even the baller 'bucks in Vienna could offer me Silk vanilla soymilk specially formulated to complement hot beverages. And Mom can't wait to take me to lunch in Culver City, that quartier is so hip right now!
In Vienna, keine kleine Eisbär, for that matter keine Kleine; but I'll have her soon enough. BA and I drank my favorite young grünern Veltlinern...ummm beautiful. And I learned to appreciate classical music; so relaxing! After not seeing the sun for a week, my seasonal affective and social anxiety disorders in full sad swing, I landed in the literally littoral Nice airport, the snow-capped Alps in crystalline view...then it started to rain.
Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville, so I've been reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles to the point of abstract distraction. It's slowly killing me with vague waves of guilt. Why must we confess?
witchiewoman_4 asks: Do you believe that a confession frees your soul from guilt?
thugsta_c199313 asks: it makes you feel better
thugsta_c199313 asks: i think its called guilt
Peter Brooks: A confession CAN free you from guilt-- it depends on the situation, and who it's made to.
girl_of_your_dreams_16 asks: hey what kind of confessions are we making in this room??
squishyboobies69696969 asks: i must confess i'm 11 and is pregnant cz i have been sexually raped
Sexycoolchic asks: I am in love with a man... he has a wife.
ctv_will: It seems people are almost eager to confess to some things. Do you agree? To what do you attribute this eagerness?
Peter Brooks: People are eager to confess. Confessions of all kinds now take place in public situations-- on TV, for instance.
Why? I think it's linked to that question of individual personality-- we don't feel we're real, authentic beings unless we have some secrets to confess.
In this sense, our modern culture of confessions develops from Rousseau and the Romantics, who first claimed that they had to expose their souls in order for us to know them fully.
In this spirit I asked my 13-year-olds for their New Year's Resolutions, which included to get married, to drive a Porsche, to get a good beautiful boyfriends, to smak [kiss] Zac Efron, to get in touch with my avocats...I was like good, great source of monounsaturated fats. My pathos was stirred by one little girl who wished for the New Year that her boyfriend would stop calling her "duck in sugar"..."He trouves it funny," she explained, pained, "but I do not."
I'm going to California in a month because I miss Starbucks...not even the baller 'bucks in Vienna could offer me Silk vanilla soymilk specially formulated to complement hot beverages. And Mom can't wait to take me to lunch in Culver City, that quartier is so hip right now!
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