Sian

I've been reading, agian.  This time, it's the Divine Comedy...  I'm reading it in parallell, which is to say that I have side-by-side English/Italian texts.  And this has been going fairly well, as far as the Inferno and the Purgatorio go.  The problem comes when you finally get to the Paradiso.  Namely, I'm having trouble finding a copy in parallell in town.  And I happen to like the whole ritual of walking into a book store, browsing for an hour or two, and ultimately leaving with a stack of crisp, clean books with pointy corners and slick covers.  I even like the human contact.  There is something reassuring about the fact that no matter where you are, or what bookstore you're in, the proprietor will invariably say something effervescent, outgoing, and somehow inappropriate.  I remember having a discussion about "Used" vs. "Previously owned" books when I was about twelve.  I buy used books--the kind with the previous owner's notes scribbled in the margins, the kind that fall open, automatically to the past owners' favorite passages.--and this guy was trying to convince me that his "previously owned" books were just as good as new.  A note to any of my professors who might be reading this--I will love you forever, if you leave me just one of your used books.  So I picked up a copy of the Pinsky translation, at the local bookstore, and was asked if I were reading it for class at the Community college (If I had been in a better mood, I probably would have taken this to mean that I look about eighteen...  I really didn't see it as a compliment.)  And then, when I bought the Purgatorio, for some reason, my roommate and I were talking about comic books, and Sandman came up, iliciting a long monologue on the author of those illustrious graphic novels of the eighties.  I'm really not that much of a fan, although, I will admit that the library is permanently engraved on my psyche--there, where all the books that were ever written or thought of are stored-- sure as heck sounds like heaven to me.  So, anyway, the Paradiso seems to be one of those things that exists in Penquin classics--English only on news-print editions--or I'll have to send away for it.

I do not speak Italian.  But, I've had a little Latin, here, and there, and it's enough to scrape by and even appreciate the poetics of the orriginal.  I do not wish to buy a copy in English only.  I have fallen in love with the idea of parallell texts, since I was in college.  And, the more language I study, the more fun I have with them.  I don't speak foreign languages.  I think of it more as zooming out on the fractal geometry of human utterance.  I really am not interested in learning to say "where's the crapper?"  It's more a matter of looking at the patterns.  I like to have the (name that orriginal language) text right there, so I can look at the patterns,

 

They say that ninety percent of the people who read the Inferno don't go on to read the rest of the book.  So, that's the light in which I'm taking this latest thing.  It doesn't really matter all that much, because I always seem to be buying books off the internet, anyway. 

posted by: SianNorah at 17:36 | link | comments

I haven't even been home for twenty-four hours yet, and so far, I've visited three relatives, in addition to the one I'm staying with, set up a website for one, and explored the newest restaurant in town.  Woo hoo.  The plane ride here was a little bumpy, and a lot late, and we were flying over thunder clouds the whole way.  Usually, I can read on an airplane, but this time, it was just music, the whole way.

posted by: SianNorah at 04:48 | link | comments (1)

The library here is thinking about charging fees for things like videos, DVDs, CDs, and so on.  And, of course, I've mentioned the experiences that I've had there.  The Truth is that the library seems  a little bit like the poor man's Blockbuster, these days, and meanwhile, despite a selection that puts most rental places to shame, the the library is working to cut back on costs: it has reduced the number of hours it's open, it has even closed a branch or two.  My mother remembers a time when the local library wouldn't buy Nancy Drew books, and now, it's buying movies.  And not just quality movies--Does anyone really think that Thirteen Going on Thirty is in quite the same category as Citizen Kane?  How 'bout Bridget Jones' Diary sequal?  Well, admittedly, the world would be a better place, if we all spent a couple of hours a day staring at Colin Firth, but I'm not exactly sure that I think it's entirely <i>necessary</i> to civilization, in the same way as literacy is.  The quality of the books is going down, too.  The library buys scores of Ann Rice books, and then sells off Cicero and Caesar to make room for them. 

I'm not saying that the library that my Aunt Mabel goes to needs to resemble the Engineering library at MIT, but I do think that some thought should be put into the difference between funds allocation and censorship.  It is not censorship, if the library doesn't buy a copy of Brittney Spears' greatest hits: it's a simple decision that the money could be put to better use elsewhere.  And that, I whole-heartedly agree with: after all, I don't own a copy of Brittney Spears' Greatest hits, either.

So, as you can imagine, the same people who stood by and did nothing while the library's hours were being cut back and various branches were being inspected for closure are now up in arms because they might be charged a fee on a DVD or video.

Funny, but I don't seem to remember the great mission of libraries being to entertain the masses.  Or to provide free air-conditioning to the homeless.

There's also the issue of computers, and the internet, which are more or less a sticky wicket for libraries and librarians of all kinds.  (Since the proposed fees include "technology" I suppose that means computers and the internet.  I like computers.  I even think they belong in the library.  But they do attract a certain group of people (people who prefer (either for financial or <i>other</i> reasons) to look at pornography in the library) who might tend to make you think twice about letting your ten year old walk from Circ to Juvenile on his own. 

Once upon a time, we had places where the homeless, mentally-ill, or perverse could go to enjoy air-conditioning and hot meals.  (Long term.)  And the children's section of the library, under the hawklike eyes of the librarian, was more or less a safe place for children to go. 

But, that really isn't the case, anymore, or if it is, I'm not sure I can name five parents who'd be willing to stake their kids' lives on it. 

The atmosphere at the library is no longer a quiet, secure place to study, read, or blog; even for an adult, it's a little oppressive.

What I'm seeing here--and you can tell me, if you think I'm hallucinating--is the rise of the private library.  Of course, I don't mean "private" in the sense of the eighteenth century aristocratic gentleman surrounded by books and servants, smoking his pipe in a wing back chair; I mean "private" as in "restricted membership.

At this moment, I own two library cards: the first is, of course, a card that gets me books (and more frequently, CDs) at the Public library.  The absolutely free, anybody can have one egalitarian library.  I also have a library card from one of the local Universities.  This entitles me to a set number of books, and admission into the library.  For a fee.  I paid twenty five or fifty dollars for the card, and since then, I've paid another twenty five in fines (which, are, of course, significantly higher than the nickle and dime fines at the public library.  I also have an alumni card from my alma mater, which entitles me to the several million books there.  Since I'm several hundred miles away, I don't use it all that often, so it took me a second to think of it. 

I'm not the only one in the world with a card to a "private" library.  Every elementary, middle, and high-school student in America has borrowing priveledges at a school library.  Maybe your Church has a library.  And there are always the little circles of friends who share books among themselves.  "Free", of course, but hardly "Public".

I'm a bibliophile to the core.  I like my books, I collect and protect my books.  I dodn't get this way by being kept on a short leash in the library when I was a child.  I didn't get this way with the kind of intense scrutiny that a child surrounded by the mentally ill should have.  I think that children growing up, now should have the same freedom and safety in the library as I did, then.  And frankly, I think that the way to bring that back would be more careful selection of the available materials, and charging a fee on anything that isn't a book, based on market value.  If Blockbuster charges $3.00, the library should charge $3.50.  If Kinkos is charging 20 cents a minute, why not 25 at the library.  It would certainly increase the library's funding.  Yes, I am <i>so</i> compromising: I don't actually think that the library <i>needs</i> multiple copies of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the first place.  It certainly doesn't need the hard-core fan who has seen the movie 467 times, and mutters lines under his breath while he wanders aimlessly.

And soon, I know some enterprising young man is going to come up with Members-only libraries for fun and profit, and when he does, I'm going to marry him for his money (and books) because he's going to make a fortune.  After all, what would you pay to have your kids, your grandkids, in the library you remember from when you were a kid, instead of the loud, noisy, de-facto homeless shelters we have, now.

posted by: SianNorah at 20:38 | link | comments (1)

I was just thinking about writing something inflamatory about Palestinian suicide bombers and the new and improved (Now, 100% totally ball-less) Mossad.  Funny how having people try to blow up my close relatives has a tendency to raise inflamatory thoughts.  Anyway, so I ate lunch, and now, I'm going to go for the objective, thank Gd my relatives didn't get bown up, calm and rational standpoint.
Really.
There is a theory in Sociology that cultures move from being "shame" cultures to being "guilt" cultures.  This is a massively huge deal, since it represents the transition from ethics which center around "me" and "what will people think of me?" to "can I really live with myself?"  Basicly, from shame to guilt.  Hence, the name.  You can see this very clearly in Classical literature. Take, say the evolving Orestes story.  In Homer, we have an Orestes who avenges his father, and kills his whorish mother, and her paramour, and that's just fine and dandy.  It's enough to ensure that his name will live forever; he's lauded for it(and let's face it, this really is all Orestes does.  Just kill his highly deserving mother.)Four hundred years later, we have an Orestes who sits around and debates (at great length, and with divine intervention) whether it was maybe just a little bit wrong to kill ol' Clytemnestra...  There's wiley Odysseus who is applauded, and then, there's Dante's Ulysses...  So, that's the general idea of a shame/guilt culture.
As a clinging remnant of Victorian times, it's generally assumed that once transformed, a Guilt Culture will never revert to being a Shame Culture.
Have you ever considered the possibility that the whole Middle East situation is the general result of a Guilt Culture trying to reason with a Shame Culture?   Ooops, that's politically incorrect.  Mustn't assume that  the  Muslim culture is somehow less evolved.  Then again, a true cultural relativist would say the Guilt Culture has no inherant moral superiority to the Shame Culture, so there.  I'm back on track.  So, we go in with our negotiators, with our calm, rational diplomats, and try to explain to the naughty (fill in the blank euphemism for) Muslims, and try to explain that it's wrong to try to kill the nice, Jewish children.  Obviously, a futile effort, as guilt plays very little role in it.
What plays a role?  The posters, the shrines to "martyred" suicide bombers.  The television coverage (world-wide) the documentaries, and the general hero-worship that seems to permeate the entire middle east.  The "honour" that overflows and makes a living saint of the dead psychopath's mother, the praise that makes small children want to dress up as suicide bombers.  This is a Shame Culture at it's best.  Does it really matter that I killed a twelve year old girl?  No, of  course not.  My name will live forever.
But it's wrong, we insist.  Don't you feel bad about it?
No, of course they don't feel bad about it.  They have been raised in a Shame culture, and the guiding principal of their lives is keeping up with the Joneses, but on a murderous scale.
So Israel put up a fence?  What an insult!  Shocking.  Let's not accept any inconvenience to help save children's lives!

They have been talking about the Palestinian issue all my life.  Is there a solution?  Will the "Peace Process" work this time?
The real question is, at what cost are we willing to maintain our "Guilt Culture" and moral highground?
In the end, war is neither a necessary evil, nor a heroic conflict, or even an ideological debate with pyrotechnics. 
War is the fine art of making sure that whatever's going to happen happens to someone else.  If someone's child is going to be dead, tonight, let it not be mine.  If someone's country is going to be reduced to famine and pestilence, let it be somewhere else.
Putting up a wall is fucking diplomatic, if you ask me.  If what's happening to Israel were happening to Texas, we'd be in Mexico sowing the smoldering ashes with salt, by now. 

So, now we have suicide bombers in London.  That's a really interesting choice.

Ever read the German accounts of the sinking of the Hood? 

Ever hear of Dresden?

So, bombing the subway was supposed to do what, exactly?

Yeah, I'd like to find a way to end suicide bombings that ends with me holding hands on a hill top and selling Coke products, but I'll settle for whatever way doesn't involve me spending another two days praying my cousin missed his train.  I really don't care if you like it or not.  I don't care whether I can sleep, and if the Mossad has to gun down every man, woman, and child who ever met these Suicide bombers, passed them on a street, or went to the same mosque, I don't care. 

Because war is deciding whose kid gets tucked in, and whose gets burried.

posted by: SianNorah at 21:33 | link | comments (1)
political views

We finally found a diningroom table, something with six places for a price we could afford.  A little old lady our landlord knows sold it to us: she is moving to California with her daughter.  You never know, going into something like that, whether California is a good thing or a bad thing.  She also gave us a mid-century cabinet thing for no additional charge, so, of course, now I've written the appropriate thank you letter for that.  Big smiley.  I'm going to be keeping clothes in it.  I think the operative word here is big--it's about six feet long, and comes up somewhat past my waist.  Come to think of it, I may also put paints in part of it, since I really don't have that volume of clothes.

I really, really, have to have a conversation with whatever gods may be running the coffee shop.  They tried to cut off my supply of iced tea, last night.  It's eighty kazillion degrees here, and humid, and they couldn't give me a glass of regular, boring iced tea.  It seems some genius decided to make five gallons of mint green tea.  Mint!   Obviously, I had to order a white chocolate mocha, instead.  I mean, come on!  I'm first generation, here.  That means I do drink tea iced, but I do not drink it minted.  There are exactly three flavors of tea which I drink.  1. Black  (including, but not limited to English Breakfast tea, Orange Pekoe , etc  Black, as opposed to Green, not meaning without milk and sugar..) 2.  Earl Grey and 3.  This funky little Indian thing I picked up from a former roomate, where you boil milk, water, gingerroot, and tea leaves (see #1) together, and then strain it. 

Five gallons!

posted by: SianNorah at 19:36 | link | comments

One of the best things about having a roommate is that it's like having a live-in model/critic/business manager for my artwork.  I draw and paint, and when I can find time and space, I even sculpt a little.  My roommate looked at my latest sketches, the other day, and said... "....And you want to have a career in classics!"  I'm taking it as a compliment.  In any event, Roommate's boyfriend's birthday is coming up, and he says that he wants something that she's made, rather than something that she's bought.  So...  We're going to cast her torso--or at least her chest-- in plaster, and mail it to him.  I thought we should put a clock in the belly, just for fun, but she vetoed that.

We bought most of the materials, last night, and now we're waiting for a day that isn't entirely hellish on which to do this.  After all, it is a little hot being burried under twenty pounds of plaster.  Really, it's a done deal.  There's a plastic tarp and a can of spray-paint waiting for me, as we speak.

Then, we're going to take the torso to the park and paint it bronze.  I also suggested that we should take it to the coffee shop and buy it an iced mocha, but I think Roommate vetoed that, as well.  In any event, I'm going to be photographing the entire process, for the sake of my family album.

The beauty of this is that I get to do something messy and creative, with an actual (**free***) model attached to it, and then the finished product goes somewhere else, so I don't have to worry about where to store it, or whether it's being crushed under a pile of dirty laundry, or whether my model's mother is going to look at it someday, and say, "Oh, shit, that's my daughter!"

Roommate has no problem looking at my sketches and saying "what the hell are you on?"  So I know whether what I'm producing is any good.

And, her latest thing is that she should be allowed to take some of my canvasses out and hang them in the coffee shop, so that they will finally take down that picture of a man stabbing his eye out that we've all heard so much about.

And I'm fine with this.  I say she can sell, trade, or give away anything her little heart desires.  Just be sure I get my cut, if you actually manage to sell, please.

posted by: SianNorah at 18:13 | link | comments (1)

 The building I am living in is more or less shaped like a capital H, and my apartment is the left side of the H.  My bedroom is on the top tip of the H, which means that I have windows on three out of four sides.  So, I should be getting at least some sunlight all day long, and as far as that goes, it's a great room.  Okay.  It's the Northern California of bedrooms--warm and sunny, but not enough to attract millions of beach bums.  And we've been getting along just fine, except that on some nights, I've been getting a really great night's sleep, and on other nights... well, on other nights, I wake up more exhausted than I was when I went to bed.  I've been blaming this all on the new place.  I'll get used to it, won't I?
Well, as it turns out, having three windows means that I have three different sets of neighbors on three different sides of the building who all have the honor and priveledge of flashing lights in my room while I'm trying to sleep.  Light shines in from the other side of the H, whenever they get up to go to the bathroom.  Light shines in from the neighbors every time they go in, or out, or look for their dog.  And I don't just mean the innocuous little porch light, I mean two floodlights with massive, massive wattage--you know, the kind farmers use around their barns to keep the Coyotes away.  The reason why none of the SETI programs have worked?  The little green men look down at Earth, see the lights, as my neighbors go in, and out, and in and out and in and out all night long, and figure there couldn't possibly be any intelligence behind all that randomness.  Neighbor number three--and her husband--just leave the lights on in their kitchen all night long.  Which, in all honesty, I can live with. 
So, last night, after one neighbor had gone to the bathroom, and the other neighbor had put their dog out, I got up and put about ten yards of turquoise crushed velvet over the dog neighbor's window.  And aside from the fact that I have no intention of making any space I have to live in permanently turquoise, it worked out fairly well.  Folded several times, it turns out that that's just about enough fabric to block out my neighbor's deer lights.
And I slept very well last night, thank you very much.
The goal, as I see it, is to have a room which is :
             1.  As dark as possible during the night
             2.  Predictable.  I can't make my decision on whether or not to sleep based on whether the neighbors can find their dog.
However...  I would also like to be able to tell whether it's morning or night without consulting a clock, and I happen to enjoy waking up to the nice gradual glow of the sunrise.

So, the trick of the thing is to be able to sleep without actually transforming my beautiful, sunny room into a pit of dispair. 
I'm definitely going to block out the neighbors with the dog.  And I think I'm going to leave the neighbors with the kitchen alone.  They aren't that much trouble, after all.  Still debating on the other half of the H.  They're usually in bed and asleep before I am, or at least, right about the same time.  And I like that window.  It lets all the nice, pink sunlight come in early in the morning.  As long as they stay regular, they should be no problem.

Do you think it would be wrong to make them All-Bran treats?

posted by: SianNorah at 18:03 | link | comments (1)

I 've finally finished the process of moving, and now I'm getting used to the new apartment, the new neighbors, the new neighborhood, and all things new that go along with moving.  I have replaced every single, filthy, mini-blind and curtain in the entire apartment.  When we first got there, we thought about taking the mini-blinds out and hosing them off.  We actually tried it.  There wasn't enough soap in the world.  The curtains--the very same sheers that hung in Joseph of Arimathea's sitting room--were, of course, doomed from the outset.  My roommate's mother actually hand-made replacements for us, and they are absolutely beautiful.  They're just a little bit thicker, and infinitely cleaner, and they hang all the way down to the floor.  They're also cut fuller than the others were.  I also washed down every inch of the woodwork, including doors and window frames, and discovered that the original paint color was, in fact, white.  Good thing I didn't bet any money on it.
Surrounding the new apartment, we have actual neighbors--the real kind, who know our names.  About a week after we moved in, a panicked neighbor dropped by to see if we had anything to feed an unexpected card party.  I let him have the pan of brownies I had just finished baking, and in return, he has now loaned me  a blender.  My blender died.  (That's a total of less than an hour from the moment Roommate's Mother gave me the blender to the moment it was sitting on the counter, smoking.) And even knowing the gruesome details, my wonderful neighbor still loaned me a blender.  We have found a 3rd person to get coffee with us.  Not that we actually think that we have anything in common... we just love all our fellow addicts, and at the very least, we can sit around and talk about coffee.  And yes, we all got up early in the morning on the 4th to watch the neighborhood kazoo band.

posted by: SianNorah at 18:22 | link | comments

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