Painting by Lucien Freud. From here.

Also, I'm reading Middlemarch and loving it.

Here and there a cygnate is reared uneasily among duckings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed.

Again and again and again

H and I heard this song on the way back to Virginia from Connecticut last weekend and it's been in my head every since.

******

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent then before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Everyday is a things I like day

"It is because these characters depend to such a high degree on their own sense of integrity that for them, victory has nothing to do with happiness. It has more to do with a settling within oneself, a movement inward that makes them whole. Their reward is not happiness...What James's characters gain is self-respect."
- Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi

Painting is by Carole Marine and she has more for sale (follow the link).

Georgia O'Keefe Summer Days 1936

Found this image in this blog.

This tornado loves you

Things I learned about myself this weekend: I can run ten miles in 90 minutes. I still love dogs, but prefer not to be licked. I kill plants. Dishwashers are amazing. I need very little (and a lot at the same time) to be happy.

What I'm Saying

What I'm saying isn't exactly news and to say it bluntly is no big deal: once you decide to live, you have to lose. But what if you could simply refuse by claiming that life itself isn't real? What I'm saying isn't exactly news---- the Buddhist think this world, hooked on adieus, is just red dust. If that's true, why feel that having to live you also have to lose? Well, because we're bodies, bodies whose mortal bruise is time's kiss and time's seal. What I'm saying isn't exactly news. The luckiest among us live in twos. Yet love has tied them to a burning wheel once they decide to live. They have to lose because time's only tempo is the blues. It's what we're born to, what our prayers conceal. What I'm saying isn't exactly news---- once you decide to live, you have to lose. - Gregory Orr, What I'm Saying

This is the water

I've been meaning to post a link to this every since throckmorton posted about it in the summer of 2007. This is a commence speech that David Foster Wallace gave in 2005.

I think about it a lot, but today, I'm thinking about this part:

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

I can try to toughen up

She and Him

Easing back into blogging

Reading List:

you politely ask me not to die and i promise not to

right from the beginning—a relationship based on

good sense and thoughtfulness in little things
- From Robert Hershon's Superbly Situated

*

"The USA Foundation's motto was 'Promoting a free market of ideas on the nation's campuses,' and here we encounter yet another of the Washington right's signature lines. Like so many conservative ideas---anticommunism for example---it sounds fine at first. A 'free market of ideas' sounds like 'free inquiry' or a 'free exchange of ideas,' an environment in which hypotheses are tested and bad ones are wedded out while good ones go on to earn the respect of the community of scholars. But this is not what the phrase means at all. Markets do not determine the objective merit of things, only their price, which is to say, their merit in the eyes of large corporations and the very wealthy."

- Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew: How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a Killing, Harper's August 2008

*

Listen to:



And

Invisible Worlds

*

Radio junky

Check out NPR's "Hearing Voices" podcast. Here's where you can listen to past episodes. At least a few episodes are hosted by Scott Carrier, one of my favorite contributors on This American Life.

We're howling forever

Last week I stumbled across Amy Stein's Photography blog. I love her Domesticated series in particular this picture:
Maybe it's because I've been listening to TV on the Radio's "Wolf Like Me" quite a bit recently, but says so much to me about the collision of the natural world and the man made world (in other words, I've been feeling a lot like a wolf howling at a false moon lately).



Check out Stein's Women with Guns series as well.

Rachel Papo, a photographer on Stein's blogroll, has amazing pictures of women serving in the Israeli army.

She writes

Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back to several Israeli army bases, using the medium of photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world. Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.

Perhaps because they are placed right next to each other, two of Papo's images stood out to me. Here is the first and here is the second. The first, is almost a glamor shot; a starling beautiful woman, stretch out in a chair with a look of peace on her face. The second, in stark contrast, is an image of a women tightly balled up and perhaps crying or about to cry. Her photos are amazing, often depicting shots of female soliders looking directly and intensly into the camera. At first it is jarring seeing sometimes small women holding weapons as large as themselves, but for me the setting (the army, the guns) quickly fell into the background of her series.

As Papo writes

Each image embodies traces of things that I recognize, illuminating fragments of my history, striking emotional cords that resonate within me. In some way, each is a self-portrait, depicting a young woman caught in transient moments of introspection and uncertainty, trying to make sense of a challenging daily routine.

Since I can't seem to write...

...here are some other places you can go:

Please check out this NPR piece from The Bryant Park project where Rachel Martin interviews Ari Ne'eman, the president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. It's really interesting.

I've also been getting into The Trouble with Spikol, after reading a New York Times article featuring Spikol and seeing a link to her Youtube videos on Feministing.

I hope we don't have to rip out the foundation

My friend Jake invited me to go to North Carolina today to campaign. I couldn't go because I couldn't take off work on such sort notice.

I also couldn't go because of everything Jay Smooth says here. This Ill Doctrine post, btw, is also a pretty good summation of why I don't really write about the democratic nomination process at the moment. Not gonna be more noise about this. (Don't take this as a criticism if you are writing about the nomination process. I love a lot of what I read; I just don't think I have anything new to bring to the table).

To B

Why does it affect
and comfort me
the little scar
where, years ago, you cut your lip
shaving when half drunk
and in a hurry
to play drums in public.

We step now to rhythms we don't own or understand,
and, with blind, dog-like diligence,
we hunt for scars
in tender places.

-Moya Cannon, Scar

And this and this.

The gift of Ear Candy to remind you that you're fabulous

I may have linked to these two bands/singers before, but I really like them so I thought I would share.

Peggy Sue and the Pirates (my favorite of theirs is "the new song") are two women from Brighton, who twist up their voices around a guitar. Adele is from South London and reminds me a little of Regina Spektor.

On a completely different note, as some of you know, I am going to be a Bridesmaid this summer. Just for fun I typed "Bridesmaid" into google to see what the top hits would be. Second down on the list was a bridesmaids.com which featured a blog (or something that poses as a blog while helpfully linking to a bunch of stores. Also it's addressed to the bride, which I found weird).

Here's a particularly choice entry:

This week is National Singles Week, which means there’s no better time to take a moment out of your aint’-love-grand stupor to celebrate with the eligible single ladies in your life: your bridesmaids. Whether that means writing them a special note, assuring them once again that their bridesmaid dresses do not make them look fat, or blessing them with special bridesmaids’ gifts to remind them of their worth, there’s no better time than Singles Week to remind your bridesmaids that they are single and fabulous.

I'm not even going to touch that whole "make sure to tell them they're not fat" tip.

I assume that I would react with appreciation if someone gave me a gift at any time, but I find something just a teensy bit patronizing in a bride giving her presumably single bridesmaids a gift for National Singles Week. Am I the only one who would read receiving a present from a soon-to-be married friend during National Singles Week as having a tinge of pity attached to it (which would defeat the purpose of celebrating National Singles week [ahem, it's actually called National Single and Unmarried Americans Week])? I don't think single people are waiting around for affirmation from married people that they are "fabulous."

February's Give plus two things I like

This month I've decided to give my monthly donation to the Women Under Forty Political Action Committee. On their website they state that their mission is to:

• To help elect more young women to elected office so that young women have an equal voice in shaping public policy.
• To build the seniority of women in Congress by electing women at a young age.

They also have a sister organization called "Running Start." Check out the info under the "Young Women" tab on their website, which includes a map of where young women are running for office, what they bring to the table, and links to other resources about young women and politics.

Also, if you're sick of all the election coverage and need something to do, please checkout the Philadelphia Free Library Podcast, which broadcasts (podcasts? streams?) the author lectures that have taken place recently at the library. I have particularly enjoyed Micheal Pollen and Robert Kamenetz's lectures. Also, via Feministing, I came across the Library of Congress's photostream on Flickr, which is absolutely amazing.

Since I'm going to be drunk for the rest of the election cycle

I like beer, probably-over-priced beer, to be a little more specific. So, for my fellow beer lovers out there, here are two brief news items: A New York Times Dining article about American brewing styles and a Bryant Park Project blog post on the rising cost of hops. (Bonus: For those of us actually considering drinking everyday from now until the first week in November or playing the Feministing drinking game, it might be wise to check out this segment from today's Bryant Park Project.)

I have to say, the NY times article makes me feel silly about liking fancypants beer so much because apparently the American style of brewing involves making our beers, like, TOTALLY XTREME. Although perhaps I can take comfort in the fact, that my love of beer does not extend to actually knowing much about it. I drink what my local expert puts in front of me and then either I like it or I don't.

Still, I think it says something about me that I am more interested in knowing more about the rising cost of hops than I am in knowing about the subprime mortgage crisis.

Three things I like Thursday

My jaw has been hurting lately, bringing the first stanza of this poem to mind:

But now that I am used to pain,
Its knuckles in my mouth the same
Today as yesterday, the cause
As clear-obscure as who's to blame,

A fascination with the flaws
Sets in - the plundered heart, the pause
Between those earnest, oversold
Liberties that took like laws.

What should have been I never told,
Afraid of outbursts, you withhold.
Why are desires something to share?
I'm shivering though it isn't cold.

Beneath your window, I stand and stare.
The planets turn. The trees are bare.
I'll toss a pebble at the pane,
But softly, knowing you are not there.
- J.D. McClatchy, Pibroch

I also really like this song and the stories on this website.

Love has to take us unawares
for none of us would pay love's price if we knew it.
For who will pay to be destroyed?
The destruction is so certain,
so evident.

Much harder to chart,
less evident,
is love's second life,
a tern's egg,
revealed and hidden in a nest of stones
on a stony shore.

What seems a stone
is no stone.
This vulnerable pulse
which could be held in the palm of a hand
may survive
to voyage the world's warm and frozen oceans,
its tapered wings,
the beat of its small heart,
a span between arctic poles.

- Moya Cannon, Arctic Tern (From: The Wake Forest Book of Irish Women's Poetry 1967-2000)

Two things I like Tuesday

Out in this desert we are testing bombs,

that's why we came here.

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing it's way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.

What we've had to give up to get here---
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence

that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out---
coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies---laceration, thirst---
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor

talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.

- Adrienne Rich, Trying to Talk with a Man

And this song, by Loudon Wainwright.