2. Go to your local library and check out Ilya Kaminsky’s slender volume of poems, Dancing in Odessa. Or purchase it from your local faltering-but-still-vibrant book store. (Call ahead and get them to order it for you if they don’t have it.) And then sit with your copy of the book and this youtube video open on your computer, and read along (he begins reading shortly after the 6 minute mark). I’ve linked to him reading before, perhaps? He’s got this almost religious sentiment in his voice. He was born in Russia and has been deaf since he was four, so the way he speaks is… I don’t know. I want to say transcendent. It brings the poems from good-and-perhaps-great to brilliance.

Este blog voy a escribir primero en castellano, y luego traducir a inglés. Así debes sospechar que voy a hacer unos errores más que normal, aunque probablamente no hay mucha gente leyendo aquí quien lee en castellano como su primer idioma.

Bueno. Hace un mes y medio ahora, leí el libro nuevo de Carlos Ruiz Zafón, El Juego del Ángel. Lo dejé en Madrid, pero noté unos pasajes que me gustaron. Lo leía durante el mes que pasé viajando—que es descrito en los blogs anteriores—y en general me gustó. Es verdad que no es un libro literario como uno de las obras del canon, o por lo menos en mi opinión no es de la literatura alta. Pero es buen escrito, en general. Ruiz Zafón sabe muy bien escribir como una poeta, y crear una misteria. El problema empieza en su manera de describir las tinieblas—quiere tanto a construir un ambiente misterioso, oscuro, que empieza a usar las mismas palabras cada unas páginas, repetiendolas hasta que se hacen sin significancia. Quizás esto no es justo. Siempre entendí el aura que quiere instigar. Pero ¿qué causará tantas imagenes del oscuro? Y no es solo esto—hay tantos clichés de las novelas policiales, tantos dichos cuotidianos…. “Ben hombre, pero se ahoga en un vaso de agua.”

Al final, leí los doscientos páginas al final del libro en unos cinco dís. Era divertido y me enganchó. Pero no entendí muy bien lo que pasó al final. Al principio, creí que había un problema de comprensión de lenguaje, pero después de leer un poco de lo que hay en el red, descidí que no, que el problema era que Ruiz Zafón no sabía muy bien como terminar su obra. Eso es una situación que pasa mucho (a mi sorpresa)—un escritor construye su vehículo del cuento, pero se hace tan complicado que no puede resolver todos de los obstaculos que ha creado. A veces, así el escritor escribe una conclusión que se deja mucho impreciso. A veces, como que creo ha pasado aquí, el autor intenta a unir todo en vueltas, resultando que el lector se deja incompleto, con preguntas. A mi me encanta los libros de fantasia, de magia o ciencia ficción. Pero si te vas a crear un mundo nuevo, tienes que seguir tus propias reglas. No puedes dejarlas cuándo lo quieres. Hay dos tipos de misterio: los en que puedes solucionar el misterio por leer, y los en que no hay ni una pista hasta el final. En El Juego del Ángel hay muchas cosas que puedes adivinar desde el principio—¡empieza con el título!—pero hay mucho en las páginas finales que no tiene nada a ver con el resto.

En cualquiera caso, creo que sí, recomiendo el libro para alguien demás a leer. Pero no voy a leer el otro libro de Ruiz Zafón, La Sombra del Viento, como mi proximo libro en castellano. Acepto consejo de que debe ser el proximo.

Aquí presento una cita del libro, que empieza a la página 169 de El Juego del Ángel. Si has leído La Sombra del Viento, quizás la reconocerás.

Enfilé una pasarela que conduceía a una de las entradas [al laberitno] y penetré lentamente en un largo corredor de libros que describía una curva ascendente. Al llegar al final de la curva, el túnel se bifurcaba en cuatro pasadizos y formaba un pequeño círculo desde el que ascendía una escalera de caracol que se perdía en las alturas. Subí las escaleras hasta encontrar un rellano desde el que partían tres túneles. Elegí uno de ellos, el que creía que conducía hacia el corazón de la estructura, y me aventuré. A mi paso rozaba los lomos de centenares de libros con los dedos. Me dejé impregnar del olor, de la luz que conseguía filtrarse entre rendijas y de las linternas de cristal horadadas en la estructura de madera y que flotaba en espejos y penumbras. Caminé sin rumbo por espacio de casi treinta minutos hasta llegar a una suerte de cámara cerrada en la que había una mesa y una silla. Las paredes estaban hechas de libros y parecían sólidas a excepción de un pequeño resquicio del que daba la impresión que alguien se había llevado un tomo. Decidí que aquél iba a ser el nuevo hogar de Los Pasos del Cielo. Contemplé la portada por última vez y releí el primer párrafo, imaginando el instante en que, si así lo quería la fortuna, y muchos años después de que yo estuviese muerto y olvidado, alguien recorrería aquel mismo camino y llegaría a aquella sala para encontrar un libro desconocido en el que había entregado todo cuanto tenía que ofrecer. Lo coloqué allí, sintiendo que era yo el que se quedaba en el estante.

Ofrezco también una traducción a inglés, abajo.

Okay, now in English. I’m translating from Spanish this time, but you shouldn’t notice much difference.

Okay. A month and a half ago, I read the new book by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game. I don’t believe it’s yet released in English; I read it in Spanish. I left it in Madrid, although I noted down some passages I liked. I read it during the month I spent traveling—as described in previous posts—and in general I rather liked it. It’s true that it’s no member of the literary canon; it’s not high literature in my opinion. But it’s well-written, in general. Ruiz Zafón knows how to write like a poet, and how to create a mystery. The problem begins in his descriptions of darkness—he wants so badly to create this dark, mysterious mood that he begins to use the same words every few pages, repeating them until they lose meaning. Perhaps that’s not fair. I always understood the aura that he’s trying to inspire. But I wonder what so many images of darkness cause. It’s not just this… there are so many clichés from detective novels, so many repeated sayings… “A good man, but he’d drown in a glass of water.” (“A good man, but he makes mountains out of molehills” would be a non-literal translation. Or without using such a shit expression, maybe, “A good man, but he can see a lake in a glass of water.”)

At the end, I read the last 200 pages in maybe five days. It was fun and engaging. However, I didn’t understand entirely what happened at the end. At first, I thought I hadn’t understood something with the language, but after reading a bit on the ‘net, I decided that, no, the problem was that Ruiz Zafón didn’t really know how to end his work. This is a situation that comes to pass surprisingly often—a writer constructs his story vehicle, but makes it so complicated that he cannot resolve each of the obstacles he’s created. Sometimes, in this case the author writes a very vague conclusion. And sometimes, as I think has happened here, the author runs in circles trying to bring everything together, leaving the reader incomplete, with questions. I love fantasy books, or science fiction. But if you’re going to create a new world, you have to follow your own rules. You can’t ignore them when you feel like it. There are two types of mystery: those in which you can solve the mystery as you read, and those in which there’s no hint until the end. In The Angel’s Game there are many things you can guess from the start—start with the title!—but there’s quite a bit at the end which has nothing to do with the rest of the book.

In any case, I think that yes, I would recommend this book to someone else. But I’m not going to read Ruiz Zafón’s other book, The Shadow of the Wind, as my next book in Spanish. I’ll accept advice as to what it should be instead.

Here’s a translation of a quote from the book, beginning on page 169 of The Angel’s Game. If you’ve read The Shadow of the Wind, you’ll probably recognize something.

I started down a narrow passage that led to an entrance [to the labyrinth], and hesitantly entered a long corridor of books which curved upwards before me. At the end of the curve, the tunnel split and circled into a spiral staircase that rose up, until it was lost in heights. I climbed the stairs until I reached a landing, at which three new tunnels began. I chose one, thinking that it would bring me to the building’s heart, and started forward. As I walked, I brushed my fingers along the spines of the hundreds of books in my path. I let myself fill up with the smell, and with the light that managed to filter in through the cracks, from the glass lanterns affixed to the wood above me, the light that floated in mirrors and half-darkness. I walked aimlessly through the space for almost 30 minutes, until I arrived at a small enclosed room which held a table and chair. The walls themselves were made of books, and appeared solid except for a small gap which suggested that someone had removed a book. I decided that this would be the new home for Footsteps in the Sky. I contemplated the front cover for one last time and re-read the first paragraph, imagining the instant in which, if luck would have it, many years after I was dead and forgotten someone would take that same path and arrive at that same room to find an unknown book, a book in which I had put everything I had. Then, I fit the book into the space, feeling as though it were I who would stay there in the shelf.

The original in Spanish is above.

A veces, él recibe notas del pasado,
bruscas en la redacción pero directas en su importancia;
salen del mar como burbujas
y le siguien a algún muro olvidado.
Cuándo vienen a él,
están como luciérnagas abajo de una luna menguante
y él cierra sus ojos ante de ellas
en un movimiento de vergüenza.
Las palabras siempre están escrito en una letra dura,
la escritura más hendidura que perfil,
la tinta negra a veces disipada.
Siempre están inevitable.
Cuándo cena con su novia,
o cambia líneas en las profundidades del metro,
de vez en cuando ve reflexiones,
o palabras en relieve
en las arrugas de la cara de ella,
o en las cajas plásticas que alojan los anuncios.
Un día, en frustración, ella le llamó a las altas horas de la noche
y le preguntó a explicar sus distracciones.
“No puedo,” él dijo a traves del transmisor,
“y no sé si es algo que quiero.”
La presente no es ineludible
no más que el pasado es incapaz de olvidar;
sus sueños no le dejarán en paz,
porque él todavía no los ha dejado.

Translating a poem is more difficult than translating much anything else, in part because one tends to use words very specifically. I’ve never taken a translation class, which I’m sad about, because I think translation is fascinating; here are some general observations:

• translating to Spanish is interesting because pronouns become debated — where are they necessary? I could write this entire poem without making the sex of its characters clear, something that’s quite difficult to do in English. I decided to use pronouns quite a bit, because otherwise a lot would be unclear. For example, in the line “en las arrugas de la cara de ella” (“in the wrinkles on her face”), I could translate this as “en las arrugas de su cara” — but then it becomes unclear whose face I’m speaking of. To me, at least.
• This translation made two oddities in the English apparent: (1) “script more indentation than outline” — this doesn’t quite make sense. I’m trying to imply that the ink is less important than the impression on the paper, but really both words describe the same thing. I didn’t change this. (2) “‘I can’t, he said into the receiver” — it seems okay to me to use the word “receiver” to mean “mouthpiece.” But really the receiver of a telephone is the earpiece, no? I’m not sure if I should change it. The word “receiver” really could mean either part. But in Spanish, I decided to go with “transmitter,” “transmisor.” I’m pretty sure this makes the most sense.
• As with any translation when you’re not fully bilingual, and even sometimes then (I’d imagine), I used a dictionary a fair bit. Sometimes just to check where an accent goes (I’m sure I forgot a few), and sometimes for words — ineludible (inescapable) is a new favorite. I’m still unsure as to exactly what I mean by “short” (“short in their wording and direct in their import”), so my translation (brusco, brusque) might not be quite right.
• I’m not sure how I feel about the last lines. In English: “his dreams will not leave him alone, / because he has not yet given them up.” In Spanish, I translated them using the same verb, as though it were “his dreams will not leave him alone, / because he will not leave them alone.” In Spanish, to me, it sounds less awkward. But I’m shaky about it. Equally shaky: “and hold him to a forgotten wall” doesn’t translate well as “y le siguien a algún muro olvidado.” But I don’t think “and they follow him to some forgotten wall” is exactly wrong, either. I’m not quite sure that I mean “hold” as a synonym to “press.”

In any case, this was a surprisingly fun exercise. I should do it again.

When I was in Bilbao, then, I spent some time sitting down and trying to think of some tips I should’ve given him. They are still contradictory; that’s part of the fun. I think, with this kind of thing, you need to pick and choose. Every so often, I come across an article — in a magazine or newspaper, usually — with tips for writers, from well-known authors. Half of them are always complete shit. Some of them are actually pretty good. Sometimes they’re ridiculous; sometimes they’re way too detailed. And sometimes one of them will ring true. So maybe I’ll put down something along those lines, here. None of these are new; they’re just the pieces of advice that have stuck to me. They’re not particularly in order. Some of them are more exercises than advice; some are more encouragement than anything else.

• Read books of poetry by a single author, and then try to emulate the style — or try to write nothing like it at all.
• Play with structure. Write something following a strict form, and then write something formless. See what fits. There are many good forms to play with.
• Don’t ask anyone to read your poetry until you feel like it. When you do, take it to someone who’s actually going to critique it, and then take their criticism with a thick skin. Sycophants might make you feel good, but they’re not actually going to help all too much.
• You don’t need to finish every poem you begin. It’s okay to throw something away.
• Be daring.
• Re-use something that didn’t work.
• Don’t write poetry when you’re drunk.
• Don’t force a rhyme. Don’t use feminine rhyme (rhyme using more than one syllable) unless you’re a rapper.
• It is, however, okay to rhyme. But realize that it doesn’t always sound good — so be aware of when your poetry is being shaped by a need to rhyme. If your couplet is being formed based more on the rhyme than on the thread of thought, scrap it. Rhymes should feel natural.
• Rewrite. If you feel like it.
• It is rarely enjoyable to read a poem written entirely in metaphorical language.
• Describe in actions, not just in adjectives.
• Avoid flowery language or language that feels like nothing new. Phrases like “silent scream,” “void,” and breathless descriptions of darkness are generally to be avoided. A poem about sadness or inner confusion needs to be really good for anyone other than you to want to read it.
• Show action and emotion — not just description.
• Pay close attention to line breaks.
• Learn how to read poetry well. Hint: You shouldn’t pause at the end of a line if there’s no punctuation, unless there’s a rhyme or something necessary. Spoken poetry is not the same as read-on-the-page poetry, and you shouldn’t try to make it so.
• Listen to (recordings of) poets reading their work. Read along.
• Learn how to end a poem. It’s not always easy.

Perhaps these thoughts are more useful to me than to anyone else. But I am curious: what advice would you give to someone writing poetry? It would be fun to hear some thoughts other than mine.

I had started it back a year ago or so, and I finally finished it yesterday, on the train coming back from San Sebastian. (Which merits its own post. The train, as well, but I’ll post on San Sebastian.) I ended up reasonably well-pleased with the book. I don’t think it was ground-breaking, and I have a few places where I wrote something akin to “fuck you, Danielewski” in the margins, but all-in-all I’d say that I found this to be a fascinating book, and I am unlikely to forget it any time soon.

To re-cap: the book is ostensibly about a film called The Navidson Record, a quasi-horror film in which Will Navidson, his wife, and their two kids move into a house in Virginia that has a basement that is more than a basement — it is a creature, an almost-living malevolent being. The innermost heart of the novel is a book that is essentially a descriptive critique of the film, heavy on external sources except for where these sources are rebutted. This part of the novel is excellent — replete with sections where the design of the page reflects what’s going in the text. This text then, is being compiled by Johnny Truant, a bum/tattoo-parlor-worker/genuine-crazy who intersperses his eclectic experiences with comments on the text. I found myself interested less in him — his story, as Julien pointed out to me, is really fairly unoriginal — and more in how he interacts with the text. There’s a scene, for example, wherein his own dream replaces one Navidson should have; Truant intertwines his own story with Navidson’s.

In some way, the book is very traditional — certainly in the way it resolves it is pleasantly straightforward. Despite its play with traditional modes of criticism and its intended subversion, I think it’s still trying to be enjoyable. It’s work, but it wants to be fun work.

I’d like to re-read it some day. But at the same time, I’m not sure that I ever will.

Nonetheless, I quite like this poem.

It’s called “Big Box Encounter,” and it’s by a woman named Erika Meitner. I’m assuming you’ll follow that link on your own, but let me sum up the poem by saying that it’s about confusing feelings of desire for a (past?) student of the speaker’s.

I’m partially fascinated by this poem because I feel like there’s this continual move toward poetry that embraces a very specific space between the taboo and the mundane. Poetry that is exciting to read often plays with this, and I think Meitner’s poem does so quite well. For example: “I tried not to look at his beautiful terrible chest, / the V-shaped wings of his chiseled hip-bones.” I like her detail, I like her drawing our focus to where her attention is. And I like the way she reads it, as well. (Slate always posts the author reading his or her poem; I like this.)

The line I quote, and the poem itself, is just the sort of thing that James Wood critiques in last month’s New Yorker, in his sort-of-review “Keeping It Real: Conflict, convention, and Chang-Rae Lee’s ‘The Surrendered.’” I don’t really think Wood’s article reaches any conclusions, and I’m frustrated by his simplification of the Barthes piece (although I acknowledge that I’ve never fully understood Barthes myself). Still, it’s certainly the case that many writers fall for “the cinematic sweep, followed by the selection of small, telling details.” And perhaps Meitner is doing this. And so what?

I have written down, somewhere, a note to myself: “write more poetry that is daring.” I think I mean by this: poems that hint at something, that are exciting and make us think. There’s a good comparison, at least according to google (by which I mean — I’m reporting what other websites say, and not something I feel is decidedly true; all I’m sure of is that he wrote these poems). Allen Ginsberg has two poems, both written about Neal Cassidy. One is called “On Neal’s Ashes,” and is moving but slightly vulgar. The other is called “Please Master” and is primarily just vulgar and explicit. (It’s also probably NSFW.) I imagine you’ll see what I mean? I think the first one has got something there. I think the second is interesting, but not particularly so. And I love Ginsberg — “Footnote to Howl” is one of my favourite poems. That fits this bill, as well.

I’m curious to hear what anyone bothering to read this thinks. Does something vaguely taboo engage your interest in poetry? Where can it go wrong? What do you think of the poems I link to, here?

Meitner’s poem accesses the daring on two levels — it addresses female sexuality, which we so rarely do in normal publications; and it considers the question of a teacher’s (professor’s) lust for her student, which is one of the ultimate taboos of academics. In the poem, at least, her narrator does nothing wrong — she simply agonizes over her desire for this much-younger man. (She does imply something more, since she’s corresponding with this student.) But why does it feel transgressive to me? It’s not the line-breaks, although I like some of them quite a lot (“He is both more / and less striking without a shirt on”). I’m always fascinated by the use of curse-words in poetry or literature, when it’s not wholly warranted. (Here: “I was fucking a guy who…”) Sometimes, as here I think, the words jar the reader to attention. They remind us that the speaker is lusting, not falling for, her student. We never get a description of him except this detailed continuing articulation of how he looks shirtless.

There’s definitely still power in curse words, and power in the unexpected. I don’t think this poem would be as good were it called “A Desire Uncalled For,” or something implying its contents. The subtlety. the side-stepping while being up-front, these are important. (This is also why I have trouble with “Please Master.”) Obviously, this power in the unexpected is the case in all manner of ways — don’t think that I mean to suggest that the only way to write an interesting poem is to be lewd or lean towards the taboo.

I think I’ll be more conscious of this current in poetry in the future. As always, I’m not really reaching a conclusion. But this is a blog, and I’m not a good essayist.

I do think we can draw a parallel between this play in poetry, and its play in visual arts. In both mediums, we have to pick somewhere to draw our lines — but you can show non-sexualized nudity in art more easily than you can in writing. (See, for example, this (NSFW?) art collective. Hat tip to Ben for linking me.) But really there’s lots of not particularly sexualized nudity in art. Maybe we’ve become accustomed to it, but for whatever reason nudity isn’t as titillating as it once was. You have to play with something else.

Anyway, I think the wiki article on the subject is super-fascinating. We don’t usually even have any idea what subjunctive is. This is the coolest part: “The verb ‘be’ is so distinguishable because its forms in Modern English derive from three different [emphasis mine] Old English verbs: beon (be, being, been), wesan (was, is), and waeron (am, art, are, were).” WHAT?

I started thinking about it when I was explaining how you had to say “If I were smarter” rather than (the seemingly correct, and oft-misused) “If I was smarter”. Of course, both sound okay — but the former is subjunctive (to be is only conjugated as “were” in subjunctive) while the latter, while carrying the same meaning, doesn’t really fit. (Both express an unreal situation, so both fall into subjunctive.) In Spanish, it should be “Si fuera más inteligente…” Unsure Spanish-speakers like me might say something else (“If I am smarter”?)… For example, even here I’m unsure: it could also be “Si sea más inteligente…”, although I think conditional statements don’t use present subjunctive. The real problem is that the use is a lot more complex in Spanish, so you can’t really understand it by translation.

(Edited a day later to be more understandable and correct a mistake.)

I went and saw the band Yeasayer on Wednesday night. They were originally playing in a small bar-or-so venue, but ended up in something slightly bigger — a place called Sala Caracol (The Snail Room), which was actually pretty great. It’s just a no-frills concert venue, like maybe the Troc in Philly, but a bit smaller?

When I got there, Hush Hush was playing. Hush Hush is this ridiculous singer guy and his recorded music and backup vocals, or such was as it was when I saw him. He danced (quite well) and sang, and honestly while I’m not a huge fan of his myspace selections (they’re not bad, either), I enjoyed him live quite a bit. (His myspace was a bitch to find. Try googling “Hush Hush”.) His songs are sexy and silly, and he danced wearing a black suit jacket, a tie, etc. — the full get up. As he went on, he removed his coat, his tie, his shirt, ending bearded and shirtless. I’m not sure why musicians like to take off their shirts — besides it just being hot as hell up on a stage — but he managed to do it rather endearingly.

During his set, I finagled my way towards the front of the crowd, getting within the first six rows or so; a space I like. After he finished singing, I started talking with three American girls standing near me. They were nice; two of them were studying abroad and the other was visiting. We didn’t really talk about anything meaningful, but it was still nice to chat. (I also saw Mateo and Ashley’s French roommate and her boyfriend, which was funny.) We worked our way forward slightly, talked a bit more, and then Yeasayer came out, around 22:00.

They played a set which was between an hour and an hour and a half long; it was plenty long enough, all in all. It was amazing. This is the second concert I’ve ever gone to alone (the first being Xiu Xiu, a few years ago), and I guess since I’m going alone because I like the band enough that I don’t care, both have been wonderful experiences. Yeasayer’s live set was at least as good as I’d been led to expect. The lead singer was wearing this amazing one-piece suit (they exist?!), and the guitarist/back-up vocalist was in a one-piece camo outfit, but honestly they could’ve been wearing whatever so long as they brought the same energy to their performance.

I was worried at first, since they looked sort of tired, but they definitely found the energy to put on an amazing show; they played most (all, actually, I think?) of the songs from their recently released album, Odd Blood. It’s a dancier and more accessible set of recordings than their previous release, 2007′s All Hour Cymbals. Both albums are pretty eclectic in terms of their offerings; Yeasayer is regularly compared to a number of artists (I’ll leave you to find other reviews); I’d add in some odd names probably. I definitely recommend listening to some of their music; the selections on MySpace are all great, and I really like their two live songs from Les Concerts a Emporter, although to be fair in general La Blogotheque has great taste and does really good videos. This was their first show in Madrid, and they seemed genuinely excited about it; they’ll be playing at Primavera Sound in May, too, so I’ll get to see them again.

In any case, I found myself dancing in the venue, my coat over my arm, laughing with people I didn’t know, singing along when I knew the words, wishing I knew the words, drinking a beer, squeezing out of the crowd to run to the bathroom and following some random girl back through the crowd to my place, dancing some more. They ended the set with “Ambling Alp,” which is their single of the moment, I guess, and was a lot of fun to get to dance with in a group of people all smiling. And then they came back for an encore, and ended their show with the absolutely gorgeous song “Red Cave,” or at least I think so. I know they played it. Then again, who’s reading this and’s gonna contradict me?

“Red Cave” is actually an awesome song. The lyrics of it, or some of the most repeated lyrics, are these: “Mary’s house in the hollow of the white hazel rapid whirlpool and the church of the red cave.” Which is just an English translation of the name of a village in Wales. I like this a lot, for some reason. Nonetheless, I don’t know that they actually played it last.

I actually awoke this morning with “2080,” another song from their older album, stuck in my head, and at this point I’d actually say they played that one last, although like I said my memory’s blurred and I don’t know song names that well anyway. “2080″ is an awesome song, but the lyrics are ridiculous and pretty incomprehensible when you’re listening.

They also have a song called “Mondegreen“, which is kind of funny when you consider that their lyrics are all more or less incomprehensible. Anyway, awesome fun. Hurrah!

Ayer, veía el grupo Yeasayer. Originalmente, tocaran en un pub, pero al final tocaban en un lugar un poco más grande, la Sala Caracol, que me gustó un montón. Es un sitio para conciertos y nada más, un poco como el Trocadero en Filadlfía, pero un poco más pequeño.

Cuándo llegué, Hush Hush, el telonero, tocaba. Hush Hush (lo cuál significa silencio o super-secreto) es un cantante raro, con musica del fondo, o sea así cuándo yo le veía. Él bailaba (bien) y cantó, y de verdad aunque no soy un fan de las selecciones en myspace (no son malos tampoco), me gustaba verle en directo. (Su myspace era dificíl a encontrar. Busca “Hush Hush” en Google.) Sus canciones son eróticos y tontos, y él bailó llevando un traje negro, una corbata — todo formal. Siguiendo, quitó la chaqueta, la corbata, la camisa, acabando con barba y sin camisa. No sé porque los músicos siempre le gustan a quitar las camisas — probablemente porque hace mucho calor en el escenario — pero cumpló a hacerlo de manera encantadora.

Durante su interpretación, caminé sigilosamente al frente de la muchedumbre, llegando a las primeras filas. Después de que terminó Hush Hush, empecé a hablar con tres chicas americanas cerca de mí. Estaban amables; dos de ellas estudian aquí (Erasmus) y la otra esta visitandolas. No dijemos mucho de importa, sino estaba bien a chatear con alguién. (También, vi la compañera de piso de Mateo y Ashley, con su novio.) Con las chicas americanas, nos movemos un poco más adelante, hablamos un poco más, y entonces empezó Yeasayer, a cerca de las 22:00.

Tocaban para más o menos una hora y cuarta; estaba bastante larga para mí. Y estaba increíble. Esto es el segundo concierto a que he ido solo (el primero fue Xiu Xiu, hace unos años), y supongo que puedo irme solo porque me gusta tanto el grupo, y por eso los dos conciertos eran magnificos. La interpretación de Yeasayer era a lo menos tan bueno que esperaba. El cantante principal llevó un traje enterizo (¡existen!) y la guitarista lleva un traje de camo entero, pero de hecho que podían llevar cualquiera con la energía que llevaban también.

Estaba un poco ansioso, porque parcían cansados, pero en efecto econtraron la energía de hacer un espectáculo. Tocaban mucho (todo, creo) de las canciones del álbum más reciente, Odd Blood (Sangre Rara). Son unos grabaciones más accesible y más dado a bailar que los de la salida anterior, All Hour Cymbals (2007; Címbalos de todas las horas). Los dos álbumes están un poco ecléctico en sus canciones; Yeasayer es comparada a muchos artistas (puedes encontrar cuales en criticas). Seguro que recomiendo escuchar a su música; las canciones en MySpace son todas buenas, y me gusta mucho las canciones en directos de Les Concerts a Emporter, aunque sea verdad que en general La Blogotheque tiene buen gusto y hace videos super-buenos. Era su primera vez tocando en Madrid, y Yeasayer parecía muy entusiasmado con el concierto; tocarán también en Barcelona en Primavera Sound en mayo, así que podría verlos otra vez.

En cualquiera caso, bailaba en la sala, mi abrigo sobre un brazo, riendome con gente que no conocí, cantando con la canción cuando sabía las palabras, esperando que conociera las palabras, tomando una cerveza, apretandome dentro de la muchedumbre para ir a los servicios y siguiendo una chica al azar para volver a mi sitio, bailando un poco más. Ellos terminan su interpretación con “Ambling Alp,” que es su canción de exito ahora, supongo, y era muy divertido a bailar en un grupo de personas todos sonrientes. Y entonces volvieron Yeasayer para un bis, y terminaron el concierto con la canción preciosa, “Red Cave” (Cueva Roja), o creo que sí. Seguro que la tocaron. Pero también, ¿quién está leyendo esto y va a corregirme?

“Red Cave” es de hecho una canción increíble. La letra, o alguna parte de la letra repetida, es: “Mary’s house in the hollow of the white hazel rapid whirlpool and the church of the red cave.” (La casa de Mary, en el hueco de la avellana blanca, remolino rapido y la iglesia de la cueva roja.) Lo cuál es una tradicción de galés a inglés del nombre de una villa en Gales. Me gusta este hecho, para ninguna razón. Sin embargo, no sé si en serio la tocaron al final.

En efecto, desperté esta mañana con “2080,” otra canción del álbum mas antiguo, en mi mente. En este momento, dirré que esta canción fue la ultima, aunque como dije mi memoria no es exacto, y no conozco los nombres de canciones muy bien en cualquier modo. “2080″ es brillante, aunque la letra es ridiculo y casi incomprensible cuándo escuches.

También, Yeasayer tienen una canción que se llama “Mondegreen“, una palabra inglesa que significa exactamente esto — las palabras que inventas cuándo no entiendes que dice un cantante. Es gracioso que tiene este grupo una canción así, según que su letra en general es incomprensible. De todos modos, muy divertido. Hurra!

In any case, I was looking over his page on non-errors this evening, and I came across two things that I was interested to find. This particular page is filled with usages that others often cite as wrong, but which Brians says are pretty standard, at least in American English. For example: split infinitives, which aren’t wrong despite so many people disliking them; ending sentences with prepositions; the pronunciation of the word forte. There are two that interested me because they are about things that often bother me when people do them, but I’ve never had someone to point to in the past.

1. The phrase “feeling bad”. To quote this page: ‘”I feel bad” is standard English, as in “This t-shirt smells bad” (not [emphasis mine] “badly”). “I feel badly” is an incorrect hyper-correction by people who think they know better . . . People who are happy can correctly say they feel good, but if they say they feel well, we know they mean to say they’re healthy.’

My reasoning has always been two-fold on this: first off, it sounds weird to say “feel[s] badly.” More logically, however: An adverb (“badly”) modifies a verb; to say “I feel badly” would be to imply that the way you felt was not being done well. As in, “I feel badly” — “I’m not very good at feeling.” Similarly, a shirt can’t smell badly — it can’t smell at all. It might smell bad. It can’t smell grossly, either. Just gross. “Well” is a little more complicated — it can function as an adjective as well as an adverb. This blog post from a few years back highlights the questions — why do people do this? Is it hypercorrection? I think it is. So saying “I feel well” is fine (implying as it does that you’re healthy), but you probably don’t “feel badly.”

2. Healthy vs. healthful. Again, the quote: ‘Logic and tradition are on the side of those who make this distinction, but I’m afraid phrases like “part of a healthy breakfast” have become so widespread that they are rarely perceived as erroneous except by the hyper-correct. On a related though slightly different subject, it is interesting to note that in English adjectives connected to sensations in the perceiver of an object or event are often transferred to the object or event itself. In the 19th century it was not uncommon to refer, for instance, to a “grateful shower of rain,” and we still say “a gloomy landscape,” “a cheerful sight” and “a happy coincidence.”‘

Mostly I just like the examples of emotions being transfered to an event, but I’m also glad to see that he’s of the mind that while technically best to refer to food as healthful and people as healthy, it’s pretty much fine to refer to both as healthy.

It’s called “Signs and Symbols,” or “Symbols and Signs,” and I heard about it from this amazing podcast the New Yorker puts out, wherein the fiction editor discusses a short story published some time ago with another writer, who reads it. This one was picked by Mary Gaitskill, herself a talented writer, who has this amazing reading voice. And hearing them discuss it was really cool, as was just hearing the simplicity of language.

Not everything on the podcast has been good — I really disliked Junot Diaz’s way of reading — but almost everything.

Here’s a quote to give you a feeling of how weird Lynch can be, taken from the wiki page to give it context:

In an NPR “Weekend Edition” interview, Laura Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie’s new producers. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. “Yeah, you’re on a David Lynch movie, dude,” Dern replied. “Sit back and enjoy the ride.” Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

Now here’s the thing about this film: it doesn’t have a plot, but that doesn’t mean it’s not about anything. In some sense, it’s about this woman’s inner life; I definitely see connections between this and Mulholland Drive, although I liked that film a lot more. But I doubt even Lynch would say that the film makes complete sense. It is an art film, as much as it is a film about Hollywood, or a film about violation and the hole to oneself. I don’t know. I guess I’m curious about it because of the mystery, because I want to make sense of it. And that’s not so easy to do.

The part I liked best at first thought is the part from roughly 15 minutes in ’till maybe the end of the first hour, where the lead actress (Laura Dern, playing an actress named Nikki) is cast in a film called On High in Blue Tomorrows and we see her life beginning to blur with her character’s life. I thought this part was really cool.

When Joe was visiting (Joe visited!), we tried watching Synecdoche, NY (dir. Charlie Kaufman, 2008), which we didn’t get all the way through. It just seemed too weird, too unrelated. I wonder if I would’ve sat through Inland Empire in the same circumstances — probably not. But I nonetheless sort of feel like I liked it more than Synecdoche; I felt like Kaufman was just pushing a bit too hard, and Lynch somehow has his crazy ideas linked in a way I prefer. Synecdoche is also about the links between theater and real life, but more heavy-handed about it somehow. And maybe I disliked it because unlike Inland Empire, the characters did feel real and then they disappeared, while Dern’s character always felt like a caricature, a stick figure.

I also have in recent days watched:
Matilda (dir. Danny DeVito, 1996)
Joe had never seen this, so we watched it. On youtube. Still good every time.

On the plane, coming back and forth from the US, I had some shitty-as-hell movie options. As such, I watched:
* Dragonball Evolution (dir. James Wong, 2009). Honestly wasn’t that bad. It was silly and ridiculous, but it was kind of fun.
* Eragon (dir. Stefen Fangmeier, 2006). I read the book and thought it kind of fun but also hilariously bad. The movie more or less had me feeling the same way.
* Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore, 2009). I kind of liked this film. They played it on my flight from LA to Chicago, I think, for everyone to watch. It was embarrassing but also kind of cute, and I do like Ellen Page. I know. Still. It was fun, and kind of silly. I like Drew Barrymore. Shrug.

Here in Madrid, with some friends, I went and saw Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman, 2009), which was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. Amusingly, two of my friends thought we were going to see Up, which was amazing but was not by any means the same film. This one stars George Clooney as a business man who is constantly traveling, firing people for companies. It’s surprisingly touching, and quite interesting; I really rather liked it. I don’t think it should win a Best Picture award, but I did enjoy it.

Anyway, quite a few movies in the past while, considering how rarely I’d watched films in the months before. Good fun.

Joe’s visit was really nice, too; we hung out around here, made awesome Alfajores, and I got to show him around Madrid, and take him to El Escorial. Overall, a good time.

There was a three-part All Things Considered piece the 21st and 22nd of January about bail [bonds] and their impact on poor Americans. You can check it out here on NPR’s website (second part; third part). I thought the pieces, by Laura Sullivan, were really good, although I’ll certainly acknowledge that I think she’s a bit biased towards the same direction as I am.

My junior year of college I was lucky enough to get to take a class with Barb Toews, who does restorative justice in Pennsylvania. The class was part of the Inside-Out program, wherein students in college take a class inside of a jail or prison, alongside currently-incarcerated men or women. I very much felt like this class gave me a viewpoint that would have been severely lacking in a class based on a college campus. It was experiential as much as it was academic; although we did quite a bit of reading and had some pretty good discussions, much of our work was anecdotal, as it must be. Still, I came to be pretty severely convinced that our prison system in the US is [still] part of the problem facing society, rather than something that helps. Even before taking this class, it seemed pretty clear that building more prisons is not and never has been the solution.

NPR seems to have a focus (lately?) on demonstrating some of the problems with current law and with the current prison system. A while back, they did a great series on California’s Three Strikes law (by Ina Jaffe). I remember hearing a fairly recent piece about sex offenders, focusing on Florida’s crazy laws. And now this.

These pieces are moving and, to be honest, make my skin crawl. One of the things my class with Barb discussed was programs intended to keep people out of jail — pretrial release programs. Our class focused on restorative justice — it’s pretty self-explanatory in basic idea. (See here.) I’ll grant that it’s ridiculously optimistic as a philosophy, but I think there are pretty clear results in its favor, and it’s not as though a punative justic system seems to demonstrate great results. (Oh no, not at all.) In any case, the NPR pieces are about how bail doesn’t seem to be helping anyone except for bail bondsmen, and how in fact they seem to be severely hurting (poor) defendants and the government itself.

Bail is intended to insure that a defendant, released pre-trial, returns to court to stand trial. If you can’t pay it, you sit in jail until you plea or until you get a trial — which may take months or more than a year. Many of the guys in my class were in this position. You generally only get a bail if your crime is nonviolent. If you can’t pay it, you can instead pay a few to a bail bondsman, who then puts up your bail for you. You don’t get the fee back. The way the system is supposed to work is this: if you then don’t show up to court, the bail bondsman pays your bail to the court, and uses bounty hunters (legal ones) to get you back. But as the NPR story explains, that doesn’t even happen. As in, the bail bondsman makes money from you, but the court loses money. And then police officers end up getting you back themselves. In any case, I’m perhaps focusing on a small part of this — the important point really is that many people can’t afford the $500 needed to pay a bail bondsman. And as such, they languish in jail, which hurts their chances of fighting their case, overcrowds jails, and makes it more likely for them to give in to prosecutors.

Short version: listen to the NPR story.

2. Super cool: Phineas Gage daguerrotype found.

3. Autism on On the Media and Fresh Air.

On the 5th, NPR’s fantastic On the Media had a rather mediocre piece on autism, focusing on the medical journal The Lancet, which formally retracted Andrew Wakefield’s disastrous paper this month. The paper was published in 1998, and is the one that made the bogus claim that vaccinations might be causing autism by using bad science. Immunologists like Paul Offit have worked hard to dispel this idea, but people persist in believing it. What frustrated me about NPR’s story was that they really didn’t do a good job of explaining just why it was retracted, and why even before it was retracted it had still been repeatedly demonstrated to be bullshit.

I really think that was a bad choice.

I got to see Offit speak at Bryn Mawr in April last year, and he was really a good speaker (he works in Philadelphia). My favorite part of his talk was an anecdote he told about his wife’s pediatric practice. As I remember it, he explained that his wife was seeing a young girl, who was supposed to be getting vaccinations that day. In the waiting room, the girl had an epileptic seizure, the first of what were apparently to be many. But imagine that the seizure had waited a day, or an hour. And imagine trying to explain to that girl’s mother that the vaccination had nothing to do with it. Think you’d get very far? Just because they might’ve been linked, however, would by no means reflect on causation. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

In any case, much more impressive were the three Terry Gross interviews of Temple Grandin on February 5′s Fresh Air. I felt like Gross asked some interesting questions; I also just find Grandin to be a really interesting woman. I no longer remember where I first heard about her, but she’s a professor of animal science who has high-functioning autism, and is also an activist in autism treatment and awareness. I recommend listening to the piece (they also have a glowing review of the HBO movie about her, starring Claire Danes — I am curious indeed), or at least reading up on her — Oliver Sacks’ article about her in An Anthropologist on Mars is a great place to start.

And with that, I’ll leave you. Some more personal updates soon.

When I was in eighth grade, I think, I started reading a series called The Wheel of Time, written by a man known as Robert Jordan. (That’s a pseudonym, for no good reason that I know of. He just always wrote this series with this pseudonym, and others with different ones.) It’s epic fantasy in the most ridiculous way possible. By which I mean: it’s quite literally epic, in that there are currently 12 books (with two more forthcoming) and over 10,500 paperback pages (thanks, wikipedia). Yeah. By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is three books long. George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire (which I read three books from in high school, and ended up finding surprisingly distasteful) is four books long (although three more are projected). Terry Goodkind’s godawful (the first two were good, and then I got disgusted) Sword of Truth series is eleven books long, I guess. WoT (as it’s often abbreviated) has sold almost twice as many books as the Goodkind series, around 44 million copies. Martin’s series is considerably shorter. The only fantasy series I ever liked as much as WoT was Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (beginning with The Dragonbone Chair and feeling very much like something Lloyd Alexander might’ve written). (To be fair, I didn’t finish the third back in that series until years after I first tried it. But that doesn’t fault the beginning.) There is also some more elf-heavy fiction, which I’ve managed to almost block out of my mind. Like Terry Brook’s Shannara series, which I’m kind of happy to forget.

Anyway, I guess the point is that most fantasy isn’t quite so large-scale as Jordan’s, and clearly I’m not the only one who admires that. Anyway, over break I picked up the series (I started on book two, and ended up just keeping on going), and now I’m reading book eleven. Twelve was released in November, I think, co-written by Brandon Sanderson because Jordan died three years ago, now. Leaving copious notes, and a wish that the books be finished.

I do acknowledge, reading these for my third time, that there are lots of things that bother me. I especially notice the things that maybe only happen twice a book, but happen twice every book. There are things like braid-pulling that happen way too often. Phrases like “his cloak would’ve made a tinker blush” are used every time a certain character appears (he’s supposed to wear a too-colorful cloak). I am frustrated when characters do stupid things. For example, characters who are not only on the same side, but also friends, don’t share important information with each other. Sometimes motivations are weak — I still don’t quite get why many of the villains switched sides not just to a different side but to the evil side. It’s one thing when the villain is, you know, a king who wants to rule the world. It’s another when the ultimate villain is the Dark One, a devil who touches the world and enjoys torture, death, and destruction, and expects his followers to as well. Someone who’s jealous might turn on their friends, but not so far as to embrace sadism. Or maybe once, but not over and over again. Right? Maybe I’m being re-naïve.

In any case, this is tons of fun. I like reading these books. I’m reading the eleventh one for the first time, I’m pretty sure (I didn’t own it, and I don’t remember it), and then I’ll have to switch writing styles and read (well, listen to, on audio book) the twelfth. And then I’ll be dry at least until November.

I’m not even going to try describing the plot. Wikipedia does an okay job, but if you’re at all interested then you should pick up the first book, The Eye of the World. It’s kind of pulp fiction, but well-written and well-thought-out for the most part. The characters have distinct personalities. Occasionally you get lost, but there are websites for looking that sort of thing up. Also a brief glossary in the back of the books.

Actually, there are a ridiculous number of websites dedicated to WoT. Not just wikis, of which there are at least two, but “scholarly” sites where people write up their theories, or think about the roots of Jordan’s ideas, or any such thing. It’s quite fun. And useful, when you’re lost, or want to know whether people think the same thing you do. Unfortunately, the websites DO assume you’ve read everything (obviously), and so sometimes give out spoilers.

In other news:

Today, I went rock climbing! It was quite a lot of fun. I feel a bit more comfortable at the place, although I still don’t really say more than two words to anyone other than the woman working at the desk. Still, it feels good to be exercising more than yoga on occasion, and if I couldn’t do anything difficult and felt tired quickly, then it’s well that I finally bought a ten-visit pass and will be going in ten times over the next three months. At least. I’ll try and use it faster. If I go twice a week, then I’ll buy a monthly membership. That’d be fun!

On Tuesday, despite being exhausted, on a whim I bought a tiny (1.5 kilo) chicken from the butcher’s (that’s a bit more than 3 pounds) for €4. The guy threw in two chicken carcasses for free, too, which was nice. So I roasted the chicken that night, more or less following this recipe. More “more” than less, except that I only left it to rest for an hour and a half or so. Even so, it turned out splendidly. Crispy skin, moist breasts, maybe a tiny bit soggy since the lemon had a lot of juice. I had the chicken and potatoes for dinner that night and last night as well.

I also saved two things: first, the chicken carcass, bad meat, joints, and skin. Second, the oil and drippings left in the pan. The latter I used for tonight’s dinner, which was fantastic: I took the last pieces of chicken, and fried them in a bit of (lemon) chicken fat with green peppers, just to warm them. I made rice with stock. I sautéed mushrooms in butter (Michael Ruhlman has an excellent meditation on how best to cook mushrooms, which I didn’t quite follow, since I used butter, but sort of did). And then I made tacos, just peppers, mushrooms, rice, and chicken. Delicious.

The reason I had stock to make rice in, of course, is that I made it. Two raw chicken carcasses, plus one roasted chicken carcass, plus a €1 selection of celery, leek, and carrots from the supermarket, plus some leftover cilantro and some garlic and an onion. I bought a new, bigger pot today, primarily because we needed one (for €15 — I doubt it’ll last more than a year, but I’ll be gone then), and it sat with water turning into stock for around five hours. (I followed Ruhlam’s book for this one. He knows that stuff back-and-front.) I’ll put the stock in the fridge for the night, and then make soup tomorrow, I think. But for now, it made some very soft, flavorful rice.

Up (wiki), dir. Pete Docter, 2009.
Up is somehow amazing endearing, happy and sad, and well-made. It was engrossing, I laughed and I cheered. I’m not so sure I’d want to watch it again tomorrow, but I sure would in a year. I definitely recommend it. (It’s about an old man who’s always wanted to go traveling, a young excitable boy scout, and the way they head to South America — with balloons raising the man’s entire house.)

Zombieland (wiki), dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2009.
This movie was ridiculous and every bit deserving of the praise it has received. It’s about a young man (Jesse Eisenberg, who was the older brother in The Squid and the Whale, and the lead in Adventureland — yeah, another “land”) who’s trying to survive in post-zombie-apocalypse America, and joins forces with an older man and two young women, sisters. It’s a romance, it’s a comedy, it’s a zombie movie. There are some quirks but they’re not overdone; the games the movie plays are surprisingly fun. I didn’t get even the slightest bit bored; I paused the movie so it would last longer. And maybe once or twice in a few awkward scenes. Definite recommendation.

On the plane from Madrid, I watched three movies.

Julie and Julia (wiki), dir. Nora Ephron, 2009.
I would never have watched this without some sort of prompting, but I’d heard good things, and it was indeed a fun movie. The acting is good (Meryl Streep plays Julia Child very well), and the plot is nice. Plus it’s about cooking! It’s certainly no movie to shy away from.

Juno
Watched this for my second time. Still good. Although yes, I agree with the criticism: how is a girl this smart having premeditated sex without a condom? (With Juno, there’s no excuse.) Still, that accepted, great movie.

City of Ember (wiki), dir. Gil Kenan, 2008.
I watched this movie near the end of the flight, more because I didn’t want to read than anything else. And it was pretty good, to be honest. A silly science fiction movie about a future where humans live in an underground city while the earth restores itself (think Wall-E and Zion from The Matrix films), where the generator is failing and the mayor (Bill Murray! especially funny after seeing him in Zombieland) is too blind to care about more than himself. So the kids (who go through a perhaps unnecessary but The Giver-like ceremony at the beginning) have to figure out what’s wrong or how to get out. And one of the kids is Saoirse Ronan, this young British actress who’s getting a lot of press and who has a difficult name. Anyway, not bad. Not something to search out, either.

When I got home, I watched some movies with my folks:

Adoration (wiki), dir. Atom Egoyan, 2009.
This movie was quite cool. I like Atom Egoyan, who also directed The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat. He’s concerned with [immigrant] identity, with Canada’s role in the world. This movie’s about a young man who ends up taking a school exercise too far. Read about it. Or just watch it. There are flaws, but Egoyan’s a magnificent story-teller, and watching the story unfold is pretty cool.

Avatar, dir. James Cameron, 2009.
Everyone knows about this, probably. I think Musa had interesting things to say, and I found this article very interesting. Mostly I just ended up having enjoyed the movie (I saw it 2-D; haven’t seen a 3-D movie in at least ten years), but feeling like it was kind of lame anyway, and not even all that special or novel. Also it reminded me of the amazing Ferngully. It reminded me a lot of Ferngully. Good, though. Worth seeing if you’re excited about it, I guess. Certainly not boring.

500 Days of Summer, (wiki), dir. Marc Webb, 2009.
Second time watching this (on DVD). A little less enjoyable the second time, but still fun. I like Joseph Gordon Levitt a lot. And Zoöey Deschanel, for that matter.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, dir. Sergio Leone, 1966.
I bought this for my father for the holidays. I first watched it with him and his father a good long while ago, and again at school last year. We sat down and watched it a few days ago. It’s still an excellent movie. There are some great scenes, and young Clint Eastwood is great. A classic, no kidding.

Finally there are two movies I’ve seen with friends:

The Road, (wiki), dir. John Hillcoat, 2009.
I read Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocolyptic novel about a man and his son trying to survive maybe a year or two ago. I didn’t like it that much, to be honest — a bit too sparse and bleak for me, I think — but I liked the ideas behind it. I think the movie does an excellent job of filling in the lines, for the most part, and sometimes for making things a bit more intense (not always in a good way, but mostly). There are some things that annoyed me about the movie — the scenes with the dead mother, for one — but they were in the book, too. It’s a very faithful adaptation. The two underground scenes — one involving a bunker, and one a cellar — were fantastic. My theatre was mostly empty, and I heard people gasping, and cheering, at appropriate moments. I didn’t quite approve of the way they ended the film, but other than that I was very impressed. Well done, sirs. Viggo Mortensen is the father, and excellently so. Still bleak and sad. Recommended.

Lastly:
Sherlock Holmes, (wiki), dir. Guy Ritchie, 2009.
So I mean, Guy Ritchie directed this. So I shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s not even as clever as a Guy Ritchie movie should be. It takes the character of Sherlock Holmes, a few elements of it, and then throws him and a souped-up Watson into a Dan Brown novel. Taken as that, it’s quite good. But the mystery is lacking. It’s a gang movie at heart, and that’s too bad. Robert Downey, Jr. is excellent as Holmes, in this role, and Jude Law makes for an attractive Watson (which Should Not Be, but oh well). Ritchie’s trying too hard to avoid the stereotypical Holmes, I think, and ends up falling too far in another direction. Still, I enjoyed the movie. Just… better plot, please. If only they had just made an actual Holmes story into the plot. I might’ve fallen for a street-tough Holmes anyway.

And that’s it for the moment.

So the other day my friend Rebecca mentioned that she’d been doing story-telling things with her students (here in Madrid), and she talked about it a bit more in an email to me. Now, her students are a lot more advanced than mine, and she’s doubtless a better teacher than I am, but I nonetheless decided that bringing stories into classes was probably something I could do.

Last week, I did basic (fake) mad libs with them. It was actually hard — not because they couldn’t understand the story, but because they didn’t get the task. I think I’ll give it another try in a bit, and see how it goes. (By “didn’t get it,” I mean that they picked easy words, instead of fun/funny words — mad libs don’t work with “table,” “walk,” and “tall” nearly so well as they work with “space ship,” “punch,” and “flabbergasted.” Obviously the vocabulary of these kids is a limiting factor, but still.)

This week, however, I had some of my kids write stories. I did a super-basic brainstorming activity — they picked ten or so “interesting” words and then had to write a story using three of them. In one class, for example, this was their word-list: lightning, alien, wolf, bear, beer, bus, bowling alley, skating, orange, jupiter, glove. Now, this was fifth-graders, mostly. And these kids don’t have a very high level of English. I can’t really place any of these kids at a level — sometimes they seem to understand perfectly, and sometimes not at all — but I think they’re probably around where I was in fifth grade, with Spanish. Which is to say: pretty bad. A lot of their problems stemmed not even from language, though, but from just being lazy — most of the stories they wrote didn’t make any sense because they just tried to cram the words together instead of telling a story.

Here’s one of the best stories, by a kid named Guillermo. I’ve corrected his grammatical and spelling mistakes.

The Magic Bowling Alley.

I am in the bowling alley and I see a magic bowling pin. I am amazed. This is a magic pin! I run to there. Oh no! It is very fast. And soon it disappears. I try to follow it. But I lose track of it. One day, I will catch the magic pin.

Even here, the story is ridiculous and nonsensical. But it’s creative and kind of fun. Here’s one of the ones that makes almost no sense:

The alien is orange. It comes to the city, rides the bus, sees a bear, and drinks a beer in its space ship. It arrives at Jupiter.

Even that is better than this (again, as before, I’ve corrected mistakes where I can):

Suddenly I. Between lightning. Suddenly aliens and I ride a bus. Suddenly orange aliens appear, and burst (?) to everyone and travel to Jupiter.

(I think this kid wasn’t listening when I explained what “suddenly” meant.)

I also did this exercise with some of my older students, who are between 14 and 17, I’d say. They had less fun with it, maybe, but they seemed to enjoy it somewhat nonetheless, and some of them wrote stories that, while still short, were kind of fun. (Their word list also began with lightning — that was my word — and was almost entirely made up of words I gave them, because they don’t like to talk.) Here’s one I thought was funny (by Victor):

One day, wild lightning attacked a house. Inside there was a young man, smoking and drinking vodka. He wasn’t paying attention and he burned himself. He tried to escape the lightning to ask for help, but no one saw him, so he died. The end.

I’m interested by how writing tasks some of these students a lot more than others — for some of them, they write a few words in English and it takes forever. For others, they can write a lot — not necessarily well — and just keep on doing so. None of them really had a good story, or even the start to one. Maybe we’ll work on this.

Anyway, I had fun with these. I think I’ll do it again. I have lots of writing exercises sitting somewhere in my head.

Secondly, I should address How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers, like I said I would. Briefly and sporadically.

The book seems to be about what it claims in its title (which is rare): hunger, an intensity. Again and again, characters think sudden violent thoughts, wish to hurt, to maim, to savage. These are not violent people, but Eggers is trying to demonstrate an interior sexuality and physicality in humans, in Us, not in the other. And the characters feel intensely, yes, like children. Here in these stories. The violence here, if it actually occurs, which it rarely does, is sudden, senseless, without conclusion.

As are the stories. This is my main complain with so much of modern short fiction — it manages to sketch a character, to demonstrate an emotion, but then what? Where’s the story? What am I to conclude? I really like Eggers’ short-shorts, because I don’t need to conclude with these — but I don’t want to, either, because they’re of a size where I can hold them, think about them. But after reading 25-pages about a suicide attempt by a man’s cousin, I just . . . want something to happen, you know?

This was a major complaint against Karen Russell’s imaginative, dazzling stories, which I really liked; this is something Raymond Carver somehow manages to side-step. But I don’t feel like Eggers is dealing with it.

I’m also intrigued, and now I’m switching themes without concluding, by the motif (archetype?) of the damaged character. In one story in this book, “Quiet,” the main character visits an old friend/crush, a woman who is missing one arm. There’s a lot more to her than that, but it just reminded me of the Kelly Link story, where Link’s protagonist dates a woman who lives at home with a nose-less father. That story was more powerful, more crazy, certainly. (Also more magical, in a literal way.) But this — what does Eggers mean by this? Is he just talking about vulnerability?

I think that’s it.

Now, a quick explanatory side-note. What I mean by this about not-for-a-long-time is that, should you ask me to be adventurous—go into a new situation, or do something I’ve never done before, and so on—if it’s going to be stressful in some way, the two ways of making it less stressful for me are as follows: One, make it short. Bring me to a friend’s house where I don’t know anyone just for a little while; take me out but then let’s go back in. If I don’t become more comfortable, I’m not going to enjoy staying long. Two, give me some control. Tell me about what we’re doing. (Obviously, usually it’s me doing the deciding on these things.) Would I like to be slightly better at this? Yeah, sure. But it’s not something that particularly bothers me, because it’s so easy to gain some semblance of control. You take small steps, rather than giant ones—you meet people through friends rather than meeting them in completely novel situations. And then when you go through with the larger steps, it’s more fun—because it’s an occasional thing. Now I should point this out, although I doubt you’ll be surprised: this is pretty normal. Most people are like this. Most people hate being put into new situations, exactly for the reasons I’m describing. And that’s not a bad thing.

But the thing is, I am adventurous. Seriously. For a long while, I had it in my head that my not liking to be completely out of my depth was a sign of my not being adventurous, not being spontaneous, not being independent. But no—perhaps that seems to be true to my friends who like this unsure-state, or like boundless, incalculable possibilities. But I prefer my thrills to come from controlled ascents, rather than free falls; I like looking at my options before I choose. I will never be the sort to take an entirely unplanned vacation. This might make me sound staid, but I think that’s missing the point. (Of course I don’t always deliberate each decision! Sometimes I enjoy jumping without looking! But only when other factors are secure.) The point, then, is that my adventuring comes from a different route: one where questions are asked and advice sought. I would never climb a mountain without a map, and maybe a guidebook. If not that, then at least I would want to be going into my climbing having read about the route, or being with someone who knew the mountain well. In some sense I would enjoy being the leader, discovering it on my own—but my mode of discovery would be to ask people, or park rangers, to get a map, to bring a compass. I’ve been lost in the woods, before (not terribly lost), and it’s not a lot of fun. If I were to be set adrift somewhere, could I figure things out? Sure. But why would that be fun? (If it were a contest, maybe.) My thrill-seeking mind wouldn’t be piqued by the supposed-joy of discovery if I were confused, lost, and anxious. And why shouldn’t that be the case? Such ways are not in my genes.

What does it really mean for me to being a structured adventurer? Not what it might sound like, perhaps. I do not mean “structured” as listed out, described, ordered, organized—although it is true that I love list-making—but rather in a more literal sense. My structure comes in mental arrangement: my mind needs to grasp the factors involved in what I’m doing. Really, I mean that I must have asked relevant questions and gotten answers. A friend once asked me: “If I shouted ‘Duck!’ at you, would you duck immediately, or ask me why first?” For me the answer was, of course, that I would ask why. (As seems obvious, were we in any of the circumstances wherein immediate response would be obvious and expected (e.g., a war, a water-balloon fight, laser-tag), of course I would duck.) I don’t think this is a problem with trust, or with control: if the command was “Look to your left!”, of course I would look. The problem is the more basic one of congruity: when things are incongruous, I am uncomfortable.

We’ve come rather far afield, but I think that in some sense we’ve hit exactly on the root of it. I am not a person who likes disorder. Show me geometry! Show me arrangement! Intentional incongruity or disorder can be intriguing, or even beautiful. But accidental confusion? Why should I ever settle?

I wrote this mostly on the airplane coming here. It’s not bad for a sort of free-flowing sort of thing, I guess? (I mentioned I would post this a few days ago, no?)

Note also: This isn’t a research paper. I didn’t take notes, so where I’m drawing ideas from is not always clear. Still, I’ll link outwards as much as I can, when I know where I’m drawing ideas from. David Goldhill’s article in The Atlantic, here, is pretty amazing; I’ll discuss him later, but he changed quite a few of my thoughts, and he provides the statistics I’m not pretending to know.

Over the past few months, I’ve become increasingly interested in, and frustrated by, the debate over health care in the United States. I’ve had the leisure to do some reading while I’ve been home, and all I read made me more and more angry. Because health care seems something that’s nearly as important as basic rights, and here we barely understand what we’re debating.

One of the marvels of the modern world is that we are able to keep ourselves healthy with medicine and technology; the world has advanced to the degree that most mothers do not die in childbirth, most children in the States live to reach adulthood. This does not seem momentous today, but it is extraordinarily different than things were two centuries ago. More notable, of course, are the leaps and bounds of biotechnology that we read about on Tuesdays in the New York Times, or daily in other papers — the doctors who perform a skin graft on a man’s face, or give another man a new hand, or repair a detached retina, or cure diseases formerly thought untreatable. These things are here, and now. This is what health care is. It is also the emergency rooms that treat victims of fires, of car accidents; it is the oral surgeon who re-set my jaw when I broke it, and wired shut my mouth for six weeks so it would heal.

Health care is also the simple, basic levels of care — the doctors’ visits you think nothing of. The doctors who ask you about your life, answer your questions, and recommend simple tests to make sure you’re healthy. It involves the doctors who, should things look bad on a simple blood test, might ask you to come back in. This is health care, too.

And of course this is simple. It’s basic care. It’s not quite on the level of physiological needs from Maslow’s hierarchy, but it’s not much higher up than that; I’d place it in-between physical needs and safety. Most of my friends have access to health insurance, or have had such up until they left home and had to start paying for it themselves. Most people I will know will have had health insurance for all of their lives. And this is excellent. Yet the system by which we fund such care is, to put it bluntly, fucked. Most people have trouble paying for care; many go without. Some die because they don’t have health care, or because their insurance doesn’t cover what they need. People have to choose which segments of care they wish to fund at the moment. I have had friends who have had operations sooner than needed, so their insurance would pay for them since they were in the same calendar year, and friends who’ve split operations into multiple parts, so the insurance would pay for both parts. This is senseless, and in the first case even dangerous. This is not care.

As I see it, there are a few ways that most health care systems work:

1. Health care is paid for entirely by the consumer. This is the primary method for people who don’t have health insurance (duh), who only get free health care if they go to certain hospitals, in certain places, when they really need care. This is also a primary method in countries without organized private insurers and without enough money to provide government-based care. (See: much of the third world; consider other ways of doing it.) I think most people reading this, at least those who are not anarchists or solipsists, will be in agreement with me that this is a lousy method of providing care, at least when the intention is to provide some sort of care to most people.

2. Health care is paid for by the government. Hospitals and doctors work for, and are paid by, the government. Individuals go to hospitals, meet with doctors, and are treated if their problems are covered by the group plan. Ideally, this could be a very effective, streamlined system. Of course there’s buraucracy involved, but this provides a direct circle insofar as financing goes: individuals pay taxes to the government, which pays for the hospitals and doctors, which service those same individuals. This system does work pretty well. Despite what some might have you think, those in Europe who have socialized medicine (that’s what this is) seem to be getting by pretty well. Their systems have their own problems, and ours would be no different. But if this happened, it would actually work pretty well in America. People often criticize such systems for not paying doctors as much and so forth, but instituting it here would not be liable to change things; it’s not that simple.

Medicare is similar to this system, although the people who pay for it are actually not the people receiving its benefits; rather, the current workforce pays for the previous one. Medicare is not very effective, but that’s only partially its own fault. It is top-heavy, and filled with attempts to make it seem to not be socialism, for one thing. Still, Medicare is a part of the problem as much as it is a solution, in other ways.

Of course, nationalized health care won’t come to pass in the US any time soon, because people are terrified of the idea of helping other people. They’re also rightfully concerned about the bureaucracy of it, and I really can’t fault them for that concern.  There’s also the third option:

3. Health care is paid for by private insurers, who are in turn funded by groups of people. This is more or less the way we currently do it. Those who can afford it pay premiums to a private company, and when they need medical services, the insurer pays for part of the service. Many people buy this insurance through their work-place. Most people, in fact. And the companies pay some of the money that would otherwise go to individual salaries into the insurance companies. Thus our insurance depends on our employer’s choices, and our salaries are limited by insurance premiums — you can think of the amount your employer pays to insurance as an amount they’re taking out of your paycheck. This is a somewhat reasonable method of organizing things (most people do work), but beyond that there seems to be no good reason to do it this way.

Besides which, most of the time the amount we pay to the insurer overshadows the amount they pay out for services, but when we need a big operation, or when something catastrophic happens, they pay for that. That’s why it’s called “insurance,” even though most of what it does doesn’t really sound like insurance at all.

Now, as David Goldhill has pointed out in The Atlantic, what we have isn’t really insurance. It’s more like a combination of two things, only the first of which is insurance: catastrophic insurance, importantly, and a stipend for everything else, less importantly. Goldhill suggests that we change the system away from any of the above, providing government-backed catastrophic insurance for all Americans and then allowing individuals access to a health funds account for their doctor’s visists, basic health services, and so on. This system seems pretty reasonable. It also won’t happen, in part because the private insurance companies are very good at lobbying. It’s also a very drastic change, and the US government is too cumbersome to work with drastic change, most of the time.

To be fair, Goldhill’s system also runs some risks in that there’s an increased incentive for individuals to not use their health insurance fund, saving it up instead. (NPR, among others, have pointed this out.) That said, I must ask: increased as compared to what? Report after report has come through the news about adults on heart medicine who don’t buy their medicine because they can’t afford the co-pays, or those who are uninsured who don’t see a doctor so they can buy their children food. Is this any different than individuals choosing not to see a doctor that they can afford? I would say not at all; a choice between now and later is much better than a choice between your life and your childrens’. And yet this system probably isn’t going to change.

The current suggestions for reform are weak, but they may be positive. The “public option” that is being discussed is watered-down and facile, and it’s barely an option for increased coverage, but it may provide health care for some who did not already have it, and I am not going to knock that. That said, I think Goldhill is right when he says that passing some new “reform” will simply entrench us deeper in our current system. What we’re liable to get is a system that’s marginally better, but not by much. And how will this affect me? Perhaps not at all, especially if no attention is paid to increasing hospital’s working with technology, improving hospital and patient records, and connecting doctors with one another. Will some folks who didn’t have health insurance now have it? Yes, probably. Will life be better for them? I hope so. But the real question is: will the government force a change in the health care system as a whole? And the answer is that it probably won’t. That may happen on its own, but I have no faith in a true reformation.

I haven’t wrapped up anything, which is why I put off publishing this for a while. Still: as a summary, this is something. So shall it be.

Cuando llegué al Argentina, estaba muy nervioso sobre mi nivel de español y mi capacidad a usarlo. En solo un poco de días, me di cuenta que aunque no pude hablar perfectamente, pude hablar la idioma; pude sobrevivir. Estes días, tengo algunas conversaciones con personas — no puedo hablar con personas randomes (desgraciadamente), pero hablé con la dueña de mi apartamento para quizas quince minutos, y hablé con un psicologo quien me dio una vuelta en auto al ciudad, hoy, durante eso tiempo. (Que pena que estoy timido en español; él era muy simpatico y amable, y me quisiera pasar mas tiempo con él. Lo mismo con unas de las chicas con quien yo trabajo; ellas (realmente, solo chicas) son amables y me gustan en general, pero tienen más años que yo, y estoy timido, y . . .) Estoy leyendo “La Casa de los Espíritus” en español, y aunque no entiendo los accentes en español (o, por supuesto, en francés), entiendo mucho de eso libro, y creo que estoy aprendiendo. Estoy un poco confundido sobre el uso de los mandatos (no sé como usar accentes con ellos; no sé ni un poco de las reglas sobre el uso; no estoy seguro si esta un diferente manera a usarlos con familiares y formales, o con grupos y individuales, o con afirmativos y negativos), especialmente porque las instructuras de mis clases de yoga lo usan todos los días, pero habitualmente aparece que yo puedo hablar en español. En efecto, me doy cuenta que por la primera vez, yo uso la forma correcta del articulos con nombres. ¡Wow!

(direct translation/generally what I wanted to say: When I got to Argentina, I was really nervous about my level of Spanish, and my capacity to use it. In only a few days, I realized that although I couldn’t speak perfectly, I could speak the language in general; I could survive. These days, I have some conversations with people — I can’t speak with random folks (sadly), but I spoke with my land-lady for maybe fifteen minutes today, and I talked with a psychologist fellow who gave me a ride back to the city today, while we were driving. (How annoying that I’m shy in Spanish, though; he was really nice and friendly, and I would’ve liked to spend more time with him. The same’s true for the women/girls with whom I work; they’re (really, they’re all girls) friendly and I like them in general, but they’re old than I, and I’m shy, and . . .) I’m reading “The House of the Spirits” in Spanish, and although I don’t understand how to use accents [this was noted because I had to look up where to put the accent on "Espíritus"] in Spanish (or, for that matter, in French), I understand much of that book, and I think I’m actually learning. I’m a bit confused about how to use commands (I don’t know how to use accents with them; I don’t know even a little bit about the rules governing their use; I’m not sure whether you use them differently for informal and formal, or with individuals and groups, or with positive and negative commands), especially since the instructors of my yoga classes (perforce), always use commands, but generally it appears as though I can speak in Spanish. Actually, I realize that for the first time, I [generally] use the correct [gendered] form of articles with nouns. Wow!)

2. Reading.

I keep on saying that I’m reading and really enjoying “Kavalier & Clay,” but nothing more. Well, I can say that this is the deepest I’ve been into a book for a really long time. I regularly find myself buried within its pages, within the blink of an eye, and I’m really astonished by Chabon’s ability to hold my attention and keep me engaged. I find the characters and their adventures interesting, and keep realizing that this book is nothing like what I expected. It could use some editing in places, which is weird to notice — sometimes things seem unintentionally jerky — but in general I’m just rolled along heedlessly.

When I was younger, I was a bit of a junky for that feeling of being completely immersed in someone else’s world, and I spent hours and hours reading on a regular basis. A lot of my cessation of reading lay in my finding more work and more modes of pleasure-seeking — the internet, more friends, and so on — but I think I also have grown more wary of this sensation of being able to go somewhere else. Not because it’s dangerous, or rather, its danger is still a draw; I still love being able to escape to elsewhere, but because the feeling of return from a novel can be so much more devestating than that of a film. After investing twenty-plus hours into characters, and tracing lives or journeys or relationships over weeks or days, being suddenly cut adrift by an ending is rather like jumping into the shower only to realize that there’s no hot water. It’s shocking and makes everything else a little dimmer for a little bit. And while this aftereffect is worth it, I am wary of it.

I’m really impressed by Chabon, though. Not just the story in general, but that he did one of my least-favorite things in novels, and got away with it for me. The thing he did is something I often think of as the Dune effect — he suddenly jumped forward a number of years, and switched perspective. Frank Herbert does this with, I think, devestating consequences, most of the way through Dune — suddenly, Paul Atreides is completely changed, years have passed, he is now a fremen leader, he is what we have known he will be. It is impossible to be attached to him anymore. All of the emotional attachment Herbert has fostered is cut adrift by this new Paul. I think to some extent that’s Herbert’s intention, but he does it too well — Dune is still a great novel, but it ends with the reader disconnected. I think this is why I couldn’t get into the rest of the books in that series. Gabriel García Márquez does this in Cien Años de Soledad, also, but worse — he creates characters and then kills them off and jumps to new ones as though it’s the same plot, when clearly it is a new one. The only author who I’ve been willing to sit through this with was Jeffrey Eugenides, in Middlesex, but Eugenides goes so slowly through it all, and takes the time to re-develop his characters, and he works on a much smaller scale than García Márquez, while still using as many pages. In any case, Chabon manages to jump years, but he keeps the same characters and just adds new ones; he allows them to develop smoothly. I was angry at first, but then I realized that he was only really allowing time to age them, not to replace them, and I found myself re-engaged.

I’m not sure how articulate that was.

3. Writing.

I have been trying to write, here. I was originally planning on writing a lot. I have been really bad about this, even with all of my free time. I am writing a lot of [online] journal entries, and this is good, and I am pleased with this. I love journals. I like records. But I also want to work on my fiction (or even my poetry), and all I have written thus far are one piece on the cab driver who took my money (which was reasonably good and sent to Jesse), one on one of the autistic kids, one on an interview I observed, and no more. None of those could’ve been more than a few pages. I have been planning a longer story, but it’s not quite together yet, and I’ve only written half a page of the first scene. It is frustrating, but this is okay. Eventually I will sit down and it will come together.

I just wish I could work without deadlines. I hate how acceptable this mode of unmotivated work is.