Turn on cable and you're bound to be sucked into or assualted by one reality show or another, all screaming for your attention. It's easy to be pulled into the lives and suffering of others. I'm grateful I don't know them. I also wonder if these people exist in the same form when the cameras are off: do they really wear heels and miniskirts all the time. It must be exhausting sucking your stomach in for months of filming. I also wonder what happens to them when their fifteen minutes of fame's over. The news of late show that people will do almost anything to get on tv or stay on tv. It's as if they don't exist unless on camera.
This reminds me of when Warren Beatty, in absolute exasperation, asks Madonna if she exists when the camera's are turned off in her reality film, True Lies. As for Madonna, can you imagine a world where she's not reinventing herself on film? And what about us, the veiwers? Why are we watching and watching? Yes, we experience catharsis watching these programs, but I'm finding blogs far more interesting. It's as if I've been given the key to the front door of a stranger's home while they're at work and I get to puruse the bookshelves and look inside kitchen cupboards, or better yet, I've been FedExed the diary of a someone I'l never meet, and I can thumb throw it at my leisure and piece together a life from the entries.
Blogs let us enter the lives of ordinary people living ordinary lives. This is extraordinary. I still write my secret thoughts in my journals, record my dreams, (which incidentially focused on "bindi" or "lindi" last night), and still make my to- do and to-don't lists, which I will never post on my blog because my journal and my blog are two very different beasts. My blog posts are random, but much less discursive and rambling as my journals. I'm still figuring out the medium.
I found these blogs today, and I'm getting acquainted with these bloggers. Here they are. Go ahead. Enter.
Cool Travel Guide
Features great travel photos and commentary.
Strawberry Kittens
This blogger photographs herself in outfits she wears to the dentist, doctor, etc..
Mrs. Blandings
Has an interior design slant and provides great links.
Zeichenn Press
Features letterpress cards and lots of amusing ramblings.
Stephanie Friedman Photography
Great eye and aesthetic. Lots of interesting photographs.
Beyond Words
Mixed-media art and politics.
London Still
Musing of a real drama queen.
Showing posts with label bright and shiny obects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bright and shiny obects. Show all posts
Thursday's Child
David Copperfield 1910 edition
"Everywoman" marginalia back pages
Marginalia inside front pagesWhether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
So begins the first chapter of Charles Dickens David Copperfield. I found this treasure at the local thrift store. I love books that include marginalia of any kind, and in Eulalia's case, she included her address, calculations, and class notes. I assume from B.Y.E, that she attended BYU before it was a university, and that David Copperfield was assigned reading for a literature class. Why she wrote Everywoman on the back page is a mystery. I'll confess my first thought when I read it was Whitney Houston's I'm every woman, it's all in me,and I hear Whitney and Chaka singing in my ear as I write this.
The narrator of Dicken's novel bemoans being born on a Friday as bad luck. Does he fulfill his query and become the hero of his own life? Read the book and find out. In the meantime, you may consider the meaning of which day of the week you were born.
Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
According to Wikipedia, this rhyme was first recorded in A. E. Bray's Traditions of Devonshire in 1838.
If you don't have any idea on which day you were born, here's an interesting site that will provide the information in a few seconds. What day of the week were you born? The site also provides a modern version of the days of the week rhyme.
Instead of "far to go", in the modern version I'm "very smart", so naturally, I like this version better.
I was born on Thursday. My daughter and both husbands, current and ex, were also. In the original version I have "far to go". Although in reality I haven't wandered too far, I'm a wonderer at heart, restless, willing to drop and run, until the rational and practical side steps in and puts a heavy thumb down. That thumb has been heavy far, far too often. With each year, I've noticed that I'm becoming more and more restless, and that my daydreams center around escaping to anywhere with only a backpack, camera, notebook, iPhone, and credit card. Two weeks ago a colleague asked if I'd be interested in working in China next year. I said YES without hesitation, and it took more than a few beats to bring me back to the reality that my daughter just might object if I moved that far away from her at this point in her young life.
Thank god for Ovation tv and their Staycation programs. And thanks again to diety and the Sundance Channel for Man Shops Globe. Both stations help me get my wanderlust fix, and I'll watch, (twitching with restlessness), until I finally allow myself to pull up anchor and sail the hell out of port! I give myself three more years of nose to the grindstone responsibility.
See, Thursday's child really does have far to go,as in all around the globe and back again!
Ever wonder how Thursday come to be called Thursday? Thursday was named after Jupiter or Thor, the Nordic name for Jupiter, also known as Zeus. Ruled by Jupiter, this planet bestows Thursday's child with the following qualities: Honorable, expansive, generous, jovial, philosophical and/or extravagant, conceited, hypocritical, sharp-tongued, fanatical. Seems a little harsh I'll take the good with the bad.
If you're interested in what the ancients called their days of the week, or how to pronounce Thurday in say, Ido or Scots Gaelic, check out wiki's Week-day Names. And if you feel like it, check out David Bowie's lyrics for Thursday's Child. While you're purusing the site, why not google your own day of the week!
Rosetta Stone for the New Age
Rosetta Disk from O Magazine photo by Spencer LowellAn analog archive of more than 1,500 languages: rosettaproject.org
Fourth Century Bible from National Geographic photos: British LibraryA virtual archive of the earliest known complete copy of the New Testament: codexsinaiticus.org
Books to Read Around the World
Another find today, (all on my own), is The Guardian's World Literature Tour. The current destination is Egypt. The reading list is growing; of course Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa al Aswany are included, as well as authors that date back to the Pharoahs.
My suggestions to add to the list:
Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif.
The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, its author compared to Tolstoy and Flaubert. I devoured this book two summers ago. Although the central theme is a blend of politics and love, forbidden or otherwise, the book is much more than the tale of forbidden love, or yet another tome decrying the arrogance and destructive effects of colonialism. The emerging Egyptian Nationalist struggle against British imperialism, is explicated through the means of a culturally forbidden love affair between Lady Anna Winterbourne and Arab nationalist Sharif al-Baroudi. Close to one-hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, Anna and Sharif's great-granddaughter, discovers Anna's journals and letters, (translated by Amal, her lover's sister), and thereby discovers the parallel between her Great-Grandmother's choice to marry a man outside her own culture, to that of her obssessive love for Egyptian American composer and political activist, Omar Ghamrawi. If you're not paying attention you might miss that Amal is a quiet symbol of the effects of postcolonialism and the current state of Egypt.
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el-Saadawi
I read Nawal el-Saadawi's fictionalized memoirs when I was in my early twenties, back in college, and I can remember thinking the character was very angry, and also, that a lot of what was written, the social and political oppression of women as a whole, just couldn't be true. Turns out the character had every right to be angry, and yes, the injustices were true. el-Saadawi wrote this novel in her twenties, and the book was instantly hailed, yet also considered highly controversial, so many parts were deleted. The book is considered a revolutionary feminist book which showcases the struggles of ordinary women, for basic rights. Speaking truth to power is risky business. el-Saadawi has never strayed from telling her truth, the truth of Arabic women, the truth of her life as a professional and as a wife and mother, nor from working to better the political and cultural lives of Arab women.
My suggestions to add to the list:
Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif.
The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, its author compared to Tolstoy and Flaubert. I devoured this book two summers ago. Although the central theme is a blend of politics and love, forbidden or otherwise, the book is much more than the tale of forbidden love, or yet another tome decrying the arrogance and destructive effects of colonialism. The emerging Egyptian Nationalist struggle against British imperialism, is explicated through the means of a culturally forbidden love affair between Lady Anna Winterbourne and Arab nationalist Sharif al-Baroudi. Close to one-hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, Anna and Sharif's great-granddaughter, discovers Anna's journals and letters, (translated by Amal, her lover's sister), and thereby discovers the parallel between her Great-Grandmother's choice to marry a man outside her own culture, to that of her obssessive love for Egyptian American composer and political activist, Omar Ghamrawi. If you're not paying attention you might miss that Amal is a quiet symbol of the effects of postcolonialism and the current state of Egypt.
Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el-Saadawi
I read Nawal el-Saadawi's fictionalized memoirs when I was in my early twenties, back in college, and I can remember thinking the character was very angry, and also, that a lot of what was written, the social and political oppression of women as a whole, just couldn't be true. Turns out the character had every right to be angry, and yes, the injustices were true. el-Saadawi wrote this novel in her twenties, and the book was instantly hailed, yet also considered highly controversial, so many parts were deleted. The book is considered a revolutionary feminist book which showcases the struggles of ordinary women, for basic rights. Speaking truth to power is risky business. el-Saadawi has never strayed from telling her truth, the truth of Arabic women, the truth of her life as a professional and as a wife and mother, nor from working to better the political and cultural lives of Arab women.
Book Beast
This "discovery" is filed in the "where have I been?" category. I'm sure I heard about its launch, but forgot until I recently heard an interview with Tina Brown (former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker) on NPR: Book Beast and Art Beast at Tina Brown's omnivorous web magazine, The Daily Beast, are not to be missed. Neither is the news and opinion coverage.
The Daily Beast Twitters, it Facebooks. Friend me!
The Daily Beast Twitters, it Facebooks. Friend me!
Mapping A Direction
I'm starting this blog to map a direction to help me write and complete my novel this year, and also, to create a cohesive body of mixed-media artwork, and most importantly, to have a good time creating. For me, image, myth, and language are inextricably entwined and inform and inspire the other. As I said in my bio, I'd like to think I was a crow in another life. I admire corvids for thier intelligence, humor, and for thier ability to gather and create from disparate bright and shiny objects. I read Robert Kelly's poem "Mapping" tonight in the anthology The Best American Poetry 1993 and think the excerpt provided here an apt guide to begin mapping my writing and art journey.
A book for us to write, like this:
you'll uncap the pen and hold the barrel
you'll press the iridium nib against soft paper
you'll draw a line--extend
it to a word
it will run from your hip up your heart to your hand
and it will say
...How does the land know
what the map is making it do?
Which way does a word point
when we look through each other
whoever we are?
And it goes there,
nobody's listening, let the word go,
let the map pour out of your hands
hurry,
you know something you almost remember.
-Robert Kelly "Mapping" from Grand Street
A book for us to write, like this:
you'll uncap the pen and hold the barrel
you'll press the iridium nib against soft paper
you'll draw a line--extend
it to a word
it will run from your hip up your heart to your hand
and it will say
...How does the land know
what the map is making it do?
Which way does a word point
when we look through each other
whoever we are?
And it goes there,
nobody's listening, let the word go,
let the map pour out of your hands
hurry,
you know something you almost remember.
-Robert Kelly "Mapping" from Grand Street
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