Meeting writers

A strange feeling comes to me when I'm introduced to authors whose writing I love. I know one aspect of their mind so well already. I've spent hours reading their work, with their words filling my head, carrying me along the drift of a narrative. I surrender myself when I read, give myself over.

But the book is a collection of artfully arranged thoughts, trapped in the formaldehyde of print. A specimen I later examine. The writer is a person, responsive, secret. Some switch is flipped. It's at once a reduction and an intensification of intimacy, and I become awkward.

The universe observing itself

Since I was old enough to understand how the human body works, I've been amazed by it. The transmission of nervous signals from brain to muscle, telling a hand how to play a piano, translating the player's cognition into physical movement, her or his understanding of the notes that need to be played and how the hand can go about playing them. A feedback loop of alterations in the physical universe and thought directing and responding to those changes.

People who say science robs the universe of mystery and wonder are wrong. The more I learn, the more awe I feel.

Sympathy is the dangerous necessity

"That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps ours frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity." - George Eliot

This quote both renews my sensitivity and forgives my lack of it.

yet another dichotomy

Guess culture versus Ask culture seems to have originated from an Ask Metafilter comment, but it has since received the blessing of the mainstream media, so I suppose it's a 'real thing.' I think it's an interesting way of thinking about the assumptions that underlie our daily interactions.

I immediately identified myself primarily as a 'Guesser,' and I wanted to make some small intelligent comment about it. But all my brain can does is find silly ways to valorize 'Guess culture.' Like: "it makes a person a better literary scholar, because you're looking for nuance and paying attention to underlying assumptions."

I saw Tennessee Williams' bum

I saw the Morgan Library's exhibition of notable diaries. Tennessee Williams's is there (under glass). Something about it entreated me, this diary, open to a single page. Be kind to Tennessee Williams, it said. Somehow.

Down in the gift shop they had the diary reproduced in full for purchase, with photos added. I read a dozen pages from the early 1940s.

There was a photo of him naked on a bed, face down. He held himself up on his forearms. I can only describe his backside as "friendly-looking." The back of his head, the way he held it, suggested meaning.

New York City

I am currently sitting in a room in Queens. We're off to Manhattan soon. This is my third time in New York City. It is very odd to sense, settling on me, the tiny beginnings of a familiarity for the place. It seems like New York should never become familiar, it should always be exhilarating. It is still pleasing and invigorating to be here, but the pure wonder of it already begins to lessen.

I suppose you would die of too much wonder, if it wasn't quickly tempered by familiarity, and people do have to live here, amongst my expectations.

Suffering for your mind

One of the songs on Kate Bush's debut album is a kinda naive (hey, she was 18) but appealing take on the quest for knowledge, learning, and self-improvement. At one of several climaxes littered throughout the song, Kate enthuses of her learning: "it's almost killing me / but what a lovely feeling!"

I used to identify, but the deeper I get into a PhD the more I think it might be unwise to have a "no pain no gain" attitude to academia. Some intellectual disorder and uncertainty is healthy, but writing a paper shouldn't feel like dying, it really shouldn't.

Travel Writing

Today I was in a bookstore's travel section. I browsed books about places I've already been, not places I want to go – not Scandinavia or Argentina, but Ireland, where I lived for 8 months.

The longer I spent in a place the stronger the impulse to read about it. I always, always look for books on Newfoundland, or the Newfoundland section of books on Canada.

I guess I want to judge the depictions, to see if they got it "right." Usually they get something wrong. Or maybe I want to check my impressions and memories against someone else's.