It's sooooo LaLaLa!!!

Yael Naim's "New Soul"

Todo bem.

Despite the hysterical tone of yesterday's post, I really wasn't.

And, reading gets done. In fact, I was able to finish most of what I need to do. I am enjoying the luxury of being no longer any further behind than usual. "Caught up" is such a relative term, but I did have time to do some of the things I truly enjoy...

¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!¡!

Surrounded by unread reading for Cultural Studies, the Sor Juana seminar, Portuguese for Spanish Speakers, versiones finales de composición #1, los otros trabajos and probably several other things I'm forgetting about, it's not even mid-term yet and I realize that this quarter is seriously spanking my ass and making me its bitch!
I guess it has my consent...

(No, eso no se traduce.)

Time enough...?

Believe it or not, I was once asked (along with two real photographers) to take pictures at a wedding and this is the one that I liked best. The groomsman seems to be offering the viewer the gift of time.
Indeed, I found myself with some paradoxical extra time this afternoon, having left everything I need to do or read or write in my school office. I can't get back there for another fifteen minutes. So I came here, expecting to have a good old rant about being an idiot. I looked in my photo file for a fitting visual image, but opened this one instead. The portrait of this smiling man whose name I don't know has had a calming effect on me. The watch in his hand, another paradox. I'm not seeing it as a reminder of how much time I've wasted by forgetting all my study materials. Its own hands are not visible, making me realize how fluid a concept is time...the time I've "lost" I can't get back and perhaps it doesn't matter.

Chove

"Chove" was the first word I learned in galego. A few days before Karl left for Porriño, in September (2004), I'd gone to every bookstore in Sacramento looking for a copy of Federico García Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba for my class in Spanish theater. I finally found it in Sweetbriar Books in Davis. That wasn't surprising, but one of the other books I found that day, the
Galician-English/English-Galician Dictionary was. Karl took it with him on that work trip. I learned "chove" from road signs.



I don't know if the dictionary came in handy, but it did surprise Karl's colegas gallegos. One of them loaned him Luar na Lubre's Lo mejor de XV aniversario and he burned those beautful celtíbero songs into his iTunes. What sounds like bagpipe is the Galician version of that instrument, the gaita. The Celtic presence still hangs in the clouds over Galicia, and seeps into its land, verdant from the water those clouds drop onto it.

When I got there in October, it rained almost the whole time, but this only enhanced the atmosphere of Santiago de Compostela. Water inundated the streets of the city along with more pilgrims than usual in the last months of that Jacobean year.



As I transferred my photos to a disc one day, I listened to the Luar na Lubre selections, repeating "Chove en Santiago"a few times, trying to figure out why its feel was so familiar. Once I'd gotten the galego lyrics (which I googled) into enough Spanish, and when that wasn't enough, used the dictionary to get the last few key words in English, it was quite clear. An additional search confirmed that the lyrics were not simply Lorca-esque, they were Federico García Lorca's words. Originally titled "Madrigal a cibda de Santiago" ("Madrigal to the City of Santiago"), it's one of about 6 he wrote in Galician. That haunting melody or music doesn't just reflect the mood of the poem for me, or even evoke it. It actually is the words. I reproduce the original lyric (from cancioneros.com) along with my, yes, unworthy, but lovingly rendered, Spanish and English translations.

Galego
Chove en Santiago
meu doce amor
camelia branca do ar
brila entebrecida ao sol.
Chove en Santiago
na noite escura.
Herbas de prata e sono
cobren a valeira lúa.
Olla a choiva pola rúa
laio de pedra e cristal.
Olla no vento esvaido
soma e cinza do teu mar.
Soma e cinza do teu mar
Santiago, lonxe do sol;
agoa da mañan anterga
trema no meu corazón.

Español
Llueve en Santiago
mi dulce amor
camelia blanca del aire
brilla entenebrado en el sol.
Llueve en Santiago
en la noche oscura
hierbas de plata y sueños
cubren la desierta luna.
Mira la luna en la calle
aullido de piedra y cristal.
Mira el viento desviado
sombra de tizna de tu mar.
Santiago, lejos de tu sol
agua de mar
remueve mi corazón.

English

It's raining in Santiago,
my sweet love.
A white camellia of air
shines darkly in the sun.
It's raining in Santiago
in the dark of night.
Grasses of silver and dreams
cover the the deserted moon.
See the rain in the street,
a moan of stone and glass;
see the lost wind,
shadow and ash of your sea.
Santiago, far from your sun,
water of full morning
trembles in my heart.

Default setting #4

Every time I've needed to resort to the default setting I've been sitting in the living room. Perhaps it's not the most conducive place for blogging. Maybe for a change I'll write it English

Escribo desde/I write from: el sofá color púrpura/ the purple couch
El tiempo/Weather: Llueve. Otra vez./It's raining. Again.
Estoy luciendo/What I'm wearing: ¿Qué importa?/ Who cares?
Conmigo/With me: Stella.
Estado de animo/State of being: Si estoy escribiendo un "default setting" significa algo./If I'm writing a "default setting that is telling.
Estoy leyendo/What I'm reading: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, obras completas; Various articles from Cultural Studies tomes; La muerte me da de Cristina Rivera Garza; Pontos de encontro, Portuguese as a World Language textbook; algo más que no sé si puedo decir


Música: Many wonderful downloads./Muchas canciones que bajé.
Vi a/I saw: Muchos, pero no les puedo decir quiénes son, como son miembros de uno de esos grupos Anónimos. Para clarificar: Yo no pertenezco a ningún grupo Anónimo./ Many people, but I can't tell you who they are, as they are members of an Anonymous group. To clarify: I am not.
Hablé con/I spoke with: Los de arriba y los de siempre./See above and the usuals.
Antojo/Craving: Chile seco.

It's been raining

"Llovió cuatro años, once meses y dos días...Lo malo era que la lluvia lo trastornaba todo, y las máquinas más áridas echaban flores por entre los engranajes si no se les aceitaba cada tres días, y se oxidaban los hilos de los brocados y le nacían algas de azafrán a la ropa mojada. La atmósfera era tan húmeda que los peces hubieran podido entrar por las puertas y salir por las ventanas, navegando en el aire de los aposentos...Fue necesario excavar canales para desaguar la casa, y desembarazarla de sapos y caracoles, de modo que pudieran secarse los pisos, quitar los ladrillos de las patas de las camas y caminar otra vez con zapatos. Entretenido con las múltiples minucias que reclamaban su atención, Aureliano Segundo no se dio cuenta de que se estaba volviendo viejo..." (351-352).

Márquez, Gabriel García. Cien años de soledad. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1983.

"It rained for four years, eleven months and two days...The worst thing was that the rain upset everything and flowers bloomed from between the gears of even the most dried-up machines if they didn't get oiled every three days, and the threads of the brocade drapes oxidized and saffron algae was born into damp clothing. The atmosphere was so humid that fish would have been able to enter the house through the door and leave through the windows, navigating through the air of the rooms...It became necessary to dig canals to drain out the house and rid it of frogs and snails so that the floors could dry, take the bricks out from under the feet of the bed and again wear shoes. Kept occupied with the multiple minuciae that demanded his attention, Aureliano the Second did not realize that he was growing old..."

(la no muy digna traducción mía/my unworthy translation)

¿?

OK, I'm confused. I pass this little sign almost every day. It's posted on a door near the entrance to the women's locker room at the ARC. I know I'm in graduate school and yes, one of the themes I work with is gender, its delineations and the blurring of those lines. I also consider myself transgender-friendly. But...maybe I need to make some actual trans-gendered friends that I can ask, because despite all of the above I can't figure this out...



I'm only sort of trying to be funny...I mean I guess I can sort of figure out one type of trans-gendered person who might need the room. Also, the / could mean that either lactating people or trans-gendered persons can use the room...I'm open to being educated.
P.S. This was the first photo I sent from my camera to my computer! I just figured it out 20 minutes before posting this!

This is why we still can't have nice things.

I hadn't even been home 5 minutes when the landline rang. Without even bothering to find out who it was I answered, "Hi. Unless this is an emergency, can you call me back in 20? I'm having an 'I Love Lucy' moment. Thanks. Bye." I hung up and went back to pulling up the keyboard of the laptop in the kitchen. In my rush to let Stella outside (she'd been in all day due to incessant rain), I'd carelessly set down my travel mug on the desk. I heard it tip, but didn't worry, knowing it was empty. When Stella and I got back to the kitchen, I smelled coffee. Evidently, for once I hadn't consumed the entire contents before Dixon and coffee the color of a brown paper bag was seeping among the letters of the keyboard. I blotted up as much as I could before popping the keyboard out and was gently shaking it to express all the liquid while trying not to yank it out by the funny tape thing that connects it to the um...whatever that is under there. From my cell phone I heard the high-pitched "Wheeeeeeeeee, huh hee hee hee!" custom ringtone I'd made from "Winona's Big Brown Beaver". That would be "Ricky" calling and it's technically his computer. Keyboard dangling from my hand, I looked at Stella. "I'm not answering that." I said. She looked up at me and her expression said, in Ethel Mertz's voice, "Now, Lucy..." I answered. "Hey," he said, "I'm just leaving work. Do you want me to get anything on the way?" Sweet! That gave me at least 30 minutes to clean up and test the computer.

Sure enough, it still worked. This is the computer that has been dropped or slammed in or into something. It's been to more places than I have, including Burning Man where someone wrote a good portion of his MA thesis on it. Its case is bent and even before today's mishap you had to jiggle the screen back and forth to get the whole screen visible. But after the coffee infusion the jiggling is no longer necessary. LaLaLa. Lucy was never this lucky!

Dirty laundry y flores

So, my department is under review. The process started last year with a survey of graduate students and the review committee (from French, German, Theater Arts here at UCD and one import from Arizona) has organized for today and tomorrow a series of meetings with staff, faculty and us. I attended today's meeting for students. The majority of students will attend tomorrow's. Having worked in education and gone through the accreditation process I was familiar with this sort of meeting. A bit of a drawback perhaps, because I left it feeling sort of icky. The committee was comprised of very busy people who are very committed (no word-play intended and I'm not changing it now) to improving UCD as a whole and to listening to the needs of their colleagues and students. They used as a springboard for discussion the results of last year's survey, but I don't know that any of the committee had training in how to direct a session like this. Especially when given only 45 minutes. I almost want follow-up so that there can be a more balanced discussion - especially about the literature requirement for linguistics students and vice versa. So many people see it as bullshit, but I think it's pretty valuable. In every seminar I've taken, there's been a linguistics student who introduces him/herself at the first meeting by saying they're nervous and don't know anything about literature and have doubts about their contributions. In every seminar, the professors assure them that they'll be fine. Indeed, in every seminar, I've found that these students make unique observations and provide perspectives and interventions that are quite illuminating. I also imagine that literature can provide them with some amazing data. Although I suspect that I remember just enough linguistics to be dangerous, I think the reverse must be true as well. Even a basic knowledge of linguistics, and not just socio-linguistics, either, can add a refreshing and perhaps appealingly scientific dimension to literary analysis and criticism.

Planned reaction

Statements of Stuart Hall's that grab my attention and that I'll probably react to once I've formed reactions to his paper, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies", probably after re-reading it several times.



"Although Cultural Studies as a project is open-minded it can't be simply pluralist in that way. Yes, it refuses to be a master discourse or a meta-discourse of any kind. Yes, it is a project that is always open to that which it doesn't yet know, to that which it can't yet name. But it does have some will to connect; it does have some stake in the choices it makes."

"The only theory worth having is that which you have to fight off, not that which you speak with profound fluency." (OK, I've been fighting them tooth and nail and not sure I understand this, much less agree with it)

"For cultural studies (in addition to many other theoretical projects), the intervention of feminism was specific and decisive. It was ruptural."

"We know it was, but it's not known generally how and where feminism first broke in. I use the metaphor deliberately: as the thief in the night, it broke in; interrupted, made an unseemly noise, seized the time, crapped on the table of cultural studies."

De colores

2/5

WWYD

When I got back to the locker room after my run today, my first stop was the first available stall. I entered quickly, it was urgent. When I stood up afterwards, I heard a soft, unexpected splash. “Oh, shit,” I thought. Unfortunately it wasn’t. I turned around and looked down into the bowl. My face, and along with it my name, student ID number and the words “GRADUATE STUDENT” stared back up at me from underwater. My first thoughts (after “Ewww!”) were the following possibilities. I could:
1. Just get my student ID card out of the toilet bowl and toss it (ewwwwwwwwwww!)
2. Just get it out and wash it really really well, without being such a baby> It was only pee and it was, after all, my own.
3. Flush, and try to grab it as the water swirled away, but it might go down, fuck up the pipes and when the plumber came and extracted it, they'd trace it back to me and I'd have one helluva charge on my student account
4. Go to the front desk and ask for a rubber glove from their first aid kit and fish out the card wearing that, but
a. it wouldn't have gone far enough up my arm
b. I'd have to explain why I needed it, and that would be embarrassing (although no reason for needing a rubber glove in a locker room restroom could ever be wholesome)
5. Swallow my pride, go to the front desk, explain what happened and leave it to the experts


OK, what would you have done?

Literatura por la puerta de atrás

At break during the Sor Juana seminar I'm auditing, I called my dad.

Me: Hey, Dad...I saw I missed 2 calls from you. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just extremely busy today.
Dad: It's good that you're busy.

He was right, of course, as he tends to be more and more as I get older. I was busy doing things I like and unlike last week, those things didn't overwhelm me. Today it did hit me, though, that for the first time since student teaching, I'm not enrolled in a literature class. So I've added insult to injury and asked Profe Linda if I may audit and show up late to her Sor Juana class that I had to drop so I could take the small group study (by the way, I'm never speaking in that class again!). Today the Sor Juana class divided up the chapters of Octavio Paz's study of his paisana and summarized them, since the actual textbook is not available. I'm not stressed about this, I'm just auditing and I've got my hook-up anyway.



My favorite chapter summary was E.'s - of that in which Paz outlines the differences between Góngora's "Soledad" y "Primero sueño" de la poetisa. The prologue (or whatever the introductory lines of a poem are) to Sor Juana's poem reads, "que así intituló y compuso la madre Juana Inés de la Cruz, imitando a Góngora". And así begins the poem, which I haven't read yet, already presenting intriguing contrasts of darkness/light. And sky/earth with a pyramidal image that perhaps is meant to connect the two.

Piramidal, funesta, de la tierra
nacida sombra, al cielo encaminaba
de vanos obeliscos punto altiva,
escalar pretendiendo las Estrellas
si bien sus luces bellas
-exemptas siempre, siempre rutilantes -
la tenebrosa guerra....

Garbage Eve!

I have the impression that Thursday must be Garbage Day all over the world. It is in certain neighborhoods in Bozeman, MT and Guadalajara, Jalisco and it certainly is here.



And, on a not entirely unrelated note, I read Walter Benjamin's "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction." and started "The culture industry: Enlightenment as mass deception" by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Both All three philosophers do have relevant things to say, even today and Adorno isn't as scary as I thought he was going to be. In fact, he's sort of closed-minded and maybe even hysterical (and not in a "ha ha" way). I will mercifully spare my reader the summary of the articles here. If I get up the guts, I will write my reaction paper on one of them and risk losing the above-mentioned reader by posting it here another day. It's time for me to stop being a baby. I figure it will be good for me to confront my fear of Critical Theory by taking on one of the big boys. Probably Benjamin because I can't see the name "Horkheimer" without pronouncing (mentally or aloud) the first syllable as a cough. I'm no longer being a baby, I've matured to adolescence. I guess I can't put this in my paper, but Benjamin is the one I'd be most likely to go have a beer with. When I mentioned this to my office mate this morning, he said flatly, "Benjamin's dead. He committed suicide." I figured the former, but was surprised by the latter. Unlike other members of the Frankfurt School who lived in exile in the States, Benjamin didn't make it out of Europe before the Nazis came to power. He died in Spain. That he may have committed suicide saddened me. His writing is so relatively accessible and comparatively balanced. Example: He says of the photographer Eugene Atget: "With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurence, and acquire a hidden political significance. They demand a specific kind of approach; free-floating contemplation is not appropriate to them. They stir the viewer, he feels challenged by them in a new way."

Not sure about political significance, but viewers are definitely invited or challenged to take a closer look.

Reach for the Sky

KFOG is playing songs in alphabetical order this week. They used to do it on long weekends and I thought that was such an interesting way for them to program music. I guess I still do. When I listen to my iPod Shuffle, though, I prefer it to do just that. So my setting is almost always set to:


When I'm running jogging, I like being surprised by Social Distortion's "Reach for the Sky." It's corny, but it really does motivate me no matter where I am in the run or what my level of energy. Its rhythm, pace, notes (?) and the singer's voice are what get me going, but yeah, I'll admit it, its lyrics also inspire. Depending on the run, "Reaching for the Sky" can mean:

• running faster/farther than usual


• keeping the current pace


• not stopping

In one of its non-run applications it brings to mind my friend who found in skydiving an incredible freedom, perhaps from those mysterious headaches. The first time I heard the song, I imagined R. hurtling from a plane, not even knowing, in those first seconds, whether the sky was up or down.

In another, the whistle that begins the song resounded through my earpieces, interrupting my contemplation through the bus window of the sun and landscape on the road between Ronda and Marbella a little over two years ago. I was recalling another trip along that same stretch of road more than ten years prior when it was raining and the road was wet. As we went into a skid, I looked out my window and saw, not pavement, but air, and below that air, earth on a steep incline. My brother got the car back in line with the road, but didn't drive again that trip. When the song ended, so did my Space Mountain-esque trip down Memory Highway. I pulled a folder from my briefcase and re-read the e-mails from my mentor in which he reiterated his recommendation that I "go beyond the MA". For the first time, I sort of agreed with his assessment of me as someone who might be capable of advanced studies. But more than that, realized that I very much wanted to continue studying and that I was ready for something new.
So, basically, I applied...

And, yeah, I think that if you need a musical motivation, especially the physical kind, crank up whatever song it is that gets your butt in gear. If it's cheesy and makes you feel like the protagonist who triumphs over adversity in a sports movie a la Rocky, all the better.

But...For the love of God, just don't let anyone catch you singing along with it in the grocery store. ;)

If anyone out there is commenting... What songs make you feel like going faster, longer, harder, or otherwise pushing your limits? (Sorry, but "That's what she said" is not a legitimate comment.)

Na sala da aula de português

My Portuguese class (MWF 2:10-3:00) is comprised of 17-18 of the biggest language nerds on campus. I say that with a combination of affection, awe and envy. Our instructor is excellent and transmits his love of Brazilian Portuguese to his students. The room is rarely silent during those 50 minutes. At any given time, some or all of us are repeating some or all of whatever he's just said, whether he asks us to or not. He often looks a bit taken aback by this, and I'm not sure he understands how lucky he is. It's often difficult to get students in the beginning language classes to pronounce things even when we ask them two or three times to do so. This is not because they're lazy - there's a shyness and a fear of sounding silly on the part of most beginning language students (who are mostly just getting a requirement taken care of ) that language nerds don't have. When I mentioned to a friend that I should tell him how very cool it is that we do this, she said it would also be a good way to teach "good noise" vs. "bad noise" in the classroom. This difference is something experienced teachers can discern automatically. Our tentative, often poorly pronounced or downright butchered Portuguese is definitely "good noise" because it means we have caught our instructor's enthusiasm and we appreciate him and the language.

Pay day/recompensa

Era el tipo de alumno que todos queremos en nuestros clases...y todo lo que queremos por todos nuestros alumnos.

This student embodies the kind of student we hope for, and what we hope for all of our students...
From: D.
To: M.,Valerie, B.
Subject:Hola Muy Buenas Maestras
Date:Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:08:57

Hola M., Valerie, y B.
¡Estoy escribiendo de una computadora en mi oficina en San Jose, Costa Rica! Estoy aquí para enseñar ingles y también para mejorar mi español. Tengo cinco clases dos veces por semana y cada clase dura dos horas. ¡Es mucho trabajo y muy duro ser maestro! Pero vivir aquí en un país lindo y diferente como Costa Rica es una aventura muy buena.

Les querría decir "Muchas gracias" para enseñarme español. Como ustedes pueden mirar, ya no lo he mejorado, pero aprenderé más, especialmente cuando asistiré clases de español aquí en mi trabajo.

Comenzamos nuestros trabajos hace una semana y los nos gustan porque los estudiantes son muy agradables y los otros maestros y gerentes son muy simpáticos y quieren nos ayudan. También recibí una noticia buena - fui aceptado en la Baylor School of Law. Estudiaré para ser abogado el próximo ano, pero es posible en otra universidad que Baylor. Estoy esperando a respuestas de otras universidades – Cornell, Georgetown, UC Hastings, y otras.
M. - pensé que era una buena idea hacer una entrevista con sus padres en España. Tengo Skype con una cámara de video aquí en la oficina y en mi apartamento también. Quisiera ser una fuente de información para todos los estudiantes (Valerie y B. - estoy hablando de ustedes también ahora) que creen quieren venir a Centroamérica y enseñar ingles. También seria buena practica para mi español (espero que seria buena practica para sus estudiantes también). O seria alegremente un "Pen Pal" de estudiantes si tienen preguntas de la cultura o "pura vida" aquí.
Si tienen dudas, me pueden escribir, por favor. Estaré aquí hasta julio, cuando voy a viajar, enseñar ingles en brasil o regresar a casa y preparar para Law School. Depende de la plata, por supuesto. Muchas gracias otra vez, muy buenas maestras.

D.
PS: Tengo mi libro, Dos Mundos, conmigo aquí. Qué tormentoso.

Haciendo cola

+

until there's a faster cure than "time".

The mommy in line ahead of me at Target kept up a constant monologal conversation with her pre-verbal child, referring to herself in third person and asking the child's permission for everything. "Mommy just needs to pay the lady, Amber, all right?" "Stop throwing our things out of the cart now, okay?" I've noticed this sort of negotiating speech pattern becoming more prevalent for about the last 10 years. I wonder what Mommy will say when Amber begins to understand and then to speak and answers, "No, it's not okay. I think I'll keep throwing items out of the cart just so I can watch you pick them up." Yes, I was in a bit of a mood (OK, still am). And yes, I do realize that my state of childlessness probably disqualifies me as a judge of parental communication styles. However, I do believe I may have gotten out of teaching high school at the right time.
When it was my turn to pay, the cashier didn't even look up at me as she asked, "How are you?" I didn't feel I should have to answer that, given that I was wearing sunglasses indoors and my purchases included a Dr. Pepper I'd already opened, a two-pack of Tylenol and a box of Monistat.

Big Cherry update

Because when I say "mañana", I mean it.

The outside tastes just like the Bing's outside. Thick, low-quality milk chocolate with ground up peanuts. The cherry center - completely different. The Bing's thick, light pink cream is superior to the Big Cherry's hot pink goo. The Big Cherry, however, does contain an actual (maraschino) cherry. The candy was so cloying I only ate half of it. Either it was reallyreally bad or yesterday's sugar jones was just an anomaly and now I'm back to the savory-lovin' gal I've always been.

Sweet nostalgia

I picked up one of these during my post-gym shopping trip. I stopped at the Fast-Mart on B St. to kill time while waiting for Parking Lot 5 to clear up a bit with the goal of getting half 'n half. But as I walked down the vast candy aisle on the way to the cash register, the pink package caught my eye. I thought it was a Twin Bing.

It's been a long time since I've seen one, never mind tasted one. I'm really hoping that Christopher's Big Cherry tastes exactly like a Twin Bing (or maybe just a Bing since there's only one Big Cherry per package). I'll let you know tomorrow. It's still on my desk at school. No, not due to my extraordinary will power, but because I also picked up one of these

and I deliberated way longer than I should have between these:

I put my items on the counter and dug out money to pay for them and as the clerk looked at me and raised his eyebrows, I swear I heard him think, "Someone smoked lunch today, I see..." I ate half of the Oh Henry in the car as I vultured for a parking space. Remembered why I'd completely forgotten what they taste like. But ate the other half anyway after lunch. I know what happened to the Skor bar, too, but I'm not talking.

Locker-room talk

Over-heard in the locker room at the ARC today:

Two girls who were seeing each other for the first time this quarter looked each other up and down before beginning the verbal conversation...

Girl 1: Ewwwwwww.....
Girl 2: What a loser!
Girl 1: Hey, bitch!
Girl 2: What up, ho?

It made me laugh, and I recalled several girlfriends with whom I'd use uniquely female insults as terms of affection. Then it made me ask myself, "Why?" Are we re-claiming those terms using them on our own (terms) and in some way lessening the destructive impact that men's use of the words has made? Someone has probably done a study on that, and if not, as soon as I am sufficiently alert to have a coherent thought in my head, maybe I'll examine that phenomenon in another post.

Who else would try to do a half a million things all at a quarter to three?

OK, maybe not half a million. And not at a quarter to three, but for 3:00 today I had scheduled the following:
1. meet with my cultural studies small group seminar in Profe. Robert's office
2. cover a colleague's Spanish 2 class in 167 Olson
3. drop Stella off at Rub-a-Dub Dog Bath out on Solano

Jesús #3 asked if I were going to Profe. Cecilia's linguistics seminar and when I said I wasn't, he said, "Are you sure? I thought you told me you had Cecilia's class." I actually almost checked my planner to make sure I hadn't tried to cram that in, too, despite the fact that I met the linguistics requirement before I even started this program.

I heard Dad's voice mail message saying, "Give me call around 3:00, I'll be out later this afternoon." I just deleted it.

SMART Goal de Winter Quarter

Food management. No, not a resolution to manage my diet or eat healthier, although that's not a bad idea for next year. I mean managing the fridge/cupboards a bit better. Doing things like making sure there's not only coffee, but half 'n half to put in it so I don't have to resort to using ice cream that's been in the freezer since who-knows-when. Although it had more freezer-burn and although it meant Oreo dregs at the bottom of my coffee cup, this morning I chose the cookies 'n cream over the coconut pineapple sorbet.

Thankfully, there's Strada for make-up capuccinos.

Taste of emotion

Remy, the protagonist of Disney's Ratatouille, experiencing flavor through all the senses

In the most powerfully moving part of the movie, the food critic Anton Ego is transported to the kitchen of his childhood upon tasting the eponymous dish, another salvific meal from the art world. When the same flavors jolt him back into the present, where he sits at his table in the restaurant he's reviewing, he is overcome by the flavors and the pen he is using to take notes falls from his hand. This scene lasts mere seconds, but contains what is to me the essence of the film - that food is not simply fuel (at least not for the more fortunate of the human race). Rather it can evoke memory and emotion with each flavor (individually and combined).



There are many many instances from film and literature that show us the healing, saving, transforming, or otherwise inspiring power of a meal (such as the one I cited in a post around Thanksgiving from Jim Welch's The Heartsong of Charging Elk).

In another call for comments, I'd like to know about a meal from a book or movie that has stayed with you...

Hang up and drive? Probably not.

My list of New Year's resolutions was probably just a two-for-one. It read like this:
1. Learn how to use, dexterously, the bluetooth/hands-free/earpiece device that I had to buy with new cell phone and
2. under no circumstances wear it outside of the moving vehicle that I am driving and even then, wear it only while talking on it and remove it immediately after ending the conversation

This is what mine looks like. It is a piece of technology I am not willingly embracing despite my shiny new Cultural Studies based perspectives on modernity. I think it sort of disgusts me...

However, for the last four days I'd felt sort of like a failure for not having even attempted to keep this resolution before the 2008 law went into effect. Even though it's supposed to be safer, I reallyreallyreally don't want to wear one of those things - probably more likely to smack into something while trying to adjust to the new postures and digital movements required to operate the device. Yes, I know I don't have to talk while driving, but I don't really see "no more talking while driving" as a practical resolution. Besides, it's too late for that. I already talked on the phone twice yesterday while driving, and without the thing in my ear. I felt pangs of guilt until I checked out the DMV website and found that the new cellular phone law doesn't even go into effect until July 1 (as opposed to January 1, like I originally assumed)! LaLaLa


Do you think I'd feel better about wearing one if mine looked like this?

How about this?

I think I can live happily with this...

(London: Routledge, 2005) In his introduction to the anthology of essays on (and what serves as my introduction to) Cultural Studies, editor Simon During writes,

"...we need to think of cultural studies not as a traditional field or discipline, nor as a mode of interdisciplinarity, but as what I will call a field within multidisciplinarity. This means that cultural studies should aim to monopolize its students or, indeed, its teachers and intellectuals, as little as is possible within the academic-bureaucratic structures we have. Within the academy it is best regarded as an area to work in alongside others, usually more highly institutionalized disciplines - Spanish, geography, politics, economics, literature...whatever" (27).

Oh, I totally forgot! During, like Brabazon (see post from 1 Jan.) is Australian. If I weren't monopolized by that highly institutionalized discipline of Spanish, I'd smell a paper about feminism/aborigines coming on. And its soundtrack would feature that white-boy disciple of the digeridoo, Xavier Rudd...

Reflections on New Year's Day

Lights and mirror both invite reflection and make it inevitable.

Composition of glasses and reflections by Nora.

Aspiraciones...

Dyson handheld vacuum cleaners, oh yeah.

I'm not complaining about my presents, but even my mom would understand that I really wouldn't mind if someone gave me one of these. She certainly transmitted good gift-giving etiquette to her kids and we understood from an early age that domestic appliances are not an appropriate gift choice unless clearly and specifically requested. But even so, if a woman today requests something like this, vacuum lust burning in her eyes, she's rarely taken seriously. My surface-cleaning device fetish is no secret, but I have yet to receive one as a gift. I choose to think that it's because anyone who would give me gifts just assumes that, as a feminist*, I'd be offended by something that seems to glorify the role of woman as housekeeper. I conveniently ignore the possibility that anyone who would give me gifts knows that as a housekeeper, I usually fall short of glorious (But I am a bit precious about the granite countertops and I sort of Martha-Stewarted the kitchen after everyone left this afternoon). They probably assume that I would use that magnificent piece of cleaning technology quarterly at best (but they're wrong this time). So why, then, is it OK not just to give men power tools as gifts, but for them to specifically request them, even when they use them way less frequently than the average domestically challenged woman uses, say, her (in the category of Things That Sound Dirty But Aren't) Swiffer® Wet Jet? But if I had the Dyson...

After a few swipes with this baby you will no longer be able to eat off my floor.

* While my brand of feminism may be different than my mom's, I do agree with Tara Brabazon, in Ladies Who Lunge, that the lyrics of the "I Will Survive" Gloria work to a point, but at some point, as we get older, the words of the other Gloria are actually more sustantive.

luz

"I write with light, and the light of Paris helped me to express what I felt and what I feel." - André Kertész