TODAY IN CONSUMERISM (D23)

1. I want her chandelier. And her bathtub and all of her clothes.



2. Melville House Books is publishing an adorable series called "The Art of the Novella." As someone who has recently been able to read a shitload of books mostly because they were all novellas, I appreciate this. Can I have all of these even if I don't read them?! Pretty like candy!

3. I hope it is still ok to like deep house because I am in love. This makes me want to be back huddling in that cold little building on that dirty Berlin waterway.

4. Shoes.

AFTERNOON UPDATE, BECAUSE THIS ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR ITS OWN POST:


5. THIS BOOK

ADVENTURES IN PROUST (D22.2)

Today I started reading Proust's Swann's Way (yes I WILL finish Remembrance of Things Past, unlike my earlier attempt to learn the Arabic script) and I hardly got very far at all without coming across a passage I absolutely had to share with all my imaginary readers.

I typed it out just for you, these three very long sentences!

Even the simple act which we describe as 'seeing some one we know' is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And so, no doubt, from the Swann they had build up for their own purposes my family had left out, in their ignorance, a whole crowd of the details of his daily life in the world of fashion, details by means of which other people, when they met him, saw all the Graces enthroned in his face and stopping at the line of his arched nose as at a natural frontier; but they contrived also to put into a face form which its distinction had been evicted, a face vacant and roomy as an untenanted house, to plant in the depths of its unvalued eyes a lingering sense, uncertain but not unpleasing, half-memory and half-oblivion, of idle hours spent together after our weekly dinners, round the card-table or in the garden, during our companionable country life. Our friend's bodily frame had been so well lined with this sense, and with various earlier memories of his family, that their own special Swann had become to my people a complete and living creature; so that even now I have the feeling of leaving some one I know for another quite different person when, going back in memory, I pass from the Swann whom I knew later and more intimately to this early Swann - this early Swann in whom I can distinguish the charming mistakes of my childhood, and who, incidentally, is less like his successor than he is like the other people I knew at that time, as though one's life were a series of galleries in which all the portraits of any one period had a marked family likeness, the same (so to speak) tonality - this early Swann abounding in leisure, fragrant with the scent of the great chestnut-tree, of baskets of raspberries and a sprig of tarragon.

I loved how this passage brought to mind a few people I know who just seem to move and behave in a way that seems to perfectly embody my impressions of them. A friend whose hand holds a pen and writes with all of the whim she brings to everyday life. A relative whose awkward yet confident walk fits perfectly with her musings on everything, especially herself. And then thinking about people who you seem to understand so much better, or at least read much more charitably, after learning previously unknown bits and peices of their pasts or presents. Here I am thinking about an American I thought was a total bitch until I learned she had just lived in Russia for two years. It makes so much sense now (can we be friends plz?)!

DAY FIFTEEN - MORE COOL CZECHS

I was going to save this post for tomorrow but I'm just too excited not to immediately overshare with my imaginary readers.

Following my re-discovery of Bohumil Hrabal this morning (one of this blog's loyal readers first suggested him a few years ago), I've become one of those annoying people that becomes momentarily obsessed with the art and literature of a country on nothing more (or less!) than a whim.

Look at these paintings by František Kupka and tell me they are not amazing! (You can use the comments to do so)

And have you ever met such a sexy surrealist as Toyen? (Perhaps NSFW)

And omg Antonín Slavíček (this too) and Josef Čapek.

Now how else to expand from Kafka and Kundera? Starting with The Good Soldier Švejk seems a good option.


Perhaps after Berlin I need to go to Prague? 

DAY FIFTEEN - GOOD BOOK

Time for a new feature in TYCDIGS: "GOOD BOOK." These will not be real book reviews, because that sounds too much like work.

Too Loud a Solitude is about a man whose job is to destroy books (as "wastepaper" that has been confiscated or banned) and whose passion is to pour over the classic works and rare volumes he manages to save. He stores them in a canopy above his humble bed, even though he is sure the weight of his collection will one day destroy him, as he destroys the flies and mice that make their way into his underground wastepaper compactor. This one really got me, passing on that physical feeling usually only associated with heartbreak or hunger or loss.

This story was the basis for a 1996 Czech film and beautiful puppet film released in 2007. Would love to see the full versions of both of these.






Looking up some of the book's references brought me quite a few interesting places as well.

It's a pretty short read, so if I don't get anything else to do at work today I might just read it again.

DAY ONE

So it is decided! Instead of starting a real career, I'm throwing caution to the wind and have decided to accept an offer to sit in a library to read, write and grade papers for the better part of a decade!

I don't exactly know where (therefore when) I will go this fall, so instead of counting down, I will count UP, describing my life, which is filled with all sorts of fantastic things you can't do in grad school.

I may also be drawing inspiration from a favorite blog of mine, but to CONCEAL MY TRUE IDENTITY I will restrain myself from linking!  But remember what they say about imitation.

So here it begins.

DAY ONE!

I sat at my desk where I should be working, but since I don't really have that much work to do, I read some Murakami. And when I needed to take a break, I gossiped with officemate for a long time about a variety of people I don't really care about that much. And some people I guess I kinda do. And when that got boring, I drank my free liter of freshly-squeezed orange/carrot/ginger juice that arrived one hour later but I still graciously received. Well I didn't drink the whole liter. Then when that got boring I went back to the most difficult task of my day: reading more Murakami.  No, he's not a particularly difficult author, but sustaining interest in a SINGLE story over 900 pages? Ugh!  Who has that kind of sustained attention? Not a non-grad!