Sep 2001, 5 entries

Read Lots Of Books

I probably read ten or so books a year, not that many. If I started when I was ten and read until I’m ninety, I guess that’s eight hundred books or so. Not a small number, but miniscule compared to the number of books one would like to read. Each time I pick up a book, I’m symbolically putting down thousands. If you want to live that kind of paranoid life. I should count them though, or else I might be a little more generous in my own opinion of myself (a writer, after all) than the actuality implies.

I read an article that said the average intellectual, whatever that is, reads only five books a year, whereas a hundred years ago the average intellectual read fifty books a year. Intellectuals haven’t gotten dumber (and I don’t think this implies that the more books you read the more intellectual you are), it’s just that now books are competing with movies, CDs, television, magazines, telephone calls, etc, and now also with webpages, video games, etc. And they’re losing. Some people might say it’s because the world is declining, but it’s most likely just that they’re not as successful at entertaining as these new things. And it’s always been about entertainment. What will your eight hundred books be?

Currently Reading:

The Iliad, recommended by Alex Massie, and which I’ve tried to read before. So far, so good.

Books I Like Enough To Recommend:

White Teeth, To The Lighthouse, Great Gatsby, Stein On Writing, Me Talk Pretty One Day, The Master And Margarita, Speaking With The Angel, Wherever You Go There You Are, Blindness

Books I Wouldn’t Recommend:

How To Be Good, Choke, Salinger

Books I Never Finished:

Word Court, How To Grow A Novel, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, A Biographer’s Tale, The Tipping Point

Total Count: 12 finished books, 5 unfinished. And only 3 and a half months to go.

I finished this book last weekend. I read it because I saw that everyone else was talking about it, and had been talking about it, and it had a neat cover. What finally did it though was that I saw Ben Brown had read it, and I got competitive—mostly because I don’t like it when it appears that people I know (however distantly) are more “well read” than I, even though it’s a plain fact that I’m a really slow reader and most of the books I say I’ve read were never actually finished. And that competitive spirit was only fueled by the fact that Zadie Smith herself is only a year older than myself, and I have only just begun writing a book. Inadequacy, guilt, and low self-esteem were the primary factors in my decision, then. I read a couple interviews with her and they were interesting. She talked about how she doesn’t like writing workshops and other writers because everything always feels like a self-help session, when really writing workshops, and writing itself, should be the exact opposite: self-destructive. And she said something else about nothing in the book being autobiographical. That the Smiths could never live up to the Jones’. She’s a Smith, they’re the Jones. Good ol’ Archibald Jones.

The book itself is a little too long, I think. Or at least, I felt most intimidated by her at the beginning at the end. The whole time I was reading it I was thinking, “Yeah, I can do that” when I thought I could do that and, “Well, I couldn’t do that, but I wouldn’t want to because…” and then I’d come up with a lame excuse whenever she did something a little better than I think I could. I liked the end, not because any of the resolutions were that meaningful, but just because of all the loose ends that came together. It’s easy to create a world where all kinds of interesting things happen, and it’s difficult to bring a purpose (either plotwise, theme-wise, or otherwise) to the story at the end. She did a good job I think. And in the interviews, she said that she was ready to write something completely different next, which I will definitely read.

React To Enormous Suffering With Acts Of Small Charity

This morning, two hijacked planes hit each of the World Trade Center buildings, forcing them to collapse later. The Pentagon was also hit by a plane, and there is another plane that crashed near Camp David. Thousands have been killed, for no reason.

I’m reading about this, of course not knowing how to react but knowing I must react somehow. At the same time, I feel this undercurrent of recognition that this is just one symptom of a horrible sickness in the world, and that us Americans are relatively sheltered from the largest sources of suffering in the world. We are shocked that America isn’t as safe as we had thought, that our Intelligence isn’t as knowledgable as we had thought, and that basically horrible acts of humanity cannot be stopped, the subtext implying: even by us. Is it possible even to hold in our attention the amount of suffering that happens to each of the thousands of families that have lost people today? Must suffering be personal to be powerful? I don’t think anyone I know has died today, so how can I relate to this act against humanity more than all other acts against humanity? I feel like just giving up, saying the world is evil, saying that if I was in charge many people would pay for this, many many, many many many. What is the exchange, between ourselves and this evil, that will strike the best deal, make us feel okay, as if we have done enough, so that we can return to a state of peace?

We should react to large pits of sorrow by engaging in small meaningful acts of charity, like giving blood, or calling a loved one, or thinking about it for the day. By expanding our understanding of human nature to account for this type of act, readjust our outlook on life, and moving on.

At the same time that I wake up and hear the news about the World Trade Center, I have the first symptoms of a flu that my wife and other roommate, Jimmy, contracted last week. The suffering of my sinuses, and the pain in my head, and my sore thoat only make me feel more vulnerable and weak in the face of this larger world tragedy.

This last weekend, my great-grandmother also passed away. She had been praying for death, and I will not be able to attend her funeral in California.

My next door neighbor, Billy, an 88 year-old lady who I’ve rarely spoken to over the course of the last 3 years I’ve lived here, broke her hip at a local grocery store and is now living permanently in an old-folk’s home. We had been worried when for a couple weeks we always saw that the same light was on in her house, no matter what hour of day we passed by it.

Suffering has so many different manifestations, some close and small, some far and big, some close and big. I always think of the Buddha and his teachings about removing suffering by removing desire. The desire for life, for fairness in the world, for good things to happen to good people and bad things to happen to bad, they are all flawed in some way, of course, but when it involves others you can’t help feeling weak.

Today one of the people I work with said that although they believe there are some innocent people in Afghanistan, he wouldn’t hate to see the whole country obliterated. Jerry Falwell said essentially the same thing last night, expanding his circle of hate, which of course he says is God-Sponsored, to include any country that celebrated the tragedy. Implying that the video and article of people in Pakistan and Egypt is enough to kill them, and their families. I think the fact that they would be so happy to see us die implies that perhaps everything we do isn’t as great as we think it is. Also, the fact that there’s only one tiny clip, played over and over, and in a neighborhood that has been particularly affected by our support of Israel (I can’t find the article that explained this at the moment, or I would link to it).

The amount of racism that has sprouted overnight is overwhelming. Guns fired (in Texas) at a Muslim mosque (at a group of Muslims who had already given blood for the disaster relief, and were meeting to pray for the victims and the victims’ families. Raw ugly racism to those who look slightly Middle Eastern (Jish, unfortunately, already attacked). Suddenly, people hate an entire county, even the entire Middle East, all during a time when even the people who know most about the situation—the government—hasn’t said that there’s any certainty as to who’s responsible. What if Americans did this to themselves? Where will your hate go then? Surely you won’t hate all Americans. Will you hate all Americans all over the world just as you hate anyone who looks remotely like a Middle Easterner? It’s sickening.

There’s a very fine line here, I think. Between responding to the tragedy and hating the group of people who caused it and hating the nation that those people come from. It is so stupid to fall into the trap of racism, though, the reaction is much more complicated than that. The scary thing is to think that if we do end up going to war about this, the government and press and media will probably do everything it can to create just that mentality—hatred for a whole nation, the kind that will best suit those who are charged with killing people on principle. Be careful!

I find the image of everyone in the US praying to God, along with people all over the world, plus the image of people fleeing from the capital of Afghanistan, fearful of an attack, plus the image of the Taliban praying to Allah to help unite Muslims against the United States…. a very eerie image all together.

You Must Write A Book

I’ve thought about this, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing worth doing in this life is write books. Not necessarily that it’s the only thing in this thing worth doing, but it’s the only thing that can truly validate your life. If you aren’t writing a book, then your life is wasted.

So I started my book. On August 27th, 2001, I took two weeks off work and over then next two weeks penned the first 40 pages of a book tentatively called The Most Beautiful One. I’m not extremely happy with it at this point, I must admit, but at least my life is worth something now. You know what I mean? Have you started your book yet?

I have this spiral notebook I call the papier database. On each page, as I get to it, I draw four lines going down the side, the first about an inch from the left margin, and the others about half an inch from each other going right. I leave the first column blank. In the second column is room for a symbol, which I have a key for in the front. “I” stands for Idea (the most common), “Q” stands for question, “A” stands for answer, “N” stands for note (which, to me, means a note about something specific to the book’s format, like number of pages, or the size of the chapters, or the length of the paragraphs, or whether I will write something in a notebook or the computer). “O” stands for observation, usually from a book I’m reading, or a movie I see, or something else like that, that I want to make sure to consider. Etc. Then the third column is a number, each symbol gets its own collection of numbers, so there is “I1”, “Q1”,”Q2” etc. The answers to questions will be numbered corresponding to the number of the question it is answering. And the fourth column is left blank. The fifth column, which is the largest, will house whatever idea or question or answer or note I’ve decided to write down. If the idea is related to another idea, I will write that idea’s symbol and number in the fourth column. If I think I’ve hit on something grand, I will put a star in the first column.

I started this about 4 months ago (in May), and have about 50 pages of notes and it’s been super helpful. I can’t believe I ever tried to write a novel without keeping track of everything I was thinking, because my memory never would’ve been able to remember all of this stuff. Every day, before I write, I read over the starred entries, to make sure I don’t forget the most crucial things.

Redesigns Are Essential Even In A Perfectly Designed World

Who was it, maybe it was Coca Cola, who first said that even in a world with perfect design and perfect implementation, a redesign will always make your product more appealing. Beauty, when familiar, is dull. Our brains thrive on newness, freshness, on the novel idea, on the happy surprise. I want beauty, therefore I redesign. Something like that.

Is there anything old that is not boring? Perhaps this is why we have fashion. Because fashion can make something old new again. When something is fashionable, when you see, for example, yoga, in this new context, it is new, it is beautiful. Then it gets old (I’ve stopped going, personally, and have gone back to running, an old habit now new), and then we have to wait for the next cycle before we see it again for the first time.

I don’t think there’s anything that remains aesthetically pleasing forever, without changing. Good thing there’s a new sunset every day, and new views to look out on, or we would get bored of nature. Good thing MTV uses them and loses them so quickly—perhaps in the case of Britney Spears and N’Sync, who were old as soon as they arrived—they are the ones watching us, who are validated by the constantly renewing 13 and 14 year olds who buy their music. If something perhaps more beautiful than pop music, say, your wife or your kitten, is around for a long time, I think emphasis goes onto their other charms, and as long as those stay strong—good humor, likes chocolate, etc—they can maybe help supplement and pull beauty out from its out-of-fashion-ness, and live forever.

And now we have a new Coca-Cola can every few years. How new do you feel?

Mockerybird, if I remember correctly, was purchased in April of 2000 shortly after being kicked off of Diaryland for impersonating Andrew, and after a short stint in the badly named ianomalous.com. Here are a few designs this site has had:

• Crown Design: this was the ianomalous.com design.
  
• Blue: This was the archive page. Eventually the large shapes started to annoy me. The Gray Template was just used for my journal.
  
• The Red Stage: this was used for a short period while I tried to find something new. Before moving to green. I did make the Babble Journal during this period, which never seemed that interesting to anyone other than me.
  
• Green: ah, perhaps my most fond design. But that sure is a bright green!
  
• White and Black: this will change colors depending on the hour. I like this one, for its simplicity. But I couldn’t look at it every day.
  
• The Trusty Light Blue: The most recent design, finally going the way of the dodo. This was the final product of a lot of experimental ideas, resolving to the least common denominator of boring. I’m glad it’s gone.
  

And there are probably plenty on the way, just give me some time, will ya?

About This Manifesto

Ah, the chance to be blantanty self-referential, to talk about oneself unceasingly, to have inside jokes about reduntant clauses, and run-on sentences, and to actually delight in it as much as I do… this is what an about page is all about. A boot.

Here’s my stance on about pages: Everyone Must Have One. Everyone needs an outlet to tell people why the final product isn’t as great as it was originally hoped to be, everyone needs to be able to say, well, this wasn’t my intention, you see, it was meant to be completely different.

Here’s how the manifesto… manifested. I killed my weblog at about the same time I took a vacation and began a book. I was surprised at how little I missed the daily outpouring of ego-inspired drivel. Several times I thought, oh, I would’ve written about this, were I writing about things in my weblog, my web glo, but then when I didn’t, and the thought melted effortlessly away, like a self-cleansing napkin, it was so relieving.

Every page on the site now will have a purpose. And within that, each page will have the ability to grow and develop as I find myself thinking about the pages more. I will return to thoughts I’ve had before and develop them instead of constantly slashing together new thoughts. Every page has a number of slots, that only I can see due to my clever passwords…. and when I fill a box, it will suddenly appear filled. Watch this, I’m going to start typing below, in the white square with the little ribbon …

... see, here I am. Can’t do that with blogger, can you! Wait, maybe you can, how would I know? Greymatter can surely do it, I can’t out-do the Greyster himself. Although I do have to check to see how ‘grey/gray’ is spelled everytime I use the word. I remember in elementary school when learning the spelling I thought “gray” and said, “A”, alliterated together like, “gray is spelled with an A.” Well, not here, bubs!

So, as you can see, I can continue writing here, or move over there