trainspotting

this book is messing me up and i feel it slowly taking over my brain like the confident virus that it is. i see the ridiculousness as i filter my own life through the book, referring to dime bags of parmesan cheese and arranging my granola in lines on the desk, and as i type this out it comes through my head in a scottish accent. how many times now have i decided to stop reading and to return it to the shelf, decided that there cant be any good in knowing, that some things should be kept under a bucket in the corner. why do i pick it up again and again, whaen ah ken thit it doesnae help us but jist brings us doon. who gets to decide the difference between books and heroin.

can't get enough of this isherwood

If it weren't so tedious, I would retype every word of his that I read here in this blog, if only to make these slightly-hard-to-find books a little more available to whoever. I stopped dogging the bottom corners of the pages because it was useless, made the book twice as thick.

And now before I slip back into the convention of calling this young man "I," let me consider him as a seperate being, a stranger almost, setting out on this adventure in a taxi to the docks. For, of course, he is almost a stranger to me. I have revised his opinions, changed his accent and his mannerisms, unlearned or exaggerated his prejudices and his habits. We still share the same skeleton, but its outer covering has altered so much that I doubt if he would recognize me on the street. We have in common the label of our name, and a continuity of consciousness; there has been no break in the sequence of daily statements that I am I. But what I am has refashioned itself throughout the days and years, until now almost all that remains constant is the mere awareness of being conscious. And that awareness belongs to everybody; it isn't a particular person.

The Christopher who sat in that taxi is, practically speaking, dead; he only remains reflected in the fading memories of us who knew him. I can't revitalize him now. I can only reconstruct him from his remembered acts and words and from the writings he has left us. He embarrasses me often, and so I'm tempted to sneer at him; but I will try not to. I'll try not to apologize for him, either. After all, I owe him some respect. In a sense he is my father, and in another sense my son.

How alone he seems!

CSC

What a little gem Cal Sailing Club has turned out to be!

As Alex's first student, I managed to handily capsize our little craft, chucking all three of us into the disgusting, dead-crabby bay water, inside of 30 minutes. Alex in backup glasses, me with all-borrowed clothes, and Tanya rocking nothing but an overcoat:

And then we windsurfed. I will officially be quitting my dayjob, volunteer positions, half-read books, friendships, and all future ambitions, effective immediately. I will only windsurf. Until I die from the STD I definitely got from this communal wetsuit:

Also, this:

I'll miss flat'.

Eichengreen Gets Steinbeck

I really liked this:

Steinbeck on the Crisis

I started reading because the Steinbeck quote was so good, and was then surprised and pleased to find that the voice of economic reason in the middle and end of the post is good old Eichengreen, who presided over my toughest and arguably best class at Cal.

The Up Series

I think I've now endorsed this verbally to everyone I've ever met, so I figured it finally merited a post. Plus I am watching 28 Up right now at my parents' house, and needed a reason to practice taking screenshots of Nicholas Hitchon (below).

The Up Series is an effort by documentarian Michael Apted in which he films a slew of seven-year-old British schoolchildren in 1964, and then subsequently films them every seven years (i.e. at ages 14, 21 28, etc.) until the present. He talks with them about their views on family, education, sex, politics, social responsibility, class, and various and sundry other things, ostensibly without slant or judgment. The results are, in my opinion, fascinating, especially since we are now able to watch Seven Up! through 49 Up in rapid succession, rather than waiting in real time for the episodes to air. 56 Up comes out in 2012; catch up while you can!

Show me the man

at seven

and I will show you

the man.

Blind Pilot : Oviedo

We need to have a sense of urgency about this. It can't happen tomorrow, it has to be now, today. Other people, they don't understand this, but we can't operate on their time, we have to push them.

I don't understand. Urgency, why? What's the stress over this?

Because we have to be on top, to do things in real time.

I don't understand what you mean. I don't know how else to do things.

It needs to be done in real time, now.

I can't operate like that. I can't feel your urgency in my limbs or in my brain. Do you know what you're saying? Why can't this wait till tomorrow, till they're ready to deal with it?

Because they don't understand, they don't feel any sense of real time. You need to constantly push, to strive, to stretch, to be successful here. Maybe I got the wrong impression when I first talked to you, it seemed that you had a passion and a fire for this, that we were on the same page.

I didn't know then, I don't know now what you saw. I didn't know this was it. I thought you wanted to know, not to say first. I thought I could help that. I didn't sign up to tie the hands of other people, to watch them grow smaller.

What are you saying? Where is this is coming from? If we don't get this done now, then we're dead.

How can that be? How can you throw your words and your weight around like that?

Because we have to be on top. Do you think I got to be on top by being weak, by waiting around? No, I did things in real time, I pushed. Other people, they don't get it, they don't think like us. Nobody gets to be here, that's why I brought you here, because of what I saw. Don't you want to be here?

How can you push everything so clearly into black and white? Can't you see that you don't know where you're going? And you want to take me along, but you don't know where you're taking me.

I don't understand you. I thought I saw someone who wanted to make it.

Where?

Here.

We are here.

I don't understand you.

I don't understand you.

A bunch of high-mass ideas to move about.

And with a casual flick of his fingers on the keys he chops me down at the knees and what is there to say but you're right you're right you're right and can you blame me do you blame me?