mustard seed

this post serves three purposes: 1. showing off 2. recommending / derecommending literature (this actually helps YOU in your quest to efficiently read everything in the world worth reading) (but it doesn't justify showing off) (my apologies) 3. enough analysis / summary / comprehension to feel like i haven't totally mentally slacked off this summer so i go back to school in five days , and i'm very on-the-fence about it. i always get excited about change, but i always get sad about change. i feel like i am the rope in a tug-of-war - except a tug-of-war between two very strong men, men so strong and so equally matched that the rope doesn't move (i am thinking about this, and i supposed the strong part doesn't really matter.... the men could very easily be total weaklings. or strong women. or weak women. or squirrels. it doesn't matter as long as they are equally matched. but this is a post about literature, not about physics, so onwards). this is nice because i...

so i know i didn't post the link to the earlier-mentioned David Foster Wallace Kenyon College Commencement speech, and i still won't, because i kind of feel like it might be illegal since it's a book now (and you really can't find too many links for it since they have all been removed due to the book's publication). i'm just posting about it again to reiterate that you should read it . and if that means coming to my house, sitting on our purple couch and reading our copy of it, then do that . my dad bought it the other day and everyone here has read it twice through so far at least. i'm on summer mode! this is a new sort of summer mode, since i'm not doing any sports (no 6am swim team, no afternoon soccer, no running, no workout.... this will start to be bad in a few days). this new sort of summer mode entails never leaving my bed. until someone shows up at my door because i get so excited to see people that i leap out of bed to greet them. so come over...

i'm supposed to be doing homework, but i have no motivation. or had no motivation, until, in my procrastinating, i stumbled across Bill Watterson's Kenyon College commencement speech , which i think is really good. there are some things that life, work, and play have in common, and if we can find those things and do them, we've found a good path. (Dorothy Sayers touches on this - actually, Dorothy Sayers annihilates this subject - in her essay "Why Work?" which you should hunt down and read as well). David Foster Wallace also gave a commencement speech at Kenyon in 2005, you can find it online or, if you want to spend money, they turned it into a cute little book with goldfish on it (which of course catches my attention). if you read this blog and you don't go take a few minutes to read both of those as a result, you're missing out. this is sort of a threat, sort of a guilt trip, and sort of hoping you will read and enjoy both :) if you don't read th...

i haven't written anything about David Foster Wallace or Roberto Bolano in a while (also: i haven't read anything by either of them in a while) (both of these things may be explained by the fact that i have been reading and writing about too many other things) (ironically/thankfully this post is happening because of one of those other things i read about and am now writing about), but both of their lives/deaths/writing still wiggle around in me (since having devoted time to each of their respective "epics," i suppose you might call them based on sheer length, regardless of lack of tragic hero in the vein of Odysseus etc). what i have been reading is a lot of commentary by poets/artists/writers about their crafts (courtesy my Vision, Voice and Practice interdisciplinary class), and that has been beyond enriching. all i really mean to say is that i ran into this Flannery O'Connor quote (while reading her passage "The Church and the Fiction Writer") that al...

my lovely roommate and i were discussing the act of academic paper-writing, particularly as relating to our specific circumstances (unpaid undergrads, typical stressful mid-semester research papers). there is always a sense of triumph, we agreed, with finishing a paper, though we wonder to what greater end writing a paper is if no one besides our professors read our thoughts and ideas. i decided, like i have done once before, to post papers as blog posts - since blog posts are, essentially, papers for not-a-class . WHY I THINK THIS IS IMPORTANT: we need to be in dialogue, consistently and holistically, about the things that are shaping us. if it's even the least bit cool that you can read on someone's twitter the sort of burrito they ate for lunch that is affecting their intestinal system, it's even cooler that you can read on someone's blog what sort of learning they're doing that is affecting their entire worldview . i hope this comes across not as me saying ...

*note: i didn't realize how personal and lengthy this was going to be, but it ended up that way anyways. sorry / forewarning for all the reasons i can't relate to Britney Spears (pop-stardom, losing virginity at sixteen, getting drunkenly married in Vegas, having two kids, going through a financially nasty divorce, pretty much having a monopoly over tabloid cover space, shaving my head, etc), she does have this one song that i really resonate with: "i'm not a girl, not yet a woman." i'm inclined to say i'm joking or being sarcastic or cynical, because i don't want to align with Britney Spears about something i'm trying to make a serious connection with. the point is, it's unfortunate i have to quote Britney Spears for those lines instead of someone great and timeless like Virgil. the other point is, i have to quote those lines. i'm in my second year of an undergrad education; i'm going to turn twenty here in a month or so. i know i lega...

i've been trying to write a post on Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 for the last like... two hours. i simply do not know which angle to take. and then i don't think i could take just one angle. it would be irreverent to the masterpiece to neglect the entirety of it's meaning. there are an overwhelming amount of things to say about it and because of it. and then there's the question: if something like that speaks for itself, why even say anything about it? i couldn't recommend 2666 to everyone, but i wish that i could. it is very dark, it's pages are slammed full of the worst occurrences and images but also the most beautiful of writings. the most profound of situations - between writer and writing, between writer and living, between writer and dying, between writer and reader, between writing and reading, between reader and reading, between reader and writing, between writing and world, between writer and world, between reader and world, between fact and ficti...

david foster wallace: depression led him to death. roberto bolano: death led him to depression. i'm only a quarter of the way through Roberto Bolano's 2666 , an epic hunk of latin literature recently translated into English. i picked it up because of it's magnitude (literal size - 898 pages - and also "figurative size," or reported mass of subject matter and storyline). in this sense it is comparable to Infinite Jest , which i obviously liked ( anyone reading this is probably really bored of the prominence of this thing in my blogs. i was thinking about that and realizing that i sort of subconsciously use this blog as a holding bin for my thoughts surrounding IJ and DFW. don't really know how that ended up happening, but i wanted to take a second and clarify that i'm aware of this, and to kind of apologize, because i'm sure you have much better things to be thinking about than books you haven't read. i suppose i'm still using this thing as a p...

so if you read some bit of anything below you'll know something about David Foster Wallace, and how i read Infinite Jest this summer and then he (DFW) committed suicide on September 13th and how for a long while after than his life and death and works and words were all so... embalmed/in motion in my mind and spirit.... kind of like a thought project but i won't call it that because it involves so much more than just thinking.... more like a "being" project..... anyways. so i get home from the semester approximately five hours ago and i am so wiped ("i'm coming home from my hardest year, i'm making plans not to make plans while i'm here" - the lights and buzz). i am crashing. i don't have a temperature, in fact, in am 97.1 degrees fahrenheit (contrary to the 100.3 degrees fahrenheit i spent most of the semester thinking i was) (i have been so excited to take my temperature with a thermometer since we don't have one in the dorms and i alw...

the further i get in this always-going "search for truth," recently, the more i run into Marxist ideas. where is the connection? do. research. later. (sources: The Mystery of Capital; The Phantom Tollbooth) (thought options: ideal/possibly real economics, fairytales a la Dr. Reynolds/Velveteen Rabbit, biblical literalness)

forewarning: this is going to be very long. it has to be, for me, for continuity’s sake. and so i apologize for your eyeballs glazing over and your vision getting messed up from staring at a screen for so long. but you know what? all you have to do is close the window and walk away, and suddenly, i’m not accountable anymore. this is not a free will discussion. never mind. there has been a lot going on in my life. in particular, i have my most important and only term paper due in just over a week, and it is hanging over my head like… well like the sky except made of molten lead. what i really should be spending my time on is this paper, but since i am enrolled in an institution that epitomizes whole-soul education, i feel somewhat okay with putting that paper on hold until i get this post written. especially because the aim of this post is to tie together all these masses of things i have been hanging on to (“things that i have been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually curious about a...