Cured Meats

Lox on multi-grain bagel; prosciutto, brie, whole wheat bread, Earl Grey.

In a Station of the Metro

In a station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

-Ezra Pound

Norah Jones on NYC

Just discovered this song by Norah Jones. Lyrics sum up my feelings about NY (esp the last stanza): What started as a mass delusion, would take me far from the place I adore

"New York City"

I can't remember what I planned tomorrow
I can't remember when it's time to go
When I look in the mirror
Tracing lines with a pencil
I remember what came before

I wanted to think there was endless love
Until I saw the light dim in your eyes
In the dead of the night I found out
Sometimes there's love that won't survive

New York City
Such a beautiful disease
New York City
Such a beautiful,
Such a beautiful disease

Laura kept all her disappointments
Locked up in a box behind her closet door
She pulled the blinds and listened to the thunder
With no way out from the family store

We all told her things could get better
When you just say goodbye
I'll lay awake one more night
Caught in a vision I want to deny

And did I mention the note that I found
Taped to my locked front door
It talked about no regrets
As it slipped from my hand to the scuffed tile floor

I rode the train for hours on end
And watched the people pass me by
It could be that it has no end
Just an action junkie's lullaby

New York City

We were full of the stuff that every dream rested
As if floating on a lumpy pillow sky
Caught up in the whole illusion
That dreams never pass us by
Came to a tattoed conclusion
That the big one was knocking on the door
What started as a mass delusion
Would take me far from the place I adore

(anyhow, what a great contrast with Jay Z & Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind," which I love too...but have grown and worn and been torn out of that fantasy..."

Jill Bliss

Listmaniac-me has almost finished her old notebooks. Bought a 4 pack of Jill-Bliss' dreamy doodles.

Cupcake treat!

Was walking and discovered a Magnolia Bakery in Upper West Side! Got the Devil's Food and Red Velvet as a treat for myself.

SATC II

Story-line was eh, but the fashion was dreamazing!!! So much flowy fabric and bejeweled colors. I honestly would love it if harem pants replaced jeans as a staple. Anything less tight and more colorful is the way to go.

The World Should Revolve Around Me

I have been trying to find this song FOREVER. It first got stuck in my head (for better not worse) after hearing it be repeated 50 bajillion times while working shifts at Forever21.

"I don't know what came first...the chicken nugget, or the egg McMuffin."

The real Love Lair

Male Bowerbirds from New Guinea build elaborate nests chocked full of random things(feathers, paper clips, soda cans, berries, stones, other discarded human oddities) to attract the females into their lair for some sexy time.

Mystique demythified

I just finished reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan today for my Feminine Text class next semester. I've heard about this book for a while but was really surprised to see how genuinely relevant it is for people, not just women, even today. It's about the "problem that has no name," namely, that 50s housewives seep into depression because they have never had the chance to develop as individuals and max out their potential human capacities. Trapped in a world of monotonous, mundane activities, housewives did not have any creative outlet to identify themselves as autonomous beings, which further made them latch on to being so-and-so's mother or so-and-so's wife. A lack of personal identity stunts personal growth, purposeful life direction, and creates a vacuum of a mind only to be frittered away at excessive cleaning and bridge games.

Friedan's solution is education and work, both crucial to the process of self-formation. This idea of work as identity-creation is echoed from Marx to current psychological research on the benefits of finding flow (that feeling of heightened engagement and attention when working on something and getting lost in it). Finding interesting, challenging activities that utilize as much of a person's mental and creative capacity as possible is the best way to start people on the path of individualism. These are activities that are built upon years of cultivation and knowledge, that extend to a wide array of possibilities future achievement and enrichment. It makes me think about how lucky I am to have cultivated since teenhood many activities/intellectual revenues to pursue for later life. Education has definitely sharpened my knowledge and interest for everything liberal arts while beautiful things like food, style, and relationships have always been in my life and will continue to be.

My only problem with Friedan is that she proposes women to embrace only one ability in depth---devote their lives to it and contribute back to society. As grand as that sounds, I feel like some of it is unnaturally human (who's curious about just one thing??) and just the cogs of capitalism churning out vertically-driven knowledge rather than valuing anything horizonal. Capitalism efficiency is at its best when you call a company and realize people only know one niche of their own department and have no idea what other departments/the greater company is about---it's a pain to be transferred on the phone a gazillion times. I wonder what Marx would say about this...how pigeonholed nicheing of knowledge and ability damages individual capacity for humanness/greater understanding in the long run. People may not be alienated from their work, but they are alienated from what's going on in the world besides their work.

I can't choose which single interest to pursue! And even if I did, it's at the cost of all the other things I could be learning/achieving/exploring. I hope that dedicating my life to relative breadth of knowledge and not intense depth will still be as rewarding, because that's what I'm intending to do, and so far it's working. Plus, breadth and a cross-disciplinary education offer something vertically driven exploration doesn't: that's the breathtaking beauty of seeing the bigger picture, with all the senses.

P.S. Friedan based her argument on several premises that still can be debatable.

1. It's mostly due to men's insisting that women are relegated to the home and not interested in greater societal work/politics.

2. WWII men came home yearning for soft femininity and homeliness, which was the primary factor in the conservative backlash of bringing women back into the home in the 50s. In the interwar period, women were actually much more liberated, working men's jobs, smoking, flappers, the New Woman...etc

3. The Family and Home are not enough for any human being---they have to have greater work within society for self-actualization.

4. Work is the most rewarding when it's valued by society (i.e. paid for)

5. Greater sexual satisfaction is contingent upon greater individual identity and freedom (she cites the Kinsey report, which shows statistically how womens' reported orgasms increased with more education and independent work?!)

What do you think about her premises?

Food Days

There was a berries sale so I splurged: raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, raisins, milk & Honey Bunches of Oats cereal. The sandwich has eggs, avocado, spinach, onions, and cheddar cheese. And the root veggies platter contains baked and sauteed sweet potatoes, potatoes, and carrots sprinkled with Comino, olive oil, and sea salt. Oh, and spinach-asparagus hummus on multi-grain bread. mmmm

Dog Day Afternoon

Oh my god. Just watched the most arresting hostage movie EVER. Dog Day Afternoon, based on a real Brooklyn bank robbery incident in the 70s. Young Al Pacino is so handsome and talented. Throughout the whole film I was at the edge of my seat, anxious for the robbers and the hostages. Couldn't let my guard down because it felt like the guns were pointed at me too. Amazing directing.

I just read an analysis of the movie from Camera Politica. Ryan and Kellner explores the camera angles and how the effects of horizontal filmage makes the film more politically liberal-oriented rather than conservative. In a conservative movie (with a theme that is politically conservative: like glorification of good v. evil cops/robbers, or the death penalty), camera angles on characters are done in close-ups and vertically (focusing on one good protagonist, or one bad villain up and down). However, in Dog Day Afternoon, the camera is always sweeping about from the hostages to the robbers to the police...everyone is part of the whole situation, showing people's sympathy with each other's situations as well as the human connections that grey-up the good v. bad sides. The shots are made from the robber's point of view, which makes the viewer complicit in the crime as well as sympathetic with them when their life stories and personalities begin to unfold.

The 70s really comes to life in this movie, with the zeitgeist of Vietnam, counter-culture, emerging gay/transgendered activism, Brooklyn realism, and men's tight bellbottoms all swirling onto one street where the scene takes place. Films are the best for me when they transport the viewer completely, sight and sound, into a different place and time. Even better when this whole event was a true story---the real criminal even got 1% of the movie profits!

Too fast, Too soon

Here is one of the most relevant poems to my life right now:

Black Oaks by Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

As midsummer hits and half of this precious summer session coming to a close, I inevitably go through small fissures of freak-outs about how fast the days are slipping by. College, the best years of my life, is coming to a close, especially not including senior year's last semester where I'd have to student teach. The ability to just soak in knowledge for interest's sake is slowly waning and LIFE with its obligations start peeking pestily through the Venetian blinds of my idealist retreat of a room. I'm not ready to give up a life of luxuriating in ideas, ruminating about Life and Self with sun-spotted closed-eyes, of that kind of freedom to structure my own days and not worry about finances or deadlines, etiquette or correctness. I'm not ready to submit to the unrelenting force of Capitalism that says "you have to be niched 8-5 at a job that only reflects one aspect of your personality, if any at all." Yet sadly society rarely sees the Other aspects, only the characteristics you purport publicly, relentlessly, deliberately, as a way to reach some social goal. Personality as Capital. Charm as Seduction. Pure personality cohesion is such a myth; people react differently to different situations, yet surface others only understand if your behavior is consistent. And so the myth goes on: we are a handful of adjectives that end up haunting us by bracketing us up, and sooner or later, some of us end up believe the exact myth we pushed so hard for, a self-deceptive linear narrative, because non-linearity is just too messy to deal with. America and its crazy drive for success, of its crazy people always climbing and rejoicing exactly in that climb (albeit they don't know it; most people think they revel in the end goal, but most of the time, it's that rush of pushing and shoving people are addicted to), of ambition ambition ambition that speeds life up like one gigantic subway whoosh---only to cause a headache to sensitive eyes trying to count the number of cars going by. I've tried to find a career that satisfies my manifold interests, and teaching comes as close as careers will, but it's still not enough. I'm tired of fitting my personality into socially acceptable roles and those roles only, but those roles will come to dominate my live inevitably: teacher, daughter, mother, wife, friend. But in the hustle and bustle of role-fitting and role-adjusting, I hope to be more than the sum of the parts. I want to retain myself as everything I am now: philosopher, rebel, writer, cook, artist, decorator, stylist, dreamer, culture-connoisseur, cultivator of small things and Amelie moments. I'm not strong enough to say that I won't lose myself in the role-making and role-playing in the future, but I will try damn hard to retain that core essence of my being and not just be blown by the wind of who I'm supposed to be. There's the socially-accepted life in all its rewards and dignity, but there's also the life of the mind and spirit--a far greater life-cultivation I'm forever shaping for myself. The two worlds obviously can feed into each other, but I want to never lose my sense of being and worth when roles go wrong. Stripped naked of all people, titles, prestige, and ego, I want to still have the sense of inner peace, wisdom, worth, and beauty I've come to find and treasure as my most precious element. And in turn, I hope this inner soul emanates to the outer world, bringing a little goodness to the people and situations surrounding me.

Shelf Life

I love taking pictures of the books I get from the library. They've become great decorative pieces for my desk, and since their stay is short, it's nice to document this batch before moving on to others (about every 2 weeks).

Risotto

I've perfected the ultimate creaminess in risotto recipes. 1/2 cup milk. 1/2 cup cream of chicken, 2 cups water, and 2 tbsp olive oil for every cup of dry Arborio rice. The key is to stir every 5 minutes and add the liquids gradually. Takes some time, but definitely worth the effort.

Riverside Summer

Went for a walk in the park today. I"m so lucky to go on weekday noons/afternoons because most people are at work and Riverside is relatively empty. They left the street lamps aglow and the waves of sun rays filtering through the leaves really relax me. I don't even take my headphones anymore. It's nice to just listen to the trees and breeze.

Moral Intuition

Moral judgments are more intuition-based rather than reason-based, especially when there's a relevant, interdependent group involved that brings out the cooperative side of our evolutionary instinct. Kinship, not Kant, triumphs in the end.

Parks better than Park Avenue

My feelings about urbanity put into psych experiment form. Nature better for mental well being.

Le Love Lair 3.5

Jail-cell dorm turned dreamer's retreat.

Flowers

Heralding the summer session: fresh blooms.

E.A.T Bakery

Eli Zabar of Zabar groceries has a fresh (albeit overpriced) eatery @ 80th & Madison. Perfect for post-MET walking recovery. Try the liver sandwich on raisin bread (I swear it's delish!)

Big Bambú at the MET

Redefining urban jungle at the MET rooftop garden. The artists made the whole walkable structure from Bamboo sticks tied geometrically, strategically, con elastic bands. Gorgeous contrast with NY skyscrapers in the background.