Every so often, I get a hankering to check out (and sing along with) some Vintage Sesame Street. The lyrics are great, and the video editing, pretty awesome too. But it’s the cauliflower throwing that really makes it work for me.
Currently Reading: Jake and Lily
After being engrossed by Love, Stargirl, it was only a matter of time before I read another. That time has elapsed.
What I love about Jake and Lily is how the book is page to page and sometime line to line, a dialogue between these two twins which then also becomes a conversation with the reader. This storytelling style of alternating voices and points of view building a picture of these siblings’ lives really brings deeply me into their world, especially one aspect of it: the mysterious, wondrous goombla they share. It’s fantastic how Jerry Spinelli crafts these voices to capture a quintessetial feeling of childhood, reminiscent of Stargirl and Love, Stargirl.
I’m only about 70 pages into the hardcover edition, and so far, it’s excellent; each day I look forward to spending time with Jake and Lily.
Objects of Value
“So what was that dream you wanted to tell me about?” I ask, taking the bowl from her.
“Oh man, totally weird,” she says, handing me the bowl.
“Awesome, let’s hear it,” I reply, taking the bowl.
“So I was all alone, feeling sad that I didn’t have any friends,” she begins, handing over the bowl. “I started to wonder why and realized that it was probably because I didn’t have any money to do stuff with people, like go shopping, eat out, see movies and gamble.”
Continue reading
Fuel
“In my dream, I was outside, walking around the neighborhood as the sun was setting,” she tells me. “The streets and houses looked much like as they normally do. At some point, I stopped at an intersection waiting for traffic to clear so I could cross the street. A man driving a van slowed to a stop, kindly letting me cross the street. I waved to thank him as I hurried across to the next block. He drove off as soon as I reached the sidewalk, and then I smelled a familiar, smoky but sweet aroma in the air. It took me a while to place the scent, but then as I continued on my way, I realized it was the fragrance of burning dreams.
“Ah, I thought to myself. He has to burn dreams as fuel to translocate. That’s what it’s come to for him. It saddened me to find such wondrous material full of potential expended on such things.” Continue reading
Keepsakes of Aspiring Pacifists
I always carry a few of Yuuka’s disarming smiles with me. Even though I don’t inhabit a community with particularly contentious or caustic folks, sometimes enmity flares up unexpectedly. You never know when you might need such a smile, and these are my keepsakes of Yuuka, reminders of her and the moments we shared, especially the last one.
It was already, surprisingly autumn after a summer of delicious tomatoes, too much music and a colorful mixture of banal and lofty goals. Long since abandoned by boats and their passengers, the pier we stood upon was enshrouded by fading echoes muting the sun.
“Until you have some of your own,” she said, giving me one more of those unmistakable, mollifying smiles of hers as a parting gift. Continue reading
Protracted Adolescence—Currently Watching: Liberal Arts
I’m about 20 minutes away from finishing what promises to be another emotionally satisfying film, Liberal Arts.
Being a long-time academic, I find many facets of the film resonating strongly with my perspectives, and what I love about it so far is its take on the place college has in our lives, as students, faculty, alumni, etc. Whatever kind of place it might be to each of us. Also, as much as it’s a film about people in love with each other, it’s just as much about people being in love with ideas—great works of art, learning and exploration, the possibilities offered by college and the world…
The characters are endearing and intriguing, but I can’t help but find that this is to some degree another older-guy-younger-girl story. How different would it be with the ages swapped? How come there are so few films like that?
Life With, Then Without Mind-Altering(Narrowing) Substances
Before the crackdown, you could get almost any stereotype you wanted – especially negative social ones – without going out of your way. Even though the bulk of them were already prohibited and much of the rest was on its way to the same classification, the trade and use of stereotypes was utterly rampant. Those were the days when it was not uncommon to encounter and even get hooked on stereotypes in your youth, a time when stereotypes changed hands on playgrounds at recess like collectible toys or candy and were passed around among adolescents loitering in empty school parking lots on weekend evenings. Continue reading
Just read: Heft by Liz Moore
Fantastic ending. Leaves me in a sort of contented expectancy.
Following yet another NPR recommendation, I got a copy of Heft by Liz Moore and was quickly drawn in by the flow of the prose and the characters it revealed. The sentences have a deliberate and adept succinctness that confers upon the events in Heft a measure of realism and upon the thoughts of the characters a quintessential tenderness. With this language, the first-person narratives excellently convey a sense of the convergences and divergences people’s lives can take on, and how tenuous relationships can be while the circumstances and emotions (like loneliness and sorrow) have at times an unrelenting grip.
Here’s a little bit from the beginning of the book…
She said noting in class. She gazed at me steadily from halfway down out seminar table, blinking occasionally through her large glasses, observing her classmates respectfully. Only once during the entire semester did she ever speak, and it was to volunteer an answer that was incorrect. I didn’t have the heart to correct her myself, so I turned to the class and allowed them to, and after that she returned to her silence. But she came to visit me in my office several times… p. 23 Continue reading
My Ex-Colleague’s Calculations
I need to reconstruct or entirely recreate my raison d’être, in such a way that it does not so heavily incorporate the notion of contingent worth in its various forms. But first, I need a slice of pizza. Possibly two. So I go to the pizzeria I frequent when pizza goes from being luxury and distraction to necessity and imperative. Continue reading
Just Watched: Safety Not Guaranteed
Wow. I haven’t seen a film this good for a while. 
For me, the quirky story is made ever so engrossing by the characters, each of whom is convincingly realistic and uniquely endearing—I found myself surprisingly relating to them all. Continue reading
A Contemplative Compilation 