Podcast: The United States of Tara and Nurse Jackie

I recorded the following at Ohio State, the Spring before moving to the Northwest.

Podcast: A Review of the Real Housewives of NYC: Originally recorded in 2010

I developed and recorded the following episode at Ohio State in 2010, right before moving to the Northwest.

Sometimes It's a Country Song

I don't know why I like this song so much but I do.
Especially the part in 3:01.

The Rilke Effect: Nothing Dilutes Quality Faster than Quantity.

There are some people I will never read in anything but the language they wrote in. You don't not read Dante in Italian. I'm not a fan of double negatives but this one is somehow apropos. Plus, Italian allows for it. Nor do you mess with Goethe in something other than German. "To be or not to be..." Say it in anything other than Shakespearean and you'll fail. Incidentally, the only time when I felt a mild form of repulsion while having German words in my mouth was when I tried to crack a joke in a German conversation and I randomly translated a bunch of Shakespeare one-liners into German. "Sein oder nicht sein, das ist ja die Frage." Rght. Blerg!

Rilke.

Lyrical poetry can never be done in a language other than the one in which it was originally conceived. My colleague boyfriend would write poems. At the time, I found the habit difficult to support. I couldn't help it. I had been trained to be critical of language. So, the first time I received the first lyrical poem, I said, "what's with the rhymes? Hmm, gauche." The reason why I remember these words is because they were repeated to me, perhaps rightly so, for four entire years. The thing is, and maybe it's innate elitism speaking here, one shouldn't mess with lyrical language unless one can. The Goethes and the Rilkes of the world are few and far between.

Instead of being imitative of them, why not just focus on them?

Lavish only the few with attention.

Nothing dilutes quality faster than quantity.

I found studying philosophy and literature easy to do. It was easy to study others' words. I knew when I was a child that I wasn't cut out for fiction. I tried. And then I wrote my first full pager. I misused one word. I wrote, "Today I woke up feeling melanchony.' I had my sister read it. She said, "Melanchony? In order to write, you need to know words." Even though I was only 10, she had a point.

What I remember from that experience, however, was that I felt better afterwards. Just like I felt better after I drew badly for hours. Or after I played dodgeball outside, or after I swam till my bottom lip was black. Somehow, I felt lighter after purging the words even though the syntax lacked in elaboration and the vocabulary needed constant depositing.

I've thought a lot about Rilke recently. Mostly, when the occasion did not call for it. Often while discussing some very-now topic and other non-literary things. One of the memories that comes to me with the most frequency is agreeing to hold a lecture outside, on the lawn, on a Spring day. I taught a Rilke seminar. Rilke is not for the fickle. Or the lazy. Rilke is for the studious and the strong. And those who open themselves to authentic human experiences and honest introspection.

The book I chose for the syllabus was the oh-so-light The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The whole seminar revolved around the heaviness of Brigge's experience. The way I would try to interject some levity to the subject matter was by saying that Brigge was a 'fun version' of Sartre's Nausea. Both works are about heroes who are clearly aware of their daily decay. Yes, a bona fide stand-up show.

But, there is another dimension to Rilke. Few people lead one to introspection more adequately than Rilke. And a brilliant work to lead one to introspection is: Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters.

The work details the relationship between a 21-year-old Rilke and the 36-year-old and married Salomé, When the two were first each other's close friend, they started an epistolary relationship which continued till Rilke's death. The relationship saw them morph into lovers, colleagues, protegge-philosopher, and friends again. In a letter right before they first became lovers, Rilke wrote:

"I always feel: when one person is indebted to another for something very special, that indebtedness should remain a secret between just the two of them."

A few days after their explorations of love, he writes: "Songs of longing! And they will resound in my letters, just as they always have, sometimes loudly and sometimes secretly so that you alone can hear them… But they will also be different — different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand."

So, during this upcoming Summer season, grab a copy. Read it. It will nourish you.

Assorted Links

1) Anatomy of genius:

2) New music I'm putting on repeat. Whether I'm driving or writing, this song has been on repeat for a couple of days. The video evokes some apocalyptic themes and the sound is reminiscent of 80's synth pop.

The Pursuing of Happiness

The substantive: 'pursuit' gets used with a lot of frequency in tandem with the other substantive: 'happiness.' To a linguist, 'pursuit' entails sort of a fait accompli and that doesn't quite make much sense to me.

I think a gerundial makes more sense here. 'Pursuing' happines. Or a gerundial noun: the 'pursuing' of happiness as it suggests on ongoing activity, that which informs quotidianity.

I revisited an existential discussion of happiness with a good friend of mine whom I met while at Ohio State. I thought a lot about my days at Ohio State this past long weekend as I was taking in some fresh air while snowboarding.

I met this particular friend on my first week at Ohio State. I was the youngest professor, by a good bundle of years, and I'd go to my lecture halls skipping through the fall-colored Buckeye campus and while listening to some indie rock. I was pursuing my happiness.

Once I'd enter the building, I'd look at myself on the reflection of my face on the iPhone, clean my glasses, apply some lipstick, and take a sip out of my venti Macchiato. As a matter of fact,  I rarely, if ever, went to my lectures without one. Routine mattered to me. It released my flow of thoughts, I supposed. And then I'd enter the realm of the Middle Ages or Gender Theory or Existential Cinema, whatever the lecture was that I was giving, and get lost in a sea of words that, for some reason, always came too easily and far too naturally to me.

After my lectures, I'd go to my big office, grab my uber-light Ventura bike where I would lean it against my book shelves, and go to Starbucks for a quick writing session away from the incessant knocking on my door. One day, while on the way to Starbucks, a guy said 'hi' to me at the light and asked me how I liked living at Olentangy Village. I must have given him one of my doubt-informed looks that said, "Hmm. How do you know where I live?!" because immediately he said, "oh, I live there too. I've seen you at the Cup o' Joe's across the street. You're always in a hurry, though. You move really fast. And you're really fast on that bike, too."

I remember thinking that the red light took much too long to turn green as a perfect stranger was sharing a bit too much and I had no idea who he was. "So", he continued, "what program are you in?" "What do you mean, 'program'? I asked. "You're a grad student here, right?" he carried on.
"What? No. I've got my PhD already. I haven't been a grad student in quite some time. I'm a prof who likes her bike a whole lot, you know? Anyway, yeah, nice meeting you."

And we became friends. He still is a good friend and after speaking to him this past weekend, I thought even more specifically about the pursuing of happiness.

Many people ask me questions I often find vexing like, "but why did you leave academia to go into the private sector? Isn't it better to be a professor?" Now, I know that people ask questions that reflect who they are not who they think I am. Don't we after all ask questions that reveal mostly things about us than the interlocutor?

We all have a limited amount of time on the planet. The pursuing of happiness has always been my driving force. Not the accumulation of accolades or man-made trophies.

I have always felt the least happy when I felt dependent on someone. And I never feel dependent on someone longer than a short spell. I think self-sufficiency is the true currency of happiness. Knowing that you can truly rely on yourself for your general well-being. Self-reliance is key to the pursuing of happiness. You cannot schlep a lot of baggage when pursuing happiness.

When in my yoga classes now, I often think of those 4pm gym session while at Ohio State. The days when I'd hop on my Ventura bike, go to the gym, swim and think of my strategy to exit academia and start a life in the private sector.

And as I tell my many staff now, "if you want something for yourself, you have to take it. It will, most likely, not just be given to you. You need to take it." And I think it's the same advice I gave myself when I was thinking of moving to the Northwest, live in beautiful nature, and work in the private sector while still very much intertwined with the channels of academia.

The pursuing of happiness does not need an audience. It's born on the inside. We birth it. It's in us. Those who need an audience to proclaim how happy they are are, most likely are anything but. The pursuing of happiness lacks form and definition. You can't frame it and then package it with a pretty pink bow. It morphs into all sorts of shapes and acquires all sorts of content depending on the daily goings-on. And that's what makes it so exiting. The pursuing of happiness is being open to life experiences, and people, and work, and activities that open up your mind to better ways of becoming. The pursuing of happiness requires not being hung up on who you thought you were but rather who you wish to become and why. The pursuing of happiness cannot rest on laurels. Because those who do, generally resign themselves to using the more petrified past participial form of the noun: 'pursuit', where little movement happens.

I choose to be in movement. I choose the 'pursuing' instead. it's, after all, in my DNA. It always has been. And there cannot be much pursuing of happiness without being true to one's nature.

But instead of doing laps in a pool, like I used to do 3 years ago prior to my moving to the Northwest, I now choose to swim in the Pacific. Well, not 'now' now. Now, I snowboard. And in a few months, I'll be hitting the ocean again like last year. Because that's what I want to do. And I took it.

Assorted Links

1) Measuring the Distribution of Spitefulness:

     Spiteful, antisocial behavior may undermine the moral and institutional fabric of society, producing disorder, fear, and mistrust. Previous research demonstrates the willingness of individuals to harm others, but little is understood about how far people are willing to go in being spiteful (relative to how far they could have gone) or their consistency in spitefulness across repeated trials. Our experiment is the first to provide individuals with repeated opportunities to spitefully harm anonymous others when the decision entails zero cost to the spiter and cannot be observed as such by the object of spite. This method reveals that the majority of individuals exhibit consistent (non-)spitefulness over time and that the distribution of spitefulness is bipolar: when choosing whether to be spiteful, most individuals either avoid spite altogether or impose the maximum possible harm on their unwitting victims.



Read more here.


2) Mustache markets in everything


  …not all mustaches are created equal, and in recent years, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern men have been going under the knife to attain the perfect specimen.
Turkish plastic surgeon Selahattin Tulunay says the number of mustache implants he performs has boomed in the last few years. He now performs 50-60 of the procedures a month, on patients who hail mostly from the Middle East and travel to Turkey as medical tourists.
He said his patients generally want thick mustaches as they felt they would make them look mature and dignified.
“For some men who look young and junior, they think (a mustache) is a must to look senior … more professional and wise,” he said. “They think it is prestigious.”

More here

3) Camille Paglia on women she does and does not like:
  
 Whatever sex represents to this generation of affluent white girls, it doesn’t mean rebellion or leaving the protective umbrella of hovering parents. The messy party scenes where everyone boastingly goes crazy don’t have the debasement and ostracism of true decadence once projected by such avant-garde groups as The Velvet Underground and The Doors. No alienation here! On the contrary, the young revelers just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go home zonked to doting Mom and Dad. Partying till you drop has gotten as harmless as a Rotary Club meeting.

More here.

Assorted Links

1) Maureen Dowd writes, "What's a Modern Girl to Do?" A snippet says:

"John Schwartz of The New York Times made the trend official in 2004 when he reported: "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame." A study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by insecure men for being too independent.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, theorized, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference between their attraction to men who might work above them and their attraction to men who might work below them.

Read on here.


2) Alex Tabarrok writes on forgiveness in: Forgiveness, Tit for Tat, and the Coase Theorem. A bit says:
"…research shows forgiveness has a dark side. At first it may help the person who has been hurt to let go of anger, resentment and desire for revenge. But forgiving also may encourage the transgressor to do it again."
More here.


3) Interesting article on a correlation between certain personality trains and physical attractiveness: People With Dark Personalities Tend to Create a Physically Attractive Veneer?
Read more here.


2)

Driving One Thousand Miles and Howard Stern

It was about 5:00AM.
I had been driving since 2AM.
I was tired.
And freaked out enough to start longing for the days when normalcy was starting to feel suffocating.

There's no reception on the iPhone. Or the BlackBerry. Howard Stern was on Sirius. It was a rerun from a few years ago. I actually remeber listening to the very same episode when on my first date with the radio DJ who took a lot of photos back in grad school. I look at myself in the mirror and for a snippet of time I could revisit that point in time. I would have never thought at that point in time that I'd be driving more to the north than I'd ever done before and that I wouldn't be listening to as much radio or go to as many photography galleries.

But this is not a post about existentialism. It's about being lost in the middle of nowhere North and not letting the irony of the situation get lost.

There's fog everywhere. No lights. I see this inn and I decide to knock. After all the Open sign was lit up. Let's hope for the best, I tell myself.

An older gentleman came down. I ask, "Hi, uhm, are there no gas stations around here? Uhm, I ran out of gas. Can I use your phone?"

I realize that my speech did not come across as clear as I usually intend it to be when talking to someone for the first time. The man then said, "you're welcome to use the phone. My name's Gary." I fidget with the BlackBerry. I lie in an effort to sound calm, cool, and collected. "Oh, I have, uhm, about a bar on my phone. I can call from it." Right after I say it, I realize I'm unnecessarily fibbing. The man just wants to help.

I get the card out of the wallet, call Roadside Assistance and, luckily, they say they're just an hour away.

Garry tells me that he works in construction. His hands look weathered and like he's worked with mortar and shovels his whole life.

"I'm making some coffee for myself. You're welcome to some." he says. I decline apologetically and tell him that I'll just wait for the Roadside Assistance people to show up. Right after declining the coffee offer, instinct tells me I should be more agreeable. "Maybe I'll have some of that coffee, actually, thanks."

"It's not too bad, this." He says. "I bought it in ..." and he said the name of a town I can't now recall. I should have paid more attention but I didn't. I was trying too hard not to feel like I was in a cliche.

We sit. I ask him about his work experiences. He says he works seasonally mostly and that he's been in construction for some 30-odd years.

I make a comment about the inn. "This is quite a place."

"They say it's haunted," Gary says.

Somehow, I got a kick out of that sentence. In any other script, the sentence would denote some sort of interesting turn in the plot. After all, it was Halloween eve.

In reality, it was just two strangers making conversation. I, a 5.2 light-haired person in heels and raincoat who ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere because I got too distracted by Howard Stern to stop and fill up before I hit the 'no cell reception zone' and he, a kind-hearted small town construction worker who did what he could to be helpful and hospitable.

I ask about the interior design of the place. The quilt on the wall was a nice touch.

He says he doesn't know but that the inn is a good enough place to stay for the winter. The winter, yes. I suppose, October is the winter somewhere.

"How about a cookie?" he asks. "More coffee?
"Oh no, thanks, I don't do sweets in the morning, or generally, for that matter." Right as I say it I tell myself to drop it down a notch and leave my city, quirky ways by the wayside. I looked at myself in the third person at that point and all I could see was a bundle of vanity. Funny that. Instantly I say,

"Thanks. This is so nice of you, Gary. Good cookie." I take half a bite and keep the rest in my hand.

The roadside assistance person shows up. His name is Jim. He shows me how to find the nearest gas station, a mere 30 miles down the road. Then he gets out of the car as I'm filling up and he asks, "you should get a jerry can, honey."

Maybe I was too tired and slightly disoriented but I had to ask him what he meant. "How do you mean, Jim?" "In case you run out of gas again down these parts." I still don't know what the thing was but I concur with him right away, anyway. "Yes, Jim, I should, shouldn't I? So, where can I get one?" I figured I'd know what it was when we got there. We go to a Husky and they didn't have it. "Let's go to Chevron", he says. "They'll have it. I'll meet you there", he says. And that he does. I follow him and I see him grab a red container. Ha. I laugh to myself. It's a fuel container also known as a jerry can. Why, jerry though? Upon coming home, I do some research on the term and I find out that it originated in Germany during World War II, Jerry obviously being a wartime name for Germany and Germans.
"How come I don't know this?" I ask myself incredulously.

But I digress.

I thank Jim for taking such good care of me. I think of what someone in my life always tells me for some reason. He always says that he finds it interesting how I always manage to land on my feet.
I always get somehow vexed at his observation as I somehow associate it with lack of effort on my part.
But, no, on this long drive I think I got it. Maybe it does take a small measure of talent to being open to being helped. Maybe, it's stature that makes one susceptible to it. Or language use. Whatever it is, I am glad that it presented itself at 5AM on a small town in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, gas stations, and fog, a lot of fog right on Halloween Eve.





Country Music Justified

I was driving through what seemed to be a cluster of little towns West of Vancouver. It felt like driving through sort of northern Ohio on the way to Indiana, you know, countryside, country stuff, and a whole lot of trucks of all sorts of sizes. I turn Sirius on only to see it go to a country music station.

"What?!" I say outloud. "What is this? Country?

Then a song by someone called JT Hodges popped up. The song's called "Sleepy Little Town" and the video is below. I vexingly try to locate my iPhone so that I can play my playlists or grooveshark or something. I've to got to get some Killers or Muse or something playing here. As I fumble through my stuff trying to find the right music to play, I listen to the song and I start getting in the mood for it. Maybe it was the snowy sleepy little town-like areas I was driving through or the lyrics but I let the song play out. It started to divert me. Enough so that I let Sirius be on the 'Highway' channel for a while. The Highway channel plays new country music, for those of you who have not been exposed to it yet.

Hmm. How about that? I'm listening to country. I feel a smirk coming on my face. I got a phone call from someone who asked me what I was up to and I quickly said, "oh, you know, jamming to country, eating a red delicious, the usu...." He said, "are you ok? You can't be listening to country. I get the apple but country?"

I instantly thought of a student paper I graded back in the summer of 2000 when I was teaching my first serious university course on modern literary interpretations. I had said 'no' to going to Europe with someone and instead chose to stay in the desert, teach literature, and watch Gladiator with my favorite friend almost every week that whole summer. On that paper, the best German speaker I had in that class, wrote, "Ich mag Musik sehr. Aber Country Musik soll ja illegal werden." "I love music but country music should be illegal."

I remember cracking up at the comment. I think I wrote a comment akin to, 'ha, lustig, aber man muss halt tollerant sein, oder?" "Ha, Funny. But one needs to be tollerant, right?"

Funny what kind of memories make it in the bank, isn't it?

The longer the distances I drive, the more I tend to think of those high-frequency memories that keep coming back day in, day out. Why do some seemingly simple memories make it in and other substantive moments go out the window? And every time I ask myself why I remember some but black out the rest. Why do we choose what we choose?

Why can't one remember the first kiss but instead remembers a kiss in the rain on a day that wasn't particularly a good one. Or why achievements and things that should mean so much are but a footnote that becomes fainter and fainter as more time goes by. Instead, a seemingly inocuous memory of you driving around town in a vintage VW yellow truck with orange leather interior is as vivid as what you did today in the late afternoon.

Yes, I did listen to country music. And not just once. I let Sirius play one country track after another. And I didn't feel as shocked as the first seconds of this track: