This quarter just ended. Winter. Masters program. 2013. I haven’t written in awhile. I haven’t reflected on much lately. I haven’t had time. Rather, I haven’t made time. I just finished my last final of winter quarter and I took some time to reflect….
This quarter was very different than last. Some good. Some not. Here are some tidbits.
Yoga on Saturdays.
Meet at least four times with professors and advisors (A+ for effort)
Rode public transportation 3 times a week (currently on a train)
made at least 16 granny squares….but haven’t made them into a pillow, yet
There has been quite a bit going on politically regarding women’s health and rights. I would like to tell you all about the jams I have made and the infused vodkas and all sorts of cute, easy and fun things. But there is so much that I want to write about and I will save all of the cute stuff for later, ok maybe I can make this kind of cute. Hella pics.
1. women
Here is what I think. As women we are brought up in a culture that thrives on our insecurity. It tells us that we aren’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. We read magazine articles and see images that craft what we should be. But we are too emotional, unstable, and crazy. We can’t do certain things because of our sex and we are only as worthy as our sex. It pins us against the world, but the deeper more sobering reality is that it pins us against each other. Competition and judgement aren’t part of our dispossession, they are symptoms of a society that makes women feel that they have to prove their worth. Women competing or judging other women is too often considered a norm in workplaces and in social situations. This is a result of a society that has pushed women down repeatedly and denied their true strengths. I really believe that genuine power and true beauty are a threat to societal social norms. If you make women feel like they are inferior and their worth can only come about through their obtaining the unobtainable they more easily manipulated and ego driven. Thus more easy to control. Validation through social acceptance creates a state of chaos and is at the root of how women are trained to define themselves. In my opinion the most direct attack on women is through other women. This isn’t the most powerful or pervasive but the most direct. We do this through the way we judge them, be-friend them, teach them, talk to them, raise them. And we do this through the ways in which we support them or choose not to.
The political attacks that have fallen upon women and families are an example of using women bodies as a tool. Their bodies can be manipulated and disputed, debated, discussed and ridiculed. They can be judged and demonized for what they are, or aren’t and all of this is through the eyes of someone else.
Often, I hear women say how these issues don’t affect them. Literally, it doesn’t affect them; like, “this isn’t my problem and I have enough problems, thank you very much.” And to that I want to say a million things, one of them is I understand that life is hard and that your life in particular might be very hard right now. But also the greatest movement, in my opinion, out of your own personal problems or struggles is to see yourself in a greater context. That is to see how you (little you) fits into this bigger world and the bigger (YOU).
I think this is our time to stand together as women and not let society define what that means for us.
2. Men
Ok so really men have no business saying what is right for a woman. I am serious.
3. I use to be very fearful of getting involved in anything. I thought this isn’t my fight..” after spending time in Armenia and seeing dynamics of power differently, I feel differently. I understand that those who can use their power and influence to bring about freedom for others, should and must.
I use to also hate flawed institutions and government. Being informed wasn’t particularly interesting because the more I learned, the more I felt disconnected from a society that didn’t represent me. Many people feel that their government doesn’t represent them and many people don’t vote because they think that all of the candidates are all the same and don’t represent THEM. But I see how vastly different the candidates are and how close elections can be.
I use to think, what can one person do? There is SO MUCH wrong with society. As I became more informed, involved and curious, I saw the power in individuals. One person is more than one person, that person is part of a community, family and social structure. Their one voice hold with it the power of their collective shared values and their experiences. Their one voice has the ability to motivate and inspire others and in that choir of voices there is the power to shake up the foundation of society.
It is all of our roles and responsibility to do what we can with our time, actions and resources to make this world better, not worse.
Better: is expansive; it allows for greater opportunities, freedoms, and resources. It is fluid and doesn’t view the world as white or black but sees the complexity, and range, of human experiences. It meets people where they are, and yet invites them to more fully express everything that they already are. It isn’t about limitations or denial, or about what is right or wrong. It is acceptances of what is and growth through learning. Better is involvement and action and connection to those around you. Maybe this fight doesn’t affect you but if it did you would want your friends, community, and government to have your back and support you in whatever decision you thought was right for you at that time so maybe, just maybe, it affects us all.
I should stop myself, but I wont. Nietzsche is my most favorite thought right now. Today I was thinking how some of his ideas are very similar to Emerson’s. I just read a complete work of Emerson and Cornell West talks very highly of Emerson (he states that a women I respect, Gloria Steinem, embodies Emerson ideals as do many other “free” thinkers). I enjoyed pieces of Emerson’s work but I felt like he was very superficial, and lacked depth in knowing. His arguments didn’t seem to hold weight to me. The were more like words on a page that seemed very nice and good but lacked structural integrity. Also he just felt like an elitist wuss. He is like the rich kid whose moms bought him all of his clothes and lied them out on the bed for him. He said the right things and got good grades but he lacked understanding. He could tell you how to build a house but his hands lacked callouses and he had never actually built a home. That is what Emerson was to me.
This is exactly what I feel “Nietzsche expands, develops, and dramatizes insights that Emerson presents in an almost casual way” This is all about the two. Nietzsche, on the other hand, admired Emerson. I feel like Emerson is a friend that I say, “no I like her, she is great, but lets not invite her to the dinner party.”
They lie and their lies don’t have depth, they are superficial, shallow seas; neither their thoughts nor their feelings penetrate the depths. They are guided by boredom and lust, present shallowness as depth, pose as reconcilers, but they are, in fact, mixers, bring the unmixable together and create eclectic forms. They are poor in style and mix eclectically where the form and the content remain apart, where a variety of disparate elements is not creatively appropriated, which is the mixing of modern style, or lack of style.
Verily, their spirit itself is the peacock of peacocks, and a sea of vanity!
I thought this very interesting because well Zarathustra is a poet and as I think Nietzsche is too. But really Nietzsche is getting all pompous saying certain poets are shallow and trite while HE, isn’t. He is a poet of blood, experience and life.
Here is an interesting article Nietzsche, Philosophy, & Poetry who makes this argument ” Therefore, we cannot draw a distinction between the philosopher as a seeker after objective truths and a poet as a seeker after wholly ‘subjective’ and relativistic experiences.” But I think that there are some distinctions that can be made between poetry and philosophy. I don’t think that there is much reason or rhyme (this is an joke to myself) in making the distinction. Perhaps poetry is an expression of what is known while philosophy is an expression of knowing and the unknown. Here is a debate on the topic.
But more so when I read poetry I look for similarities. I see pieces of myself in the work. I feel the depths of the emotion and the impact of the experience. Oscar Wilde spoke that the artist has a great responsibility to expand experiences to make them more vibrant that the actual event. In that the act of reading about it is a greater emotional sensation that actually being in it. To me, that is what poetry strives for. Philosophy on the other hand, I read differently, I read for similarity and consistency with my own mode of thought but I also read it to breach my own experience to bring me to a place of uncertainty.
Nietzsche is a bit inconsistent from what I am gathering and he also loved poetry. His “favorite poet” was Friedrich Hölderlin he was diagnosed with extreme hypochondria and later declared “mentally unfit.” Who wants a “mentally fit” poet?
Another day. I follow another path,
Enter the leafing woodland, visit the spring
Or the rocks where the roses bloom
Or search from a look-out, but nowhere
Love are you to be seen in the light of day
And down the wind go the words of our once so
Beneficent conversation…
Your beloved face has gone beyond my sight,
The music of your life is dying away
Beyond my hearing and all the songs
That worked a miracle of peace once on
My heart, where are they now? It was long ago,
So long and the youth I was has aged nor is
Even the earth that smiled at me then
The same. Farewell. Live with that word always.
For the soul goes from me to return to you
Day after day and my eyes shed tears that they
Cannot look over to where you are
And see you clearly ever again.
Like any good college student I read a lot of Herman Hesse. I think that Hesse is an amazing and thought provoking writer and I love how he blends dualities like masculine and femininity, east and west, thinking and feeling, reality and imagined, man and animal, past and future…etc. After reading quite a bit of his work (I am one of those kind of readers, I like to read the authors entire collection) I noticed, all of his books seemed to follow the same skeletal structure. Man longs for something different or is forced to be exposed to something different. The difference confronts who he was and or his inner demons. Usually the dualism comes into play here and he must struggle with his desires/longings/wants/isolation. There is chaos here. Then there is some sort of transcending where the newly enlightened character resolves and accepts his conflicts.
I was reading Nietzsche today and scribbled in the margin, “I wonder what Hermann Hesse thought of this?” there are a lot of similar underlining themes, this spawned a guick-ish internet search. Fact: Hermann Hesse had a crush on Nietzsche too.
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse
Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. His
metaphysics consists of a somewhat “Byronic” and mystically
“malevolent” universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to “will,”
or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But,
as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent
feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual,
terms.’ *Objectivist* March 1968, p. 6
…….
‘Nietzsche’s rebellion against altruism consisted of replacing the
sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself.
He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his
“blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power–that he
is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself,
while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves–that
reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality
is useless, that the “superman” is “beyond good and evil,” that he is
a “beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim.
Thus Nietzsche’s rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating
Attila into a moral ideal–which meant: a double surrender of morality
to the Witch Doctor.’ *For the New Intellectual* p. 36
Ayn Rand can s my d. I am at the irrational place with my love where I have decided that Nietzsche is being ironic and sort of poking fun at us all when he talks about women, and compassion. He strokes my hair and tells me “baby, I really didn’t mean it.”
To be totally honest, I don’t really like Ayn Rand, but this is a really interesting interview with her.
John Fante is one of my favorite authors and I have read every book he has written and at least one book about him. From his works I was first intrigued by Nietzsche. This is a piece from his book ask the dust
“I pulled the huge door open and it gave a little cry like weeping. Above the altar sputtered the blood-red eternal light, illuminating in crimson shadow the quiet of almost two thousand years. It was like death, but I could remember screaming infants at baptism too. I knelt. This was habit, this kneeling. I sat down. Better to kneel, for the sharp bite at the knees was a distraction from the awful quiet. A prayer. Sure, one prayer: for sentimental reasons. Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have you read Nietzsche? Ah, such a book! Almighty God, I will play fair in this. I will make You a proposition. Make a great writer out of me, and I will return to the Church. And please, dear God, one more favor: make my mother happy. I don’t care about the Old Man …”
I know it is more user friendly to have less text but I love this story so much and I can’t stand to cut out more of it.
The road to Los Angeles They went to bed. I had the divan and they had the bedroom. When their door closed I got out the magazines and piled into bed. I was glad to be able to look at the girls under the lights of the big room. It was a lot better than that smelly closet. I talked to them about an hour, went into the mountains with Elaine, and to the South Seas with Rosa, and finally in a group meeting with all of them spread around me, I told them I played no favorites and that each in her turn would get her chance. But after a while I got awfully tired of it, for I got to feeling more and more like an idiot until I began to hate the idea that they were only pictures, flat and single-faced and so alike in color and smile. And they all smiled like whores. It all got very hateful and I thought, Look at yourself! Sitting here and talking to a lot of prostitutes. A fine superman you turned out to be! What if Nietzsche could see you now? And Schopenhauer what would he think? And Spengler! Oh, would Spengler roar at you! You fool, you idiot, you swine, you beast, you rat, you filthy, contemptible, disgusting little swine! Suddenly I grabbed the pictures up in a batch and tore them to pieces and threw them down the bowl in the bathroom. Then I crawled back to bed and kicked the covers off. I hated myself so much that I sat up in bed thinking the worst possible things about myself. Finally I was so despicable there was nothing left to do but sleep. It was hours before I dozed off. The fog was thinning in the east and the west was black and grey. It must have been three o’clock. From the bedroom I heard my mother’s soft snores. By then I was ready to commit suicide, and so thinking I fell asleep.
……..
They wouldn’t give me a ride. He killed crabs, that fellow up there ahead. Why give him a ride? He loves paper ladies in clothes closets. Think of it! So don’t give him a ride, that Frankenstein, that toad in the road, that black spider, snake, dog, rat, fool, monster, idiot. They wouldn’t give me a ride; all right so what! And see if I care! To hell with all of you! It suits me fine. I love to walk on these God-given legs, and by God I’ll walk. Like Nietzsche. Like Kant. Immanuel Kant. What do you know about Immanuel Kant? You fools in your V-8s and Chevrolets!
……..
It was always the park. I read a hundred books. There was Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Kant and Spengler and Strachey and others. Oh Spengler! What a book! What weight! Like the Los Angeles Telephone Directory. Day after day I read it, never understanding it, never caring either, but reading it because I liked one growling word after another marching across pages with somber mysterious rumblings. And Schopenhauer! What a writer! For days I read him and read him, remembering a bit here and a bit there. And such things about women! I agreed. Exactly my own feelings on the matter. Ah man, what a writer!
I am currently reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I love it. I thought that Nietzsche would be masculine, aggressive and verbose but this book is simple and sweet. It is gentle and feels like an old, maybe slightly odd, man telling a story to a little girl. I don’t know if I am “getting it” though because everything I read about him paints him is another light, like WTF is this (besides some christian dude throwing up all over Nietzsche’s work). True, I am less than 100 pages in but so far I want to pour tea for him as he eats a cracker and I tell him, I like what he has to say and I also like his mustache.
I haven’t posted in so long. I think my brain melted a little bit and for a period it became really slow. I have all sorts of reasons that I think this happened from increase soda consumption, white bread eating, and winter with it’s lack of vitamin D and fun all were culprits in stealing my smart juice. The sun is shinning (well not right now) and along with it I am ready to fill my brain with stuff again.
I started a book awhile ago that I had to stop reading because the words were too big and the ideas to confusing for me at the time (brain melting time) and instead I read something like three cups of tea and watched Oprah. Thanks god that period of my life is over, though I still love Oprah (perhaps I will explain later or perhaps you will have to judge me and say, uuuuuuuhhhhhhh?).
plutocracy the rule or control of society by the wealthy 2. a state or government characterized by the rule of the wealthy 3. a class that exercises power by virtue of its wealth
Cash rules everything around me, including you.
milquetoast a very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated: a milquetoast who’s afraid to ask for a raise.
Not to be confused with milk toast.
shib·bo·leth a peculiarity of pronunciation, behavior, mode of dress, etc., that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons. 2.a slogan; catchword. 3. a common saying or belief with little current meaning or truth.
Urban dictionary: Word for a slag word used to denote something cool. such as grovy, shibby, sick
ol·i·gar·chy a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few. 2.a state or organization so ruled. 3.the persons or class so ruling.
sal·vif·ic of or pertaining to redemptive power.
If you google image redemptive power you get a picture of meatloaf singing.
hu·bris excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
I don’t know the meaning of the word hubris… And I’m just about to enter a “define the word hubris” competition. But I’m not worried. I’m pretty confident that I will win it anyway. –Richard Herring
my·op·ic Ophthalmology . pertaining to or having myopia; nearsighted. 2.unable or unwilling to act prudently; shortsighted. 3.lacking tolerance or understanding; narrow-minded.
This is pretty sad that I looked this up
he·gem·o·ny leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation. 2.leadership; predominance. 3. (especially among smaller nations) aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination.
cu·pid·i·ty eager or excessive desire, especially to possess something; greed; avarice.
be·reft a simple past tense and past participle of bereave. 2.deprived: They are bereft of their senses. He is bereft of all happiness.
Where had I heard this wind before Change like this to a deeper roar? What would it take my standing there for, Holding open a restive door, Looking down hill to a frothy shore? Summer was past and the day was past. Sombre clouds in the west were massed. Out on the porch’s sagging floor, Leaves got up in a coil and hissed, Blindly striking at my knee and missed. Something sinister in the tone Told me my secret my be known: Word I was in the house alone Somehow must have gotten abroad, Word I was in my life alone, Word I had no one left but God.
love Robert Frost
i·con·o·clas·tic attacking or ignoring cherished beliefs and long-held traditions, etc., as being based on error, superstition, or lack of creativity: an iconoclastic architect whose buildings are like monumental sculptures. 2.breaking or destroying images, especially those set up for religious veneration.
This does the same thing to me that fiction and non-fiction does. It makes me confused.
xen·o·pho·bic unreasonably fearful of or hating anyone or anything foreign or strange.
Xeno means stranger. Xena means warrior princess
per·ni·cious causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful: pernicious teachings; a pernicious lie. 2.deadly; fatal: a pernicious disease. 3.Obsolete . evil; wicked.
dr.evil
pro·pi·tious presenting favorable conditions; favorable: propitious weather. 2.indicative of favor; auspicious: propitious omens. 3.favorably inclined; disposed to bestow favors or forgive: propitious gods.
I realize that this is the least interesting post known to man…Sorry. I am effort to make this more fun I will add little extra for your learning fun. Is that making it worse?
In case you wanted a flash back to being young like a person who is not missing teeth and hates their life here is a little lesson.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at asolar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
“Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.
There is so much for me to love about Louise Bourgeois, her name is my middle name and the same as my grandma and according to Wikipedia her major themes are; childhood trauma and hidden emotion, sexuality and fragility, architecture and memory. Louise described architecture as a visual expression of memory, or memory as a type of architecture. She is pretty amazing and a bit beyond my comprehension. I don’t really know how to talk about art but something in me likes her.
“What interests me is the conquering of the fear, the hiding, the running away from it, facing it, exorcising it, being ashamed of it, and, finally, being afraid of being afraid.”
Ode a l’oubli (translated means Ode to oblivion) this is a cloth book that she made and that was displayed at the MoMa.
Combined with the freedom to marry campaign she produced this work. Bourgeois worked with archival dyes on cloth with embroidery to depict an abstraction of two flowers joined on a single stem.
