Vampire

I just finished Dracula.

The late 1800s must have been pretty depressing for women. Male posturing has probably never reached such heights... I'm mildly disgusted:

"Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man's brains—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman's heart." And same paragraph: "We men are determined—nay, are we not pledged?—to destroy this monster; but it is no place for a woman. Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—..." After a few horrors, by the woman in question: "I shall put a bold face on, and if I do feel weepy, he shall never see it. I suppose it is one of the lessons we poor women have to learn."

I got kind of tired of the weak woman/strong man imagery after a while. If the author had been a woman and it had been a little more absurd (nay! is that possible) I might have taken some passages as sarcastic, but I think it's actually just degrading.

Actually there were several things I didn't like about it. "Treatment" of mental illnesses, Victorian propriety, the English hereditary title system (I think I liked the American guy the most), assumed superiority of technological advancements (mingled with reliance on religion and superstition), the aforementioned female-belittling attitude (the woman later fulfills her societal duties and pops out some babies), the alluded-to male posturing--a major tension point with three men after the same girl, and probably other things. But I'm apparently a picky (and feminist) reader.

gutes essen

michael pollan! interestingly, i think i've had this idea several times. most recently wondering why on earth cherries would put so much of their fruit out of reach if they wanted us to spread them around. also, in reference to why i'm willing to try some fruits i see randomly, but not others (not always sucessful however).

i'm a little obsessed! when you have an hour: see this! it takes a while, but it is quite awesome. props to google.

btw, people looking for birthday gifts... books are beautiful. michael pollan has many. i want them all :P.

also (via lisa): conservative organics? no matter what your pollitical alliance (although i'm fairly sure everyone here is more to the left), we can all find a reason to support locally-grown, non-industrial, non-Farm Bill-supported food.

speaking of which: barack obama's view. i'm not sure i like it or believe it. somehow i just don't think it's going to change anytime soon, although if he really wanted to target big industry and lobbists, the farm bill would get my vote for 1st on the chopping block.

grüner welt

in the pursuit of a greener world:

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/07/the-first-step.html

looking back 2-3 years ago, even 1, i've made a lot of small changes in my life. from the amount of meat i eat to how i get around to how long i spend in the shower. and yet, every week i seem to think of something new that i'd like to encorporate into my life. and i do. and i wonder how on earth i managed before.

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health-fitness/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2.shtml

another site/article that i've only recently read but i've known about for a lot time. really scary stuff. it makes me want to wear a gas mask and never eat anything i haven't personally grown. well, not that i haven't had that desire for a long time. but now it's just coming out more often.

one of my goals for this year is to learn more about environmental problems that are going to loom large in the 21st century--not just focusing on global warming which seems to have utterly captivated the press and people's imaginations recently. ironically, we could almost thank the 100 billions lbs of plastic produced per year (45 billion kg of plastic = roughly 38 billion kg of carbon) for sequestering a very small portion of the united states' carbon output. sigh.

weiße zähne

i just finished zadie smith's novel, white teeth. a friend shared with me a while back something smith herself said about the book in retrospect:

This kind of precocity in so young a writer has one half of the audience standing to applaud and the other half wishing, as with child performers of the past (Shirley Temple, Bonnie Langford et al), she would just stay still and shut up. White Teeth is the literary equivalent of a hyperactive, ginger-haired tap-dancing 10-year-old.


i think understood vaguely what she meant by that, before i even picked up the book at bookman/bookwoman (7.95$ could be considered a bargain if i didn't love libraries so much--very much my father's son, i am.). by the end of the first chapter i didn't see anything remarkable about the storytelling, but it was interesting and i don't put books down. now in retrospect, it's pretty clear. rough, though it was, still a fun read. the past plays such a huge role in shaping every character's actions and reactions--sometimes it felt like more of the later was going on than the former, but i suppose that's real life (more on reactionism later)? also, every character was so very deep. compared to so many personalities, both real and fictional, none of the rest really seem to have such an extremely detailed history or carefully molded personalities. even the first, most boring character "whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things" is nicely summed up in the "familiar ratios:/ Pebble:Beach./ Raindrop:Ocean./ Needle:Haystack," is interesting in that he is just so vapid. it might have been around here when i first saw the awkward dance through the new book haze. much sarcasm, vulgarity, and some 25 years of painful family drama (maybe i can be 'nephew/cousin of shame'--maybe i already am! ...just imagine that said by margaret cho!) the end (evening 31 dec 1992--i was 7 and probably in bed already) finally comes. for a book that places so much emphasis on the past and everything leading up to the final climax (at least most of the 2nd half was building up to it), i was a little scared to see that there were only 5 pages left and no sign of the apocalyptic clash that was promised. but it came (and went) and turned everything over. in the end, i was pretty happy with it. felt good to end it though. in a relief kind of way. for the poor characters, at least.

there was one particular sentiment that i liked: homeland. "The well-wooded and watered place. Where things spring from the soil riotously and without supervision..."--talking here about jamaica, but it reminded me of a certain pastoral idealization of far-off places like europe and japan and hawaii that i might harbor and occasionally actively nourish (miyazaki movies anyone?).

"homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. ... And the particular magic of homeland, it's particular spell over Irie (angry teenager), was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page."

i think i really like that thought on homeland. a good portion of the book deals with an immigrant family from bangladesh who moved to london and an immigrant family from jamaica who was taken there. it's funny, because i feel like i identify with them sometimes, even though i've never (until last year) lived out of the state of tennessee. and it isn't just that tennessee doesn't feel like home. quite the contrary. as much as i loved california and i love germany, i genuinely miss tennessee, or at least the representation of tennessee i hold deep in my memory from around age 7. but there is that longing for a homeland. somewhere that feels more like home than land and a house. and i think for me a new beginning might be what it is all about. a place with no past, no legacy of sadness or grudges or regrets--a vague idea somehow imprinted in the genes, making it seem like a memory. my homeland is an eternal place of quiet refuge. no intruders or meddlers. just home. if you could have it, would you take it?

i'm still not done!! but for now i'm just going to post and let this simmer. more to come.