“Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”— Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (via books-n-quotes)
(Source: booksnquotes.com)
November 23, 2018
October 22, 2018
Backstage at Folies Bergere, Tropicana. Las Vegas, 1969. Bettmann archives.
(Source: vintagelasvegas, via whenwewerecool)
August 24, 2018
The Proust Questionnaire
There is no other literary format that I despise more than the interview. I find that there’s little to be gained from it as a piece of literature. Its eschewing of a coherent narrative, its lack of any organic unity that forces both reader and writer to trace the flows of momentum in a text, or to see how one sentence transfers energy to the other… is something I don’t quite appreciate. Not everything has to have organic unity, of course. Some texts wander aimlessly and make it their life’s work to be as ambiguous as possible. That works too. But the interview doesn’t traffic in ambiguity either, for its goal is singular: to collect answers.
Well of course there are really nice gems, often mined in The Paris Review. Brilliant questions matched with equally brilliant answers, heady exchanges featuring dialoging intellectuals. Boy doesn’t this sound similar to the format of a play? I suppose so, though no matter how play-like it sounds, it’s still unlike the latter because interview dialogues occur in a pre-arranged context that precludes novelty, wonder, and unpredictability on both sides. In an interview, persons are in clearly defined roles of probing vs probed.
I think a lot of readers detect the boringness of the interview format. Which is why they don’t read the whole thing. They just pick the QnAs that pique their interests, skip, loop around, and hop from one curious part to the other. (Things you cannot do in a play, essay, short story.)
This is why, dear readers, I am handing out the carte blanche to everyone to skip, loop around, and hop from one item to another in the succeeding “interview format"of this post. The part where I answer The Proust Questionnaire, popularized by who else but the French "softboy” Marcel Proust. (Did I use that slang correctly?) This questionnaire has been at the back of my mind for the past decade or so, but I always put off using it as a tool to introspect because I deemed myself “too young” to say anything of substance. But last night, I found myself watching the night trudge along and felt myself to be aged. (There’s something really old about sitting on a chair, doing nothing, and just being alone with one’s silence.)
It’s always slightly narcissist to be answering questionnaires like this and displaying them to the grand public, no different from answering a “meme” called Horoscope Bingo and posting your results to your Instagram story, or perhaps no different from Twitter culture’s gratuitous display of kink. The main difference between this just-mentioned set and my answers to the Proust Questionnaire is, I hope, the presence of insight. That the readers might gain insight from my introspection just by virtue of my answers being different from theirs.
And so we shall begin.
The Proust Questionnaire:
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Middle-aged in a stony loft that houses my sustainable lifestyle where coffee pods are taboo. I’ve reduced my carbon footprints signficantly by flying less. And I’m just sitting there, having closed a case where I returned all the art stolen in past colonization attempts by Europeans… to their rightful owners. This would’ve been an entire life’s work of tracing the genealogy of each art piece, studying their archeology, building facts to support the case in some international tribunal. Or alternatively, I would have figured out how to permanently prevent international law from favoring Empires. Or … figured out who the adjudicator is, in international law. Or I’d have written a novel that invents the metatheory after post-postmodernism.
I will be surrounded by my own little tribe, which I’ll have raised w/o the same violence and aggression I suffered as a child. They will all be allowed to be as unique and weird as possible. In fact I’m close to saying that they aren’t allowed to be normal. But I guess that’s anti-democratic to normal kids. Either way, they will grow up to have odd jobs, likely struggling with how they fit in the wider neoliberal market. At their best they would devise a way to retool the global world order with the sheer force of their frustrations.
A partner in life is in the picture, too. Someone who will be grateful for a lifetime of having one adventure after the other.
This is how I imagine “perfect” happiness to be: The reprieve after having done really really great work. Whether professionally or in smaller spaces. Like the inside of one’s loft.
2. What is your greatest fear?
Stagnation. Becoming dumber.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My quickness to place certain people in boxes. The box labelled A is where I place boring human beings. B is where the quirky, unconventional ones are.
Often, I close myself off to the former. Probably because of my own history. As a young girl, I was very odd and quiet. It was those “boring” human beings who I felt initiated the persecution of my idiosyncrasies, which led to years and years of wanting to conform to a more linear model of reality. Even as a young woman, this same pattern repeated itself. So I suppose this sieving of people – while I deplore – has become a coping mechanism that’s proven hard to eradicate.
*Emphasis on “certain” people. Usually, I mean members of my peer group or members of institutions. (So this includes adults too.)
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Pretending to be part of Box B when they reside squarely in Box A. (See above.)
5. Which living person do you most admire?
Oh boy how difficult, for I tend not to venerate. And I tend not to read biographies, so I don’t really know any living person extremely well.
Professionally, it would be Amal Alamuddin. As a writer, it would be Claire-Louise Bennett. CLB was an academic of Literature – which signifies a certain “retreat” already into the margins. She retreated even further as she went into the woods to live a completely solitary existence, much like Thoreau. Unlike Thoreau though, she’s a middle-aged woman, making this move …a lot more radical than it is. I’m very piqued by her life choices and the way they’ve transformed her words. “Pond” remains one of my favorite books in the universe.
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
This is quite shameful. I’ve spent a large portion of my salary on furniture. I hate boring things, see, so my room needs to be an articulation of my identity. The furniture isn’t that expensive on its own, but taken together, and taken into the financial context of a person my age… it will be.
But the most shameful one has to be the time I bought a 20,000+ peso piece of clothing to wear to a ball. It was a work event, where I was the +1 of my boss, and I caved into the pressure I think. This is something I won’t repeat again.
7. What is your current state of mind?
That middle valley between peace and excitement.
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Tough question on its own. It’s hard to pick an absolute.
Maybe when I’m 40 I would know how to answer this.
9. On what occasion do you lie?
To avoid social situations I have no patience of enduring.
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
The way my height makes me seem fatter than I really am.
11. Which living person do you most despise?
The Chief-of Staff I worked with back in the government. Though I didn’t really “work with” her. She didn’t work at all. I have written about her extensively on my Tumblr. See here: http://prousthetics.tumblr.com/post/174825262721/indignez-vous
She is the epitome of neoliberal evil.
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Ah! Marcel Proust answered “feminine charm” to this question. I would say: His feminization.
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Unflinching femininity.
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Motherfucking… . Oh my god. Jesus H. Christ.
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Ask me on my deathbed! For I have no answers for you yet.
16. When and where were you happiest?
That semi-brief reprieve while waiting to get my 2nd tattoo (2016). This was in London, and I was with my friends Kelly and Bianca. I had just “escaped” from work (which was facing immensely gruesome crises at the time), was pondering whether to continue or to leave it, and was feeling a reconnect with my creative self. It felt like a reclamation not just of my body, but of power.
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
To paint. Or to let conversations at dinner tables run w/o end, AND without expending my precious introverted energy.
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
The easy pendulum swing of my temperament.
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I don’t believe I’ve had it yet.
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
…one of the Queen’s corgis. I expect to be the most sentient one, and hope to enact policies beneficial to the Corgi community. I will use my monarchic ties as platform for change.
21. Where would you most like to live?
Paris for eternity.
22. What is your most treasured possession?
My wits!
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Forgetting who you are. And knowing that you’ve forgotten but can’t seem to un-forget.
24. What is your favorite occupation?
Fly on the wall.
25. What is your most marked characteristic?
My perceived aloofness.
26. What do you most value in your friends?
Truthfulness. That is to say, authenticity.
27. Who are your favorite writers?
Gasp. Ann Patchett, Jennifer Egan, Claire-Louise Bennett, Michel Faber, Sara Hall, Siri Hustvedt, Tom Stoppard, David Foster Wallace, Tina Fey, Arnaldo Iannucci, David Harvey, Mark Greif, Donna Tartt, Jeffrey Eugenides, Luis Katigbak. Many others!
28. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Gasp, how difficult. I am particularly fond of Midge Maisel from “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.” Also, Rodrigo de Souza from “Mozart in the Jungle.”
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Napoleon Bonaparte!
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
Volunteers in refugee camps or conflict areas. Doctors w/o borders.
31. What are your favorite names?
Rebecca, Jonathan, Elizabeth, Catherine.
32. What is it that you most dislike?
Feeling tethered. Being surveilled.
33. What is your greatest regret?
That I didn’t give my 100% on some things. Certain relationships with people. Certain endeavors to make a community better.
34. How would you like to die?
By hemlock!
35. What is your motto?
“How does a heart of stone write a love song? In free verse of course, to show how little rigid he is.” These are lines from a poem by Turner Cassity.
August 22, 2018
(Source: veepoutofcontext, via veepoutofcontext)
August 21, 2018
“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
(Source: booksnquotes.com)
August 21, 2018
“I’ve been in love before, it’s like a narcotic. At first, it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You’re not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he’s not there, you feel like an addict who can’t get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you’re willing to do anything for love.”— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept | @thelovejournals
(via thelovejournals)
(Source: thelovejournals.com)
August 11, 2018
“Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures. No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.”— Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
(Source: booksnquotes.com)
August 5, 2018
“There is a garden that only we know how to get to—a man who sleeps cloaked in my shadow sings there— where all the dead I loved still waver in a pond’s reflection, where a koi breaks the surface with its lidless eyes, and I promise never to look away, not even to blink.”— Henry Israeli, from “Imaginary Garden: An Afterlife,” Praying to the Black Cat (Del Sol Press, 2010)
August 2, 2018
“I really don’t know what I love you means. I think it means Don’t leave me here alone.”— Neil Gaiman, Adventures in the Dream Trade
(Source: booksnquotes.com)
August 1, 2018
“A translator is someone trying to get in between a body and its shadow.”— Anne Carson in her introduction to Sophocles’ Electra
(via booklover)
August 1, 2018
As some of you may know, I spent my months post-employment in a deep, inescapable rut mirroring my horrendous 2010 year of depression.
Luckily it wasn’t inescapable at all, for I’ve since plunged myself feverishly into the rabbithole of Oxbridge Admissions. I still don’t sleep much, but I’ve acquiesced to this deficiency since the reason for not sleeping is that I feel so alive again (!). And I feel like I have two years of dead-woman-walking to make up for.
Why I feel alive is because I feel very much at home with what I’m doing. That is to say: (1) alternating from reading academic books to literary ones, and (2) constructing and reconstructing my Personal Statement for Oxbridge (which follows a different standard from most, since it is to be an articulation of your academic self, an RRL of your life and your mind). The standard length is 4000 characters, and a woman as a well-read as I am, will conceive of great difficulty in fitting my Life RRL to that constraint. But whichever the case, these are acts that lead me to revisit old undergraduate memories which I’m quite fond of. I get to see my 2014 coursework and submissions in the eyes of someone 4 years older, and I feel so much gratisfaction at seeing how I’ve since evolved.
I was miserable in the early months of my post-employment because I was angry, mostly at myself, for making decisions that erased my academic inclinations. This misery accumulated into some form of rapaciousness that hits me now and hits me sharp, that the only thing I feel is momentum to move forward.
These recent emotional realizations have made me think, too, about the nature of the future I desire. My mistake for the last two years has been that I was forcing myself to live a conventional life, which is why erasures of eccentricities occurred. For me to be truly happy, I realize, I need to adopt a large degree of unconventionality. And it has been made very clear to me by my job experiences that a structured office setup will not do the trick. I already knew this before, but I was so stubborn to act on the knowledge. I suppose given this, the personal challenge for me in the near future is to know what would do the trick.
In my flights of fancy, I’m quite fond of the lives of Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson (yes, I’m citing Elementary!). While Holmes is obviously quirky with polymathic interests that mirror mine, the character that strikes a chord more is Joan Watson who in the show began as a surgeon at the top of her class, and then moved on to a far less “glossy” job as a sober companion, and then to a far more eccentric career change as a detective. The world is her oyster; she uses all of her faculties (linear, lateral, otherwise) to investigate and then process data that leads to answers about the way people behave. She is untethered by any authority figure, and even colors outside lines.
That is the kind of life I want to live: always investigating, always looking for creative ways to solve problems. It’s not too far from my current reality: I suppose my academic choices (Political Economy, and eventually Law) make much sense because both fields require a large degree of investigation and creativity. Gathering facts, forming theories, testing them. The caveat, of course, is that this disposition precludes a fighting stance. And fight, I would like: to change obsolete laws, to vote for a better regimes of justice, to retool institutions. These are changes on a massive scale, whereas investigative prowess flourishes in small, tight spaces. Forgive the dichotomising; I’m sure they’re not mutually exclusive – I’m just not yet sure how to bring the gap to an overlap.
July 29, 2018
“Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.”— Truman Capote, Summer Crossing
(Source: booksnquotes.com)
July 28, 2018
“June, July, August. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go.”— Mary Oliver, from Devotions: The Selected Poems; “August,” (edited)
(Source: violentwavesofemotion, via booklover)
July 28, 2018
get to know me meme: favorite friendship [1/5] → Liz and Jack
Have you spent time with each other’s families? Have you attended special events together, such as class reunions, birthday or holiday celebrations, weddings, or extended car trips? Are you each others’ emergency contacts? Do you ever drink together at work, perhaps while summarizing what you’ve learned over the day or week? Have you shared intimate details of your fears, hopes, and dreams, both personal and professional? Is this the longest and perhaps most meaningful relationship in your life?
Still my favorite show in the whole universe
(via mitskully)
July 28, 2018
“Desire perishes because it tries to be love.”— Jack Gilbert, from “The Great Fires,” The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)
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