Someone blessed me with a Zachary Schomburg recommendation. This is a most exquisite love poem (via).
Category: books
2013/02/18
FINALLY. I just pre-ordered the shit out of Patricia Urquiola’s monograph.
2013/01/21
Instagram lately: home improvements
I’m getting close to feeling “moved in” (I moved in August). Over the weekend, we hung a couple spectacularly cheap IKEA lights in the living room and hallway (I don’t have before pics, but trust that the landlord’s taste in ceiling mounted light fixtures is awful). And the pendants make lovely use of the high ceilings.
An even more exciting improvement is my new bookshelf. This is a cheap-n-dirty version of the internet-famous hipster plumbing pipe bookshelves. My last domestic partner and I built some of those but damn if all those elbows and flanges don’t drive up the cost. So, straight long sections of pipe are cheap, and this version only uses a couple special pieces, at the top where it attaches to the wall and some feet for the floor. The shelves are totally adjustable and are simply held in place by hose clamps. So far it hasn’t collapsed. Finally, no more stack of boxes taking up a third of my living room!
2013/01/16
In case anyone would like an update on my literary life, I’m pleased to report that I delved into Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence series over the winter holidays. I fittingly read Martha Quest while visiting family in Minnesota – my uncomfortably frustrated, bored, and overall adolescent feelings about the trip were well accompanied by the first novel in the series. I read A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, and half of Landlocked while in Tulum. Lemme tell ya, ladies, post-breakup rebound fucks are great, but I highly recommend partaking in a rebound novel such as A Proper Marriage as well. Lessing usually makes me feel disturbed and alone, but on top of that, A Proper Marriage made me really glad I was single and not engaged, married, or – goddess forbid – pregnant or parenting. No offense to anyone who enjoys those things. (Side note: I also watched This is 40 the other night, which just compounded that feeling). Anyway, happy to be making a good amount of progress on my Doris Lessing project this month, and looking forward to the rest of the Children of Violence series. Lessing is more.
Kickass photo of me reading Lessing in Tulum by Carrie!
2012/10/11
I can guarantee that this is a book I would have taken far, far too seriously if I’d read it when I was eleven.
[...]
What DID happen to me, as an adult, as a direct result of The Mists of Avalon, though, was natural childbirth. [...] So, if you’ve ever had any curiosity about how it would feel to have your brain come apart and transform you into an animalistic, primal creature who taps into your inner (NOT GODDESS, YOU DO NOT BECOME A GODDESS) vole or ferret or some kind of tiny burrow-dwelling creature that writhes and moans and crawls, natural childbirth is for you. Okay, I think I’m making it sound really unpleasant (which it totally is!), but I guess it is also transformative and powerful and stuff. At any rate, when I was going through transition, I had this full-on hallucination that I was Morgaine, fucking the Horned God at the Beltane Fires, which is what happens when you become actually insane from physical discomfort.
This review of The Mists of Avalon is hilarious and amazing. And I did read this book circa age 11. I have somehow avoided full-on luna/earthmother/hippie-dom (we can probably thank a few choice undergrad profs for ruining any fun concept of The Feminine I may have entertained), but now I’m wondering, what did this book do to me? It left a huge empty hole in my adult life that no other book manages to fill. I keep waiting for the magical unicorn of a literary feministy fantasy novel with Arthurian undertones that will also fulfill by high fucking standards for politics and writing to drop into my lap. It will probably never happen. In the meantime, I find myself doing unreasonable things like watching Game of Thrones, or any movie featuring a castle, then regretting it for days. Misogyny and violence abound! Take me back to Avalon.
2012/10/01
instagram lately: apartment updates
I finally got around to fetching my speakers and amp, so now I have a decent audio situation in the living room. Starting hanging a few things on my naked walls and it already feels homier. My awesome dad fabricated the book ledge I imagined for my hallway – daydreams do come true! Slowly but surely… the goal is that by Christmas I’ll have the place looking lived-in.
2012/08/13
lolz. once in a while, better book titles actually makes a funny.
