election day

Did I go to New York this weekend to see Halley in a play? Was the play called "Election Day?" Was the other purpose of my visit to see Peaches and the Herschkowitzes? Would that be a good name for a band? Did I like the play? How are Jenny and Julie? Did I go out for drinks after the play with Halley and a bunch of the cast and crew? Was that fun? Did I eat delicious challah french toast on Sunday morning? Did Peaches and I hang out in her new apartment and then walk around the West Village for a while? Was that great, seeing her? Did I also see the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA? Did I pay more attention to Peaches than the exhibit, but still enjoy the show? What did we talk about then? Where was that drag queen in the furniture shop from? Did I read a short story by Donald Barthelme called "Concerning the Bodyguard"? What did I think of it? Did Mom and I have really nice drives both ways? Did our topics include the Oxford English Corpus, theology, and internet ethics? Was my new cell phone waiting for me when I got home? Did I talk to Vale on Friday night, and again on Sunday? Is it strange and hard to talk to her on the phone? Is it worth it? How is she doing? Did I play frisbee last night with the Blair clique team, and did we lose 15-11? Was it fun? Did Lincoln and I finish the guest bedroom in Erin and Arthur's house? Was Cori there this afternoon and did we get to talk for the first time in weeks? How was her trip in Bolivia? Did it sound like a nightmare? Did I do prep for painting the hall? Was dinner delicious tonight, and did it consist of orange-mint lamb, corn on the cob and pasta? Is that a lot of starch? Did I talk briefly to Nora and am I going to call her in a little bit? Did Vale's postcard get here? What am I going to do tonight?

What was that short story about?

i finished harry potter

Because people who give spoilers are basically on par with violent felons, I'll refrain on saying anything about it, period.

Other than that, things have been going all right here, I suppose. Mom, Dad and Linc are all pretty busy, but I'm still waiting for word from Sparks and Jack is sick still from El Salvador, so he and I have been chilling at home. I emailed our landlord today and applied for a couple of work-study jobs in Ann Arbor for this coming year. However I'm still not sure what to do about spending money; SAT tutoring came to mind today as I searched CraigsList.

Judy and I went out for coffee tonight. It was nice to catch up, and also to drive around a little bit, as cumbersome and useless as the car is at the distances I was traveling (my house-Mayorga-downtown Silver Spring). She seems to be making the most of her summer, working at a nonprofit in DC and biking and although Bethesda is suffocating her, she's getting along fine. Talking about being abroad is nice in general--lord knows I've learned enough things and had enough unusual experiences to fill at least one decent conversation with anyone--despite the fact that it brings my mind to Vale and Rodrigo and Cecilia and the other people I miss and the people I missed the chance to get to know enough to miss. And Vale. But talking to someone who has been abroad recently is so much easier because the shared experience, although we may have gone to such different places, is very powerful.

Dad, Linc and I went to Deb's on Monday night. It was kind of boring and not very fulfilling, which is an unusual experience there. But really there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of tension in the house right now. Stress, to be sure, but we're not taking it out on each other. In other news, I've fallen back into my old practice of reading eight hundred books at the same time; right now they include: Super Fiction, Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme, Cotidianas by Mario Benedetti, Harry Potter (which I obviously just finished, but like 20 minutes ago, so it counts), and Ficciones, plus the usual New Yorker, Outlook, New York Review articles. I've been laying off the blogs, though. It's interesting, when I was in Chile they provided an intellectual link with the day-to-day issues that I care about at home and I drank them in effortlessly and eagerly. But now that I'm here they remind me mostly of sitting next to Vale in her apartment in Santiago de Chile, of how strange it was to be keeping in touch with the goings-on up here through the opinions of other people rather than just by simply being at home.

Anyhow I've got to rise and shine tomorrow, to await word from Sparks and then go to the dentist at 10:15. Hope I've got a car, walking there would suck shit through a wet paper straw, as a certain recent houseguest might say (although he was talking about the Yale University bureaucracy). One last note before I conk out: WHEN IS IT GOING TO FREAKING THUNDERSTORM!?!?!??!!? I feel ripped off.

leaving so soon

Vale made me promise not to use my computer at all tomorrow, so I figured I'd better post now because my next opportunity will be Friday. First, I've got another book for the list: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Barrington Moore. Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to write a little about what's going on here.

Yesterday Vale and I went to Rodrigo and Cecilia's for a good-bye dinner, which was lovely despite one last Transantiago nightmare getting there. We laughed a lot, as usual, and stayed so late that we ended up spending the night even though Vale had work this morning. It was strange saying bye, I've gotten pretty close with that family over the past few months and I will miss them a lot. Today Ceci drove us to the metro bright and early and Vale went to work and I fell asleep. On waking up I had my second round of good-byes, in the COPA office, to Isa and Katty. I haven't been as close to either of them this semester and it was a little weird and awkward, but they have also been very important this year for obvious reasons and I'm glad I went. Tonight we'll go one last time to the Pilars', but not for dinner. David and I talked last week about me going over there for lunch one day but he never called back to tell me when I should come over and I didn't call him back, either. I'll also leave without seeing the Diaz family one last time. I regret not having made a greater effort to get over there (it's been months since my last visit). Good-byes are awkward and hard and I've shied away from a lot of them or avoided going out of my way for them, which I'm not exactly proud of. I wish I could have said bye to the frisbee crew, but the game got called off yesterday because of rain. Tomorrow I'll spend with Vale, who of course will be the hardest good-bye of all, and then at about 3 on Thursday morning a van will come pick me and my mountain of stuff up (and hopefully Vale) and take us to the airport and away from Chile for a long time. But not forever, and hopefully not even for that long. I love this country and certainly some of its people and there is still so much for me to learn and see and do here.

Some real reflections on the past year will come along soon but not now.

camille paglia

Well I'd never heard of her before today but I clicked on her column on Salon and read it all the way through. I don't agree with a lot of what she says but she's definitely way unorthodox and way unlike a lot of the other people I read on a regular basis (not so much Unsane and Safe, who I like more and more as time goes on). No knock on the liberal bloggers, Add two new books to my wish list and throw them pretty high up there: Sexual Personae and Break Blow Burn. Plus she pisses off lots of people, like John Updike and Betty Friedan--thank you, Wikipedia. Any self-proclaimed liberal who pisses off that many bona fide liberals certainly piques my curiosity. I mean, they really hate her. (The book list will eventually take true list form, along with the music list, in a future post.)

Speaking of which, scratch Andy McKee from the music list, that one song is really impressive to watch but GOD is his music boring. The one video, though...damn. Okay, I'm off to buy HP tickets so we're sure to get a seat tonight. In really shitty news, Cori is stuck in Bolivia and won't be coming into town, after all. Getting back to the States can be a nightmare. Oops better run.

quick note on gladwell

Because it's irking me at the moment, here's one nit-picky complaint I have about Gladwell's writing. I've just come across my umpteenth "brilliant" paper/book. The word "brilliant," like the word "stupid" or the word "intelligent" can be usefully descriptive, but when it's used over and over again in different contexts within a short space it loses most of its meaning. How is it brilliant? Is it very insightful? Particularly well-written? Extraordinarily creative? "Brilliant" doesn't tell me anything worthwhile about it at all.

This was starting to turn into a longer post but I'll wait until I've finished the book first.

v.s. naipaul knows sensuality

I'm about two thirds done with A Bend in the River. This afternoon I came across a passage that was, well, see the title of this post. The narrator has been taken to a party by an old friend and becomes enamored of the hostess of the party.

"Indar was embraced by Yvette as we left. And I was embraced, as the friend. It was delicious to me, as the climax to that evening, to press that body close, soft at this late hour, and to feel the silk of the blouse and the flesh below the silk.

"There was a moon now - there had been none earlier. It was small and high. The sky was full of heavy clouds, and the moonlight came and went. it was very quiet. We could hear the rapids; they were about a mile way. The rapids in moonlight! I said to Indar, 'Let's go to the river'. And he was willing."

Hoo boy.