The Streets

"The Anthropology of Sports" is another beat or serial I've been tossing around in my head for a while now. (See here.) "Anthropology" here as akin to how Anne Carson uses it in "The Anthropology of Water" (which I wrote about here) or Joan Didion does in A Book of Common Prayer (where she talks about the uselessness of it...in a very loving way), rather than any serious place for academic writing. If we are able to view anthropology as a style of art as well as an academic profession (and a hands-on-in-the-field backlash towards that very academic backdrop called "applied anthropology," which I think of as really just a natural result of any research to be done in the discipline), then I would place myself firmly in the former position. Interested in it in so much as it provides for my art (and I guess in the way that it is different than my art, for my life). Now I'll get on with the piece...

When at last you give in...

I think the ultimate test of understanding an idea is being able to recognize it elsewhere. Anyone can string useless words together as some sort of definition, anyone can write, but it is actually seeing this concept outside of its initial context that allows you to truly claim understanding. It's like waiting on a girl to grow her hair out just to see if you're only attracted to the current boyish cut. Because you'd never know. I would say that being unable to recognize ideas that connect across different contexts is one of the major faults in ideology. Let's have ourselves a little experiment, then, in locating the concept outside of its context.

What Follows a Long Day at the Office

Autopsy isn't dead. The body still isn't buried. A word I've taken to pronouncing with the "u." "Burr," like I'm cold, "eed." It's interesting to say the least. This story, however, isn't, so much. It's a sequel of sorts to our first cadaver in this morgue, Tempest. It's... I don't know how else to explain it. There's an odd feel about it. I guess it's about the self-awareness in a marriage. Trying to get what you want, but still make it easy on those you care about who are involved. That of course makes it sound better than it is. Typing it up, I considered not throwing it up online, but since I have it stapled into my pamphlet, I felt I didn't have an awful lot of choice.

That, anyway, is what I have learned.

This is another new idea for the blog. I'm calling it "debriefing." I've written stuff to comment on, explain to myself, write about, toy with, and explore the stuff I've been reading for quite a long time. This is the latest installment. But the good thing is that I've always written with the nonexistent audience motif, so at least this time there is the possibility that someone might read this. That seems more sane than talking to your imaginary friends about how they are imaginary. So the book I'm going to write about here is... Not Pale Fire. I bet you were expecting that one. Actually, I think that will come later. I might even write another style and design post about the book first. No, this one is about the Mario Vargas Llosa novel The Storyteller. (Which is quoted in the title if you don't believe me.)

This Good Ink

                                                      this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always form, when dropped, an ampersand

"Pale Fire" (532-534)

During my two week self-imposed exile from the internet (with some cheating) that I spent with my family on vacation in the Michigan/Ohio area, I got a few ideas about how I would like this blog to be run. ("Run," I should say, with Tao Lin's scare quotes, as it isn't really a working machine most of the time.) Since then I've done a whole lot of nothing in the past few weeks, speaking of more than just the blog. Now I've finally gotten myself to start these changes to some extent. Mainly, I would like to add a sort of magazine-feel to the blog. The creation of serials or beats to allow me to work in specific fields without coming back to the blog every once in a while for one month's failed attempt at daily posting. To do this, I've attached the "blogaday" tab loosely, to force a bit of deadline on. Have new semester and GRE coming up in next months so "deadline" itself is a loose title, but this is all part of the struggle. One idea from my exile was remarks on "design and style," the misremembered title of an earlier post (called Art & Design) starting with the book I was reading, Nabokov's Pale Fire.