Goodbye, Shanghai!

Tonight is our last night in the city. So long, Shanghai, I'll miss you. I spent more than two years in China, including my first year and a half of married life. I made a lot of great friends, had a lot of harrowing adventures, learned a lot of new things, and most importantly, became a little more good-natured, patient, and fearless. And I even got a book out of it.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be living back in my native Los Angeles - stay tuned!

I have been thinking quite a bit about poetry lately. First, I read again Edmund White's excellent essays on T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein in Axel's Castle. Then I came upon a (sadly misplaced) article arguing that popular music lyrics now serve the function once served by verse. The author explains that music's reliance on rhythm and rhyme trip the brain's poetry synapses in a way that modern free-form verse cannot. Then, I came upon this article on the state of modern American poetry in the New Yorker, occasioned by Ruth Lilly's $200 million grant to Poetry magazine (the magazine that first published "Prufrock"). While less conservative than the piece on pop music, this article too takes a few swipes at MFA workshop verse.

I am tempted to enter into a pact with my fellow writers wherein we all swear to never enter into an MFA program. Unfortunately, such a pact is much like one of those arrangements wherein a pair of platonic friends promise to marry one another if neither is married by the age of 40: Everyone enters the arrangement secretly hoping to renege. Eventually, the fortunate recipient of a fellowship or a wife is obliged to break his promise, while the faithful adherent becomes, essentially, the loser that's left.

Some very interesting observations from Dyske Suematsu on Asian art, criticism, and the Western notion of expertise.

More on Mourning

I just picked up Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and - pardon the cliche- I can't put it down. In fact, several other things I ought really to be doing will have to wait until I finish it. In her meditations on the social history of grief, she includes a great wealth of allusions, several of which sent me off on little side research projects. I'd like to write an essay on the contemporary American attitude towards mourning and how it differs from earlier approaches. Specifically, I wonder whether the erosion of formal mourning practices (black clothing, armbands, etc.) has changed the way people recover from grief.

Mourning and Melancholia

Freud's Mourning and Melancholia finally arrived today-- I ordered it and several other books in October with the justification that I needed to bump up my father's birthday order to a minimum that guaranteed free shipping. And so indulgence is wed to generosity.

But I digress. I took a break from real (read: paid) work to start it this afternoon, and of course I highly recommend it - and all the good doctor's work. I also highly recommend Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy for anyone so inclined, whether by intellectual bent or emotional trauma.

Starbucks, the urban weathervane

While working at "the office" today, I saw that Starbucks has started serving pumpkin lattes, apple spice cakes, and other autumnal foods. Fall is officially upon us! - just as winter is welcomed in with eggnog lattes, peppermint mochas*, and spiced cider. I think it would be fair to say I am extremely excited.


*I do not recommend the peppermint mocha, which feels like a dash of minty sweetness taking you into an alley out back and kicking all your teeth in.

Incidents and Accidents

I've spent the last hour searching accident report websites. I wanted a present for Dev and I was hoping to find some type of potentially gruesome accident category (hunting, scuba diving, dirt biking) and subscribe to an industry accident report magazine. I discovered two things: #1. accident report subscriptions are really expensive; #2. everything is terribly hazardous.

A brief survey of the web includes accident reports for roller coasters, circus performers, nuclear plants, mining, paragliding, oyster farming, avalanches, crane operation, and "general amputation accidents."

On Dieting

This morning I took my work to "the office" (read: Starbucks). I work from the Starbucks when I need to get away from the house and be around other busily working adults instead of many indolent pets; or when I need a place to work without the constant nagging thought, "I should be cleaning the house right now."

I spent the morning preparing a very clever email, only to find that the guy I'm emailing is out on vacation and won't be back until Wednesday.

On the plus side, I ate a danish.

(Generally speaking, I've been avoiding pastry as part of my diet. So far, dieting has consisted mainly in eating all the things I usually eat anyway, but then feeling really bad about it. On the other hand, counting calories is the perfect hobby for me, as it combines my love of keeping track of things and making lists with my natural tendencies towards obsessive self-scrutiny and needless unhappiness.)