Scintillating
"Scintillate: v to sparkle, either literally or figuratively"Jonathan Safran Foer's latest novel, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," is absolutely scintillating. It will only frustrate me to try to put into words just how...honest, interesting and true to life the characters in this book are...All I can say is: when I read this book, I want to be it. I want to consume it, pitch a tent and set up a home within it. I want to curl up into a little ball and become the dot on the letter "i" on page 156. I don't want to stop, even for sleep, one of my all time favorite activities!
It's been a while since I enjoyed reading a book so much, and it's not even that the book is gripping at all on a plot-basis...i mean, i'm curious as to what will happen and there is a mysterious element, but mostly i just enjoy the act of reading this book...since it's written in a very personal tone, reading it is an experience in and of itself, aside from the process of digesting the ideas contained within it.
Ok ok i'll let it speak for itself...here's a passage where the main narrator, a precocious 9 year-old who's on a mission to find a lock to fit a key his deceased father left behind, is speaking to an elderly gentleman who lives above his Manhattan flat. As the boy looks around the flat, he notices that the old man has a collection of rocks with tags labelling where each came from:
"That was so fascinating, but one weird thing was that there were lots of bullets on the mantel, too, and they didn't have little pieces of paper next to them. I asked him how he knew which was which. ' A bullet's a bullet's a bullet!' he said. 'But isn't a rock a rock a rock?' I asked. He said, 'Of course not!' I thought I understood him, but I wasn't positive, so I pointed at the roses in the vase on the table. 'Is a rose a rose a rose?' 'No! A rose is not a rose is not a rose!' And then for some reason I started thinking about ' Something in the Way She Moves,' so I asked, ' Is a love song a love song?' He said, 'Yes!' I thought for a second. 'Is love love?' He said, 'No!' He had a wall of masks from every country he'd been to, like Armenia and Chile and Ethiopia. 'It's not a horrible world,' he told me, putting a Cambodian mask on his face, 'but it's filled with a lot of horrible people!' "
Ugh, I'm sure that out of context that makes no sense, and i sort of hate myself for just leaving it out there like that, but i had to share it with the hope that someone else may be convinced to read the book as well! It's actually my book club book for this month, so I'm looking forward to a...scintillating discussion (which, i hope, will not be arcane...har har).
I have to also say that one of my favorite aspects of the book is that the main character is always inventing things (anything from a bed that had a cavity for your elbow so you could cuddle without having your arm go to sleep to a system where your skin changed color according to your mood so people could be more attuned to each other). It's such a subtle, childlike thing, but it just tickles me...it brings back a creative side I think I sort of lost somewhere along my educational track, where i sought to back up every statement with supporting evidence. "Wouldn't it be cool IF...?" is a really fun mental exercise!
Anyway, yeah, i can't come close to describing just how cool this book is... | posted by Cheryl, 5/31/2006 10:19:00 PM | 0 comments |
Arcane
So, I like words. When I'm writing, I generally aim to keep my prose simple and to the point, but lately I've been so often at a loss for just the right word to express what I'm feeling that I've turned more and more to online vocab resources such as "dictionary.com" and "thesaurus.com!"I've decided a fun way to continue this blog will be to choose new words (or words that I recognize but am not completely comfortable with) and relate them to something in my life. I hope this won't come across as overly formulaic; I figure as long as you're taking the time to sit and read my thoughts, you might as well learn something useful, eh?
So, today's word is "arcane." Englishtest.net says it means, "obscure; secret; mysterious" and Answers.com gives two definitions: "Known or understood by only a few" or "Difficult to explain or understand."
After a brief search, I've noticed that the usage of "arcane" seems to be relegated more in the "known by a select few" rather than "mysterious or difficult to understand" realm. However, the second definition ("mysterious") is really what relates to my life right now.
Firstly, I must say that life is incredibly peachy for me right now - in fact, a major reason that I haven't been blogging is just that life has been so rich and full for me lately! I simply haven't had the time nor incentive to digest/process it at the keyboard. I'm doing a job i feel incredibly passionate about and my tasks are a really good match for my skills; i'm dancing a ton and have even been starting to help coach a U-14 girls' soccer team; i've had time to see family and friends and even, as the pictures showed, went on a week-long trip for work which made me feel very important! In general, I'm going with the flow of life, and it's all good.
Yet, I've been finding aspects of my emotional terrain (specifically relating to matters of the heart) to be "arcane," in the "mysterious" sense, as of late! The whole concept of selfness is really trippy, when you think about it...i went through this whole fascination with selfness my junior year in college when i was taking 2 psych courses, intro cog sci and philosophy (if that won't turn your world upside down, in the "i'm rethinking all my assumptions about who i am and what the world is like," i don't know what will!).
So, what is the self? Who am I? I'm brain, i know that, meaning that if you went around and tweaked some synapses in my frontal lobes here or there, i would surely "be" a different person...i'd feel different things, react differently to situations, etc. I think we all love to hold this idea of "selfness," that there is an essential "cheryl" out there somewhere; i think there is, in the sense that i was born with certain dispositions, but i believe it's all firmly rooted in the brain.
Anyway, the cool thing about brains is that they somehow allow us the ability to feel "meta-cognition," or the thought that we are having thoughts. This is what makes us think we are a "self" outside our bodies, right? Anyway, so the whole topic of the self is always a bit funny to me, because i feel like saying "I am finding myself arcane" would imply i think that there are two cheryls: the cheryl who is saying the statement, and the cheryl to which the stater is referring, but really we're one entitity, held within this strange collection of organs and bones that we call the body.
Oh my god, i sound insane. Please, nobody show this to any of my old professors at Vassar, they'll get depressed and think i never learned anything! Hehe.
Anyway, so "arcane." Yeah. "Mysterious." When i get into these thought loops and start questioning everything, it makes answering the simplest question a bit of a chore. "Hi, Cheryl, how are you feeling today?" to a normal person would solicit a "fine" response, whereas when i get into these thoughtful states, it might spark an entire day's worth of mental fodder...so, you can imagine, when the questions get more complex, my brain starts to hurt!
A couple friends and i are currently debating some stuff regarding romance and the human heart, mine in particular. I'm finding it more difficult than usual to answer the question, "What is it that you want?" What am I "looking for?" What do I think is "right" for this time in my life? in relation to romance and relationships. I don't have as much of a desire to experience another intense "fall" (into love) at the moment; perhaps this is due to having more than my share of great loves in the past (seriously, i am not exaggerating here; i've been loved so well, my past boyfriends all deserve trophies...multi-leveled trophies!). Yet, I'm not really into being "single" as some sort of intrinsically meaningful experience, either. And dating can be super fun, but it also really pushes the boundaries of my okness with ambiguity...
So, I don't have clear answer to the question, "what do you want right now?" Someone asked me that the other day, and all i could say was, clarity. Regardless of where i am; clarity about how i feel, and clarity about how i feel about feeling that, and clarity about how my romantic interest(s) feel(s).
So, to get back to my vocab idea: I'm finding my emotional state regarding romance/dating arcane precisely due to it's ambiguity. It's mysterious and hard to understand that I really have no preference other than to have clarity, you know? But perhaps that's a good thing...that i don't have a clear vision of what i want? I've certainly seen people became very disappointed after their perfect vision of what they want/need in their lives doesn't emerge. Who knows! Why should i assume that it's a good thing to have a clear opinion? I don't know!
On an interesting aside, when you look up just the word "arcane" under Google, the third result wil be a link to "the Arcane school," where you can get training on "new age discipleship...(it is) a correspondence school presenting the principles of the Ageless Wisdom through esoteric meditation, study and service as a way of life." Perhaps they have a potential student in their midst? Or, perhaps, those sorts of schools serve if nothing else to just allow people to feel ok with not knowing how they feel?
One last note: if you google the phrase, "what does arcane mean?" your third result will be a link to a blog boy someone called "The crochet dude," which i find very giggle-inducing. Check it out! http://thecrochetdude.blogspot.com/2006/05/arcane.html | posted by Cheryl, 5/22/2006 10:49:00 PM | 0 comments |
More New Mexico Pics
Here's a picture one of the workshop participants took of me when we hiked to the top of "Chimney Rock," near the ranch! The workshop concept started a while ago when Phil Borges (founder of the nonprofit) decided to teach local indigenous kids in developing countries to use digital cameras and share their stories with kids in the Seattle area schools. As it started growing, he realized it would be great to train other photographers or cross-cultural enthusiasts to help facilitate the process and "mentor" the kids. So, in New Mexico, the organization took 15 people to come work in a class of about 12 kids on a mult-media piece; the kids took all the pictures and wrote/recorded the narration for the piece, which was about their conflict between whether to stay in their area or leave town. The workshop also provides photography/photoshop training for people who don't have a background in photography but are excited about the potential for storytelling. Anyway, it was great!
I enjoyed learning how to use my dad's camera - this is a shot I took on that same hike on Chimmney rock!I love the lighting on this one!
Here's one of my favorite shots - it's from the last day in the classroom. I don't remember what we were talking about but it was obviously very funny! Phil, who founded Bridges, is pictured on the right. 
| posted by Cheryl, 5/14/2006 11:35:00 AM
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New Mexico "Bridges to Understanding" workshop!
Wow, it's been forever since I've blogged, mostly due to being super busy doing fun stuff at my new job! Here are some pics from a digital storytelling workshop we did with a group of high schoolers in the Chama Valley in northern New Mexico...Here is Camille, a gregarious senior in high school who wants to be a dental hygenist and major in Spanish and Chinese! She's standing on this cliff near a local lake which used to be much higher before a recent drought.
Here is Michael, a professional photographer, mentoring Joseph, the son of a rancher who wants to have his own ranch someday. When we made the multi-media piece, he narrated a section on the choices people who want to ranch have. He said there is not much money in it these days, especially due to a drought, so he's going to move away for a while to make money, then come back and buy up some land.
Here's the ranch where we stayed
- it's called Ghost Ranch and it's where Georgia O'Keefe spent time painting!
Here's the view from the top of "Chimney Rock" near the ranch!
| posted by Cheryl, 5/14/2006 11:27:00 AM
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