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{ September 2003 }

• Finished The Pickup (2001) by Nadine Gordimer.

  A story about defining one's own path and one's own dignity. In South Africa a rebellious daughter of a rich white investment banker has an affair with an illegal immigrant, a black Muslim who is a car mechanic. When the man is deported, the woman marries him and goes with him to his ancestral village. There she learns and loves the people and the desert, accepting the customs and the primitive conditions.

  I found it odd that Gordimer seemed reluctant to name the woman (Julie Summers) or man ('Abdu' who becomes Ibrahim) and never names his homeland. It gives the story the feeling of a myth, though I don't know if that was Gordimer's intent.

• Finished Endurance: Shakleton's Incredible Voyage (1959) by Alfred Lansing.
  In 1914-1916, Ernest Shackleton led his 27 men (selected from 5000 applicants) on a voyage in the Endurance to Antarctica. Shackleton's goal was to cross Antarctica overland. But the Endurance was trapped and then crushed by sea ice, leaving the men stranded on ice floes. The voyage, entrapment, and eventual escape is the theme of the book, constructed using diaries of participants and interviews with survivors.

  However, for beauty of writing and for classic British understatement, I prefer Shackleton's Boat Journey, by Frank Arthur Worsley (introduction by Edmund Hillary) which was my #1 book read in 2002 (see my 2002 best books list). At one point Lansing reports that Worsley was one of only two pessimists in the ice camp (made after abandoning Endurance). Though Lansing's book emphasizes many troubles and privations that Worsley gave scant attention, and to me Worsley sounds quite balanced. And clearly from both books (despite Worsley's modesty in his book) Worsley was a vital to Shackleton's success.

• Finished Villa Incognito ( 2003) by Tom Robbins.
  A light-weight romp involving Tanuki (an Asian badger-like dog and trickster), three American MIAs who are still running their own business in Laos long after the Vietnam War, a circus, a beautiful women, the CIA, and a postal worker. To my joy, Robbins continues to show new ways to criticise the military, big business, and most main organized religions. Flabunga-flabunga. Definitely has the most unusual and laugh-out-loud metaphors and similes in any book read this year.

  On the down side, it jumps around a bit too much and has a little too much posturing. Not as good as Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, which was my #4 hit last year from my 2002 best books list.

• Finished The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998) by Alexander McCall Smith.
  A delightful tale that is a welcome counterpoint to the barrage of "woe is us" books like Paradise and "woe is you" books like The Corrections.

  Mma. Precious Ramotswe, a plump, dignified, and sensible woman, begins her Detective Agency in Botswana. Instead of a single Cristie-esque, monolithic mystery that takes days to resolve, this mystery novel gives you a dozen smaller, interleaved mysteries that add up to more than the simple sum of its parts.

  I love the glimpses of African life, especially the traditional. And what a relief to have a protagonist that has integrity, a practical intuition, and a humor that is gentle rather than cutting. (Though I do appreciate her one dark moment of humor when she takes a neighbor's dog "tracking" and then using it as crocodile bait.)

  I also enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe.

Quotes that Mr. Holbrook highlights include:

" For each dollar of tax cuts, federal borrowing to finance the tax cuts, the war on terror and routine government operations will total $3.60 over six years, Congressional Budget Office data show. ... Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that the 26 million taxpayers on the middle rungs of the income ladder, those making $28,000 to $45,000, are especially hard hit by federal borrowing. Each dollar of tax savings for this group is accompanied by $6.55 of increased federal debt, it estimates. ... In 2007, interest alone on the additional $24,859 of federal debt owed by each family in this group will be more than $1,200, which is more than twice their average $578 of tax savings in 2006. Only the top 1 percent income group comes out ahead, the analysis found. Each dollar of tax cuts for the top 1 percent is offset by just 77 cents of added federal debt. For this group, the tax cuts over six years are worth $236,266 a person on average, while the share of the extra federal debt averages $182,725. ... William G. Gale, a Brookings Institution economist, said ... 'Now federal debt is rising again and a significant chunk is to finance tax cuts for the very wealthiest families, which in my view is not a good reason.' "

(09.23.2003)

• Dipping into Beckett on File, the 1985 collection of notes on Sam Beckett that was compiled by Virginia Cooke, I rejoice in this quote from a 1963 review by Nigel Dennis in Encounter:

  "The first thing we are happy to say about Happy Days is that Mr. Beckett has consented at last to allow woman her fair share of human futility. ... We had long since taken for granted that in Mr. Beckett's view life's intolerable tedium and pointlessness were noticed only by men and that they alone suffered the grief of being alive and the chagrin of being unable to die. ... Happy Days has corrected this imbalance. ... Women are not men. It is unkind and illegal to suppose that they are. If women were men, marriage would not be the same problem at all. Marriage is a life-long union between two opposing sets of pain. ... What a mercy for the unfortunate man that his wife is buried up to her waist in scorched earth. She cannot take steps to make him hear, which she would certainly do if Mr. Beckett had not had the wisdom to bury her. Wisdom? Well, not wisdom perhaps. Just a small prejudice in favor of his own sex. An appreciation of how much deafness means to a married man. The lengths to which he will go to ensure it."

• Finished Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (1899).
  Superficially, this book is a classic tragedy of a flawed character. In reality it's a story of responsibility and guilt that I advise our present leaders to read and study.

  The protagonist is Jim, a young crew man, who wants to work hard and be a hero. But when his courage is tested, he jumps from a sinking (though never sunk) ship (The Patna). Jim lands in a lifeboat in which the ship's captain is already fleeing. Back in port, the captain spirits himself away and Jim is left at a show trial to bear all responsibility for abandoning the ship and its passengers. Convinced of his cowardice in this failure to embody his own ideal, Jim begins his search for redemption.

  He ends in a backwater of the Malayan Peninsula away from white men. There an undeveloped tribe sees him as a strong and wise protector. For a while he approaches the ideal that he once hoped himself to be, showing how one can regain some self-regard after failure.

  The book's narrator is the Marlow of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," who portrays himself as trying to help Jim and frustrated in not being able to convince him to "forget it and move on." This is one book where I wanted the Hollywood ending. But then it would not be a tragedy, and would not be Conrad.

• Read Wind Bell, the newsletter from San Francisco Zen Center. Lots of interesting essays. Quotes include:
  Jen Hagar, describing Ryushin Paul Haller's Mountain Seat Ceremony (installation into the position of Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center) early in 2003:

  "The [mountain-seat] ceremony originated in China, where Zen monasteries were built at high altitudes and an abbot took the name of the mountain itself." [This, of course, raises the question of whether the poet Han Shan was a self-elevated abbot.]

  Ryushin Paul Haller (a native of Belfast) commented:

  "A finely honed sense of tragedy will sustain an Irishman through any period of joy."

  Lew Richmond, in an article on his practice since leaving the Zen Center in 1983, writes:

  "There is a tradition in Zen that after your formal training in the monastery is complete you leave. You don't just leave to become some famous Zen teacher; you leave to be nobody."

• Finished Hamlet: Poem Unlimited ( 2003) by Harold Bloom.
  The fussy Mr. Bloom tells directors how to direct Hamlet, which apparently none of them are competent to do without his advice. I made some notes.

The designer is Andy Goldsworthy (of Rivers and Tides and "The Storm King Wall" as in the glorious Wall: At Storm King). Schama includes notes on British "land art" that influenced Goldsworthy, especially Richard Long, who has since turned to "solitary, imperially guilt-burdened peregrinations ... in the Andes or the Himalayas."

Meanwhile concerning the 10-ton granite boulders while they were being hollowed for Goldsworthy by Ed Monti with a 4000-degree Fahrenheit kerosene torch:

"Fire cleans as well as sculpts. Shooting flames at granite not only reënacts primordial geology, but [it also] converts the incinerations of genocide into the flames of sanctification."

(09.18.2003)

• Finished: The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William J. Bernstein. Recommended by R. In an optimistic attempt to not become a bag lady, I am taking notes. A very sensible, practical guide to long-term investment in a variety of fund types, to maximize your return for the risk acceptable to you.

• Listened to "I" is for Innocent by Sue Grafton (1992).
  Another delightful mystery novel from the middle years of the Kinsey Millhone series. A little complicated to keep the cast of characters in a row, sometimes, with most suspects having been married more than once. But nonetheless, a pleasure to hear Grafton's take on life, death, gun choice, and dusting with socks.

  Other books reviewed in Sue Grafton's series include:
  B is for Burglar
  O is for Outlaw
  R is for Ricochet

What a relief to hear him after too many stogy or confused or wimpy other Democratic leaders.

The talk (with Leon Panetta) will be rebroadcast tonight at 8 p.m. and you can hear it:
(1) either in the California Central Coast area on KAZU at 90.3 fm
(2) or on the web through www.kazu.org.
If you need a boost in your hope and your faith, check it out. For example, he refers to the Bush tax-the-non-rich strategy as:

"Bad ethics and horrible economics"

• Finished Signals of Distress (1995) by Jim Crace,
  While I have been enthralled by other of Crace's novels (particularly The Gift of Stones; also Being Dead), this was a sad and sorry book about miserable people leading miserable lives. A great deal of ignorance, bullying, and other cruelties in Crace's exploration of unexplored lives. Crace's overly heavy-handed use of iambic pentameter is an added irritant.

• Listened to "B" is for Burglar by Sue Grafton (1985).
  Delightful mystery novel from the early years of the Kinsey Millhone series. I didn't start hearing these great readings by Judy Kaye till the mid-90's and I am still filling in the gaps in my alphabet.

  This book has lots of murders and a lot of suspects. Kinsey is gutsy and yet not afraid to say when she is scared. Enjoy her wry first-impression comments on many of the people she has to interview. Her insight into the foibles and potential evil of others is enhanced through her own willingness to bend the law.

  Other books reviewed in Sue Grafton's series include:

  • I is for Innocent
  • O is for Outlaw
  • R is for Ricochet

• Skimmed Runner's World Complete Book of Running by Amby Burfoot (1997).
  Much of practical use, particularly the prevention and treatment of the "Big Five" injuries:
  • Achilles Tendinitis (stretch with heel drop).
  • Chrondomalacia (stretch quads, hamstrings, calves; improve lateral-motion control).
  • Iliotibial band syndrome (stretch with sideways hip tilt).
  • Plantar Fasciitis (stretch by raising hooked toes).
  • Shinsplints (stretch lower-leg by straight-leg lifting against resistance and by running up slopes).
  
  and the "Buried Treasures" of nutrition-contributing foods that surprise me, including
  • Baby lima beans. 1 cup has 8 grams fiber (a third of your daily intake needs).
  • Beer!!! For the chromium lost in exercise! This explains why there was a beer tent at the finish of the Big Sur Marathon.
  • Blackberry jam. 1 cup of fruit has 6 gram fiber and plenty of vitamin C.
  • Dark molasses. High in iron and potassium - one teaspoon has 20% of your daily requirement of each.
  • Celery. Has fiber, vitamin C, and a little potassium. Also "3-n-butyl phthalide", which lowers blood pressure, possibly by reducing stress hormones.

• Finished The Corrections (2001) by Jonathan Franzen.
  The tome is "tragedy rewritten as farce", as one of Franzen's characters says about his failed manuscript. While The Corrections opens well, with a light and ironic hand, it devolves into "Tom Robbins with less humor and none of the surrealism", or into "Anne Tyler without the sympathy and compassion". Some flashes of interesting writing. Franzen is especially good with non-cliché adjectives. But the funniness gets overwhelmed by the failing coping mechanisms of most of the character. An overrated book.

• Finished Practical Gods by Carl Dennis (2001).
  Winner of 2002 Pulitzer Prize. The better poems have resonances of Billy Collins or Stephen Dobyns, though they are much less witty and memorable. They need cutting. They are prose-like and would have read better if written as prose poems. They remind me, though of Caldwell's seminal cartoon of a man with a fat mallet and a sign reading:

  "Your prose broken into poetry: only 75c."

• Finished Paradise by Toni Morrison (1998).
  Morrison won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. She explores large-scope issues -- the moral, sociological, spiritual, political, and economic. "Paradise" tells of a close-knit Afro-American township, Ruby (Oklahoma), and the events that lead to a tragic attack. It's a scary story of xenophobia, scapegoating, misplaced prejudice, and the physical ill-treatment of men (essentially black men) upon women. The interleaving of exile and home-coming don't do enough, for me, to soften the tale.

{ August 2003 } (08.31.2003)

• Finished Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (Libro 1) por J. K. Rowling, Alicia Dellepiane. Harry Potter en Español is a great way to remember a little Spanish. I needed to look up about 7 words per page on average. Now I need to go back and learn all those words! Aparecium! Alohomora!

This month's Utne Magazine ("the best of the alternative Liberal press") includes:

• "2004: A Political Odyssey" by Jim Hightower, author of Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country -- And It's Time to Take It Back, about the "Kleptocrat Nation" as "a body of people ruled by thieves ... a government characterized by the practice of transferring money and power from the many to the few."
• "12 steps to regime change", an essay by Don Hazen on how to beat Bush in 2004. "Don't trust anyone who tells you it's a cinch to win back Washington in the next elections." he writes; "But, more importantly, don't believe anyone who says it's hopeless."

• Finished Imperfect Paradise by Linda Pasten. A beautiful collection, so I had to make some notes about its structure with examples.

Linton Weeks writes:

" Gluck may prove to be a different kind of laureate from those of recent years. Outgoing laureate Billy Collins was, well, outgoing. 'Some of us have chosen to spend a lot of time running around the country lighting poetry bonfires,' Collins said. He added that he will be curious to see how Gluck will respond to the challenge. 'The job can be tailored to each individual's personality,' he said. ... Born in New York on April 22, 1943, Gluck grew up on Long Island. Her father invented the X-Acto knife. ... One of her best friends is former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, whom she talks to nearly every day. ... Gluck 'is always a few jumps ahead of the cliche,' Pinsky said. He has been struck by her 'ruthless breathtaking originality.' ... Billy Collins ... added: 'I think of her as being like a masseuse-chiropractor who is able to find pain centers. Her poetry is often concerned with detecting centers of psychic pain.' " © 2003 The Washington Post

(08.27.2003)
Hooray for chocolate! German research shows that dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. [This morning NPR quotes their study reported in JAMA.] My instincts were correct all these years.

The value of self-medication: 3 oz. dark chocolate/day drops the average blood pressure (which was 153/84 in the 2-week study) by -5/-2. [Just remember to cut out those calorie-wasting breads, cakes, sugars, butters, etc. to compensate.]

Chocolate watchers may remember the recent report by researchers at the University of California at Davis: they reviewed studies on chocolate and found a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease associated chocolate. They credit: (1) the main flavonoids in cocoa (flavan-3-ols); (2) oleic acid (third of the fat in chocolate), which is the same monosaturated fat as found in olive oil. [February issue of Journal of the American Dietetic Association.] (08.25.2003)

• Finished Nemesis by Agatha Christie (Recorded 1995, read by Joan Hickson).
  A good mystery to right a wrong (solved mainly by judging character) by "the world's best selling author" and the Queen (or Goddess?) of detective fiction writing. Another chatty book to listen to while doing chores.

  Initially it's hard to understand Ms. Hickson's pebble-mouthed octogenarian pronunciation, so I jumped to the final tape. Which so interested me that I gradually worked my way backwards.

  Yes, I do often read books backwards - endings are usually more interesting than beginnings, so if I don't care for how it ends, why bother? They usually make more sense backwards. It sounds like this is commonly known - just like Catarina writes about NYT:

  "... the way to read a New York Times article is to ignore the headline and the lead paragraph, which are mere window dressing, and to skip directly to the conclusion where you can find out what's really going on, down in the cellar and hidden from view."

(08.23.2003)

• Finished Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketchings, and Drawings by Richard Vine (2002).
  The profusion of reproductions show you Nerdrum's riveting and unusual output before 2002. Nerdrum is a figurative painter and applies to his art "an Old World discipline", mixing and grinding his own pigments, stretching his canvases, and using live models (often of unusual appearance) that pose for him alone.

  I am entranced by Nerdrum's frequent revision of his paintings, so that the reproductions in a book may differ from what you will see should you be lucky enough to actually sit in the presence of his huge canvases.

  Nerdrum is a master of painting flesh, light, and the body's liquidities. Vine's essay "Painter Provocateur" recognizes the talents and oddities of Odd. Favorite essay quotes:

  " There is more to be learned from earnest than irony." " He [Nerdrum] seems determined to remind us ... that consciousness is isolate, each mind imprisoned within a particular body, a particular set of circumstances. Communication is never direct but always inferential." " The sea, that enduring metaphor for eternity and the fathomless unconscious, laps at many of his scenes. It is directly confronted, occasionally, ... by a lone contemplative figure ... or by a group acting in ritualized consort ... the characters seem to embody either individual solitude or collective solitude, never fulfilling union. Community is little more than a shared loneliness."

It costs Canadian patients less than twice as much as their Eusan cousins because they have a single administrator (the Canadian government) instead of the many [profit greedy, Ed.] private administrators as in USA. The numbers I think I just heard are:

" $1059 in USA per person is spent in the USA on administration 1999 ... [compared with] $307 in Canada." " Health-care administration in American cost 31 cents of every dollar." " The American health-care system is about the size of the economy of France."

• Finished When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (Read by John Lee) (2000). A 2000 Booker Prize nominee.
  The unreliable narrator (Christopher Banks) leads us through a labyrinth in which he may or may not be a famous detective, may or may not return to Shanghai, and may or may not have a relationship with Sarah.
  
  Hard to tell what is reality-as-experienced-by-Banks and what is reality-as-it-would-be-experienced-by-a-reliable-narrator. Banks always seems to be afraid of making a mistake, of tripping up, like someone under the influence speaking and moving with undue care. My guess is that Banks is hooked on opium and we are experiencing a lot of his dream state. Fascinating to listen to John Lee's rendering what I think is a careful, well-meaning, and self-justifying addict.

• Abandoned Peoples and Empires:A short history of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present by Anthony Pagden (Read by Robert O'Keefe) (2002).
  The same old stories of all the fallen empires of the past; wonder how soon Bush's empire will fall.

• Finished Prey by Michael Crichton, hot on the heels of some genome. (Also see our terminology of genetics and genomes). Giving plenty of science nuggets and plenty of exciting pauses, Crichton begins with a nano-sized self-powered, self-sustaining swarm of cameras that quickly evolves into a efficient predator.

  The book's a terrifying bio-thriller from the author of Jurassic Park. Nano-technology is paired with genetic engineering using the gutsy industry standard, a strain of E. coli. Being created using self-learning software based on a predator-prey model, the resulting molecular-engineered "agents" stay "on-task" and are never distracted. A military molecular helicopter (including tiny solar cells and 3 hours of capacitative storage) is created where the assembler (to create more) sits on the bacterium itself. Because the military required memory, the agents can learn!

  The resulting hunter molecules evolve to take over Homo sapiens. I had to stay up half the night, biting my nails and settling my nerves with cherry chocolate, listening to the tapes to see if Homo was sapiens enough. Quite pleased to find that the ending is ambiguous. And watch out for E. coli-infected hamburger.

• Finished The Wild Iris by Louise Glück. After reading her The Prism, I decided to return to the Pulitzer-winning book. There are many poems in it that I like. While not a fan of poems that address "you", I find that the poems do mostly work. Some are marvelous. The most interesting poems are in the persona of the god who addresses "you" - maybe addressing the persona of the poet.

• Finished The Human Genome Project: Cracking the Code Within Us Elizabeth Marshall. A handy introduction to the Human Genome project (which has mapped the 30,000 human genes (as opposed to the 40,000 rice genes!)). Emphasizes the gene-related 4000 inherited diseases: colon cancer on gene 2, Huntington's on 4, cystic fibrosis on 7, malignant melanoma on 9, sickle cell anemia on 11, Alzheimer's on 14, Tay-Sach's on 15, breast cancer on 17, many chromosome 18 deletion syndromes on 18, etc. Brave New World, folks. (Also see our terminology of genetics and genomes).
• Finished Understanding DNA and Gene Cloning: A Guide for the Curious (4th edition is just out in 2003) by Karl Drlica. Lots of detail and diagrams. The science behind Marshall's overview.

• Finished The Woman and the Ape by Peter Høeg, translated by Barbara Haveland (1996).
  Entrancing and hilarious. A modern beauty-and-beast parable. And a meditation on our use and abuse of animals and of this world. This note starts the book:

  "All author royalties from the sale of this book go to the 'Lolwe' Foundation, which provides aid to women and children in the Third World. 'Lolwe' is the East African Luo tribe's word for the infinite space seen in the west, across Lake Victoria, where the sky meets that water and beyond which lies the world of the gods."

  
  Favorite quotes:

  "... it must have dawned on him ... that what he had actually created was a factory for the manufacturing of suffering. That the whole point of the jaguar is that by pushing itself to the breaking point it should be subjected to a certain number of afflictions which will keep it alive just long enough for it to mate." "Several times during the past week or two she had found herself in painful situations and she was starting to discover that, if one bided one's time, something usually turned up." "The ape had not had anything to eat either and it was now on the move, making its way down the stairway, tripping lightly as a ballerina with the wheelchair under its arm. ... at the foot of the stairs it stopped, swathed itself in the traveling blanket, slapped the hat down over its head, seated itself in the wheelchair, drew the veil down into place and bowled through the doorway, heading straight for the party around the table." "... the game reserve that Adam and Eve must have beheld, with its mixture of the fascinating, the thought-provoking, the appalling and the utterly catastrophic ways in which the animal world can develop when left to its own devices." " 'When we go down to the river to drink', he [sic] said, 'sometimes, quite often, the sun appears. Even though that wasn't what we were after. Now and again, when you go looking for something small, you come up with something big.' " "It was over fifteen years since Susan had begun experimenting with the quicksilver of hastily improvised sex and she had developed the reflexes of an explosives expert." "... there is no way the question of the survival of wild animals can be dissociated from that of the insatiable, grasping materialism of the world's wealthiest nations."

• Reread The Past (1985) by Galway Kinnell, his first book after his "Selected Poems" (1982) won a Pulitzer Prize.
  Includes lots of poems on the passage of time, so many are narrative. Many are a delight to hear Kinnell read, especially "The Road Between Here and There" (with its long Walt Whitman-like lines) and "The Old Life". My favorite is "Mount Fuji at Daybreak" which ends:
  
  

  " From the cinder block Fuji-view stand the crow flies off repeating the round vowel "ah!" to Mount Fuji now risen bright into daybreak, or else - who can say? - "ha! ha! ha! ha! "

Later, section 8 ends:

" You could take a few things with you, like a dowry. You could take the part of you that thought. 'Marry' meant you should keep that part quiet. "

and section 13 ends:

" Being struck was like being vaccinated; the rest of your life you were immune, you were warm and dry. Unless the shock wasn't deep enough. Then you weren't vaccinated, you were addicted. "

While the poem does sometimes flash with Glück's querulous mode, the sections are intrinsically interesting and there is something hypnotic about the way she uses the sections to start a new topics and/or relate back to previous topics. (08.14.2003)

• Finished Make the Connection : 10 Steps to a Better Body-And a Better Life by Bob Greene (Reader), Oprah Winfrey (Reader) (1996).
  Practical advice and coaching on getting fit. Interleaves a useful combination of Oprah's zesty highlights and Greene's factually and emotionally supportive commentary. Easy to listen to while commuting.
  Saddest advice that I "should" follow is to drink a pint of water when I get back from a run, rather than eating a pint of chocolate-cherry ice cream.

• Finished John Adams (2nd president of the U.S.A., not the composer) biography by David McCullough.
  Politicians should listen to and learn from the adventurous and courageous life of John Adams (1735-1826), and his concern for his newly founded country. Modern U.S.A. politicians with the integrity of John Adams are unknown to me.
  The Federalist Adams (preceded in the presidency by Washington and followed by Jefferson) had a significant role in the American Revolution and seems to have maintained his integrity in the turbulent aftermath.

In 2002, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano became the first publicly financed governor ever elected. Also, more than a third of Arizona's legislature is "clean".

See Ed Asner's article "Clean Money, Clean Elections for California" in July 18th S.F. Chronicle. Also see www.californiacleanmoney.com. (08.12.2003)
During the Odd Nerdrum expedition last week, L. took me to several other galleries. The exhibit that haunts me is The Look Stains by Brad Brown. The artist's notes include:

"Keeping the work unfinished allowed for a cyclic relationship with the drawings. I wanted to rid the drawing process of the anxiety of looking for an end. ... when I started to feel that I didn't want to draw on a page anymore, I would alleviate the idea that it was finished by tearing it up ... I would fold the page in half and tear along the fold, ... essentially producing a new group of drawings to work on. ... The body was always growing and always collapsing back in on itself. All of these pages were notated with the date from the time they were introduced into the studio process, and then periodically as I worked on them."

and:

"Exhibiting THE LOOK STAINS was an extension of the drawing process. I would essentially draw with the drawings by weaving them into fields that were tacked directly on the gallery wall. Within these fields, all aspects of the studio process were conspicuous. ... These installations were really only 'ideas' that the drawing process produced, and they could never be exhibited the same way twice."

(08.11.2003)
Nicole Hollander:

"If you stay in the tub long enough, someone else will fix dinner."

(08.09.2003)
Augusta Read Thomas:

"My favorite moment in any piece of music is the moment of maximum risk and striving. Whether the venture is tiny or large, loud or soft, fragile or strong, passionate, erratic, ordinary, or eccentric! ... music that is alive and jumps off the page and out of the instrument as if something big is at stake!"

Last day of the 41st Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music . with Maestra Marin Alsop. Includes:

• Aug 24, 10 a.m. Music at the Mission. Prayer Bells by Augusta Read Thomas opens, a beautiful and spiritual piece.
• Aug 24, Noon. A Tribute to Lou Harrison. Celebration of the music of composer Lou Harrison (1917-2003).
• Aug 28, 7 p.m. Monsters in the Park. Highlight is Joseph Ribeiro as chansonnier and would-be evil-doer in Frankenstein!!
• Aug 30, 11 a.m. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's Stone for purists). The remarkable Saturday free concert for kids.
• Aug 31, 10 a.m. The 'A' Team: Adès and Adams and of course Alsop. The best concert of an amazing series. This was where the Festival did its heaviest lifting. If you listen to only one concert, catch this one! Piano Soloist Christopher O'Reilly passionately compared the British Adès to Mozart. Go Brits! Adams, as always, is de Man.
• Aug 31, Noon. Radiohead Transcribed. The Radiohead fans in the audience really liked this, though thankfully (despite O'Reilly's good-humored encouragement) they did not sing along.

This Festival orchestra has won the American Symphony Orchestra League's nation ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music every year since the award's inception in 1982. Next year, plan to buy tickets! (08.08.2003)
Tag line of B.E.K. cartoon in new New Yorker (with absolutely no visual reference to Odd N.):

"I don't know if he's a great artist, but he's certainly annoying."

(08.07.2003)
At today's open rehearsal, heard the repeat of John Adams' Guide to Strange Places (2001) which is again entrancing. Yes, I did look at Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketchings, and Drawings (introduced by Richard Vine) while I listened. Paradise!

Then they rehearsed two pieces by Thomas Adès. Thanks to Phil Collins of New Music Works, I began to hear what Thomas Adès is doing. Phil says:

"Adès works with a foreground and background all the time like a painter."

The background may carry the theme or basis of the piece, perhaps in slow-moving choral melodies. The foreground may be bright and bustling activity but, as in Oz, "don't be distracted".

In rehearsing Adès' "... but all shall be well", Maestra Marin says:

"Percussion and piano and everyone needs to be lighter. You think that your moment is the most important so you make it loud. But your moment is not important. You don't have the tune. Clarinets have it most, but usually it's nowhere. So there should not be highlights. Absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Nothing."

Sound like life? Sound like the painting "Wanderers by the Sea" by Odd Nerdrum? Everything happens and nothing happens. (08.06.2003)
Visited SF for the Odd Nerdrum showing at S.F. Weinstein Gallery. The five oils still there were amazing. Sitting among them was like being in the presence of monarchs.

Facing the door was "Summer Nights" ( 71.2" x 75.5", 2001 ). Interesting to spot some differences from the catalog - Nerdrum (like the rest of us) changes his work even after it is "done".

Opposite it was "Self-Portrait in a Tree Trunk" ( 64.5" x 76.5", 1999-2000). with its anti-physics reflection.

Going upstairs, there were 3 more similarly huge and awesome oils: the bright sunny "Wanderers by the Sea" (2001); "One Blind Singer and Two Dancers" (2001); "Transmission" (2000).

Seven other oils had sold and been removed from the exhibit, which closes tonight.

Odd (from Weinstein catalog) says:

"Avant-garde artists want to shock, want a dialog with society. I don't. I paint for eternity." "Innovation is of no important. Nor is originality. Going into depth is the goal, for in the depiction of nature itself lies the individual expression."

More Nerdrum paintings are expected at Weinstein in a month. (08.05.2003)
At today's open rehearsal, the outright winner (among John Adams, Thomas Adès, and Kevin Puts) is John Adams. His Guide to Strange Places (2001) is (as the BBC's Pilip Clark's program notes say):

" a peculiarly different beast to [from?] anything else Adams has written. The composer himself confesses to being shocked at some of the sounds that he has unleashed and compares his composition to psychoanalysis - 'you start with what you know and use that genetic information to reach something you don't.'"

Like Maestra Marin Alsop said on Saturday, American composers tend to like big endings. This Adams piece includes about a dozen big and false endings!

An Odd moment - at one point in the open rehearsal of the Adams piece, the hands of the harpist and harpsichordist were in line, doing that synchronous kind of dance that Odd Nerdrum captures in some of his pictures. As Odd's pictures are of strange places, I plan to bring his book to the next open rehearsal of this piece - what a blast to look at his paintings while hearing this music.

• Finished Life of Pi by Yann Martel during the open rehearsal of Island of Innocence (2001) by Kevin Puts, a "September 11th" memorial of "grim vigilance ... laced at times with hope." [Lawrence Duckles] Whereas Pi (π)is more "hope laced with terrified vigilance". OK, I believe "the story with animals", even though I don't believe the tiger existed.

Last night, the smash hit of 2nd concert in the Cabrillo Music Festival 2003 Season was "Frankenstein!!" (1977-79) by H.K. Gruber (b.1943), with a fabulous performance by chansonnier Joseph Ribeiro of H.C. Artman's cruel text - like:

" 'tis the merry werewolf's favorite day merrily he crosses fields winter silence at his heels fur is bristling out in fun freest soul beneath the sun little children, leave your house scurry out quick as a mouse take along some Christmas cake follow in the werewolf's wake "

• Finished The Wailing Wind by Tony Hillerman. A cozy mystery CD of murder, the lands near Flagstaff, and three Tribal Police officers. Good company for light listening during a day of chores. So, whenever I look inside my re-painted white cupboards, will I remember goldmines, ghosts, and the desert?

Last night a terrific opening concert "Blood Sweat and Tears" for the Cabrillo Music Festival 2003 Season. It was gripping. A wonderful combination of music and musicians. My favorite was Michael Daugherty's "Fire and Blood," (2003) with a stunningly agile Yumi Hwang-Williams on violin. Tonight more Daugherty - plus Herch's Symphony #2 (2001) and 2 other composers' work.

1. Life of Pi Booker Prize-winning novel by Yann Martel How fabulous to be reading this (I'm at Pi's list of what he has when shipwrecked) while I await the Cabrillo Music Festival performance of Michael Daugherty's Fire and Blood (2003) on the works and lives of Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo. (Done August.)
2. Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (Libro 1) por J. K. Rowling, Alicia Dellepiane. Sí, en Español. Alohomora! (Done August.)
3. Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketchings, and Drawings by Richard Vine. (Done August.)
4. The Human Genome Project: Cracking the Code Within Us by Elizabeth Marshall. (Done August.)
5. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis by Michael Williams. (Review).
6. The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio by William J. Bernstein. (Done September.)

My 'to read' list includes C's suggestion of Fast Food Nation.

{ July 2003 }

Tomkins sees some of the same characteristics in the older and the newer work:

"the willingness to push an idea to extremes, risking failure at every point; and, underlying the whole enterprise, the ongoing dialogue between the natural world and the world of pure imagination, and the willingness to let the uglier and scarier aspects of both worlds interact with their possibilities of unexpected beauty. "

Bontecou got her early energy from the "Abstract Impressionist" tradition. She says she was "working in the ... spirit, ... inherited from the Abstract Impressionist." Is she pulling "abstract" art in an analogous direction to how some poets want to influence language poetry?

{ 2002 } (12.31.2002) See the best of the 100 books I read in 2002.

Related pages: Poetry - Learn How to Write Your Own. Books on Learning Spanish. Forests of California and Trees of the World.

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