i knew i didn't like the image on the cover of if on a winter's night a traveler, and i liked it less when i confirmed that it was a painting by de chirico. a listless image, poorly reproduced, but perhaps it is totally appropriate in this context. a painting about paintings on a book about reading.
stephanie was reading the first chapter aloud. it addresses you, dear reader, and your choice of this book. i didn't think i liked it. when she set it down i picked it up, and the first page i flipped to commenced with a paragraph on the differences between having something read aloud to you and reading it yourself.
perhaps i will like this book.

essays on art by octavio paz
-didn't even come close to finishing this, but by the time i had finished struggling through a fascinating essay on glossolalia and native languages the brooklyn library was sending me you-owe-us-money e-mails. perhaps i'll try another time.

perdido street station by china miéville
-this fantasy novel didn't fuck around. miéville likes to make you lose faith in his main characters before he kills them off ignominously. it became a slog towards the end, and i found it too over the top. miéville also overuses s.a.t words like chitinous and puissant and bathos and blench. every once in a while i stumble across an adjective i suspect he straight up invented, but if i paused to look up all the words he uses that i'm not sure about i'd end up owing more money to the brooklyn library than i did to the irs this year. on akie's advice i went ahead and borrowed the second one, the scar, from rebecca. it was much better. the third one, the iron council, i liked less.

the jungle by upton sinclair
-slogged through the first few chapters of this and realized it was the grapes of wrath set in the meatpacking district of chicago. i've already read the grapes of wrath, thank you very much, so instead i read the extensive introduction. it sketched out the plot for me and told me what i was supposed to get out of the book (not that meat is bad, but that capitalism exploits the workers), and i left it at that.

the death of ivan ilych by leo tolstoy
-i read this because stephen harper was reading it. it was good. i've never particularly liked short stories. there's no time to get lost in the story, and there's usually some moral getting crudely bashed into your head. the death of ivan ilych was no exception, but i did find that certain stillness to which yan martel was referring when he chose this book to send to stephen harper. ummm, to summarize: ivan ilych does everything that he's supposed to adequately. he never rocks the boat, he works just hard enough, and he achieves pretty much what he wants to: family, friends, bourgie house and lifestyle. since he's never done anything special or really loved anything, he dies disappointed. everyone mourns him exactly as much as society dictates and not one jot more. food for thought at a time when i'm seriously wondering why i struggle so hard to work in the arts when i could be doing exactly the same kind of work for reasonable people and making twice (or more!) as much money.

hee. i like this stuff. i'd keep it, but i don't think i want to smell soapy all the time. and it's distracting. i feel like the cat someone stuck a piece of scotch tape to: "what IS it! what IS it?"

the smelly stuff came in tonight. in my eagerness i got new orleans all over me. fortunately there doesn't seem to be anything in it that triggers the allergy. i keep sniffing and sniffing at myself, drawing apart the various layers. jasmine, and something soapy, and... something softer underneath. this lady's wares are as cracklike as i had hoped. i'll be less cryptic when i'm not trying not to spoil a surprise.

sat through 45 minutes of mumble jumble at rutgers. it was fascinating to listen to my brother speak in a language i do. not. understand. and then his board would ask him questions in mumble jumble and he'd answer then back the same way. wow!

at the end we drank champagne and ate chinese food and cake and they called my brother "doctor."

alex's advisor asked me how much if it i understood, which is how i found myself trying to explain computer learning to an expert in the field. i stumbled through the rudiments i gathered. you give the whatever (agent?), okay, you give the agent a problem to solve. wait wait, the programmer's dilemma is that you want it to learn and do the solving itself. you need it to use the information it has gathered from experience but you also need it to try new things in case it stumbles across a better way. alex's method tells it to be "optimistic" and assume a positive result from things it hasn't tried yet, but i think it can also remember what it's done before that worked. so you start with that, and then for each trial if the agent succeeds it gets a reward (R). this is where it gets strange for me. i know what a reward is: ice cream or a smile or cash or free time. what does a reward mean to a computer program? well, it's programmed to try to get the reward. it's also programmed to risk failing with the hope of getting a greater reward.

i thought i would come across as naive asking alex's advisor about this, asking about the diff between a computer brain and mine. it's a romantic notion, wondering about computers thinking and yearning. but it turns out it's not. he tells me it's not a fundamental difference, to his thinking. our reward systems are more complex and thus more difficult to plumb, but it's a difference of degrees than anything else. the algorithms they are writing have simple choices and simple rewards, but as the field advances they will surely grow more complex.

i tell him about a character from mieville's perdido st station: a massive computer which has achieved sentience. its goal is to accumulate knowledge and all of its actions are premised on that goal. it calculates probabilities, makes decisions, and acts on them. alex's advisor tells me that's the idea, and i've understood what he's working on better than i thought. some of the students in the labs actually work with robots, little robot dogs and cars. give them a challenge and let them work out a solution. alex's work takes place entirely in the computer. he creates a digital problem and his computer thinkthinkthinks itself through the maze.

they all joke about computers making decisions that could affect people, they've all seen terminator. do i worry about it?

listening to cuban jazz at a japanese restaurant. an asian woman in stiletto heels dancing precisely with a guy with an afro in a baseball jersey and jeans.
swing dancing tonight. we met a young french au pair who trained in from connecticut alone for a chance to swing dance. she asked elijah to dance and i noticed how stunningly, perfectly beautiful she was: long black hair, charming rounded face, dressed simply and fashionably. a better dancer than me, more contained and confident. too precise, said elijah afterwards, not open to improvisation. i am a little embarrassed at how comforted i was to hear that.

caffeine after a long time without, my hands tremulous, mind snappy.
taking little sips from the styrofoam cup, the heat makes me more aware of my body. in a way i love it, that i have to engage with it, it blocks automatic gestures and thoughts. it pares down my movements. careful, more deliberate. sleeping last night in the heat, on top of my blankets. i don't think i ground my teeth last night out of desperate tiredness and relaxation.

feelings of dread
the heat at work so thick i can't think through it, and filtering in around my thoughts the unease produced by china mieville's horror lands.
lots of shouting coming up from the sidewalks tonight. so strange to be up in the cool air and space of the roof, looking down like a voyeur, like a distant observer on the life in my neighborhood.

work was the crapinnest today, but i survived to come home and concoct a hideous beverage!!!! yes, it was going to be a mango lassi and it was perfect, but then i went and added honey and it went too sweet, and then i spotted steph's 151 on the window sill. it may be disgusting, but it's all mine and i fuckin earned it.
rar

i just registered for the gre. there's no stopping me now, muthafuckers!