the weekend was breathlessly fun.
for steph's bday party i rolled and rolled truffles. to remember, i made a list on the fridge:
pecan- cocoa/coffee
almond- sugar/ginger
strawberries/confec. sugar- cocoa/confec. sugar
black raspberries- cocoa
dried currants- sugar/cardamom
for an experiment i sprinkled a few of those with white pepper. galen approved.

stephanie ruined my bread by preheating the oven while it was thawing inside. oh well. i already know what i want to adjust in the next batch: mix whole wheat with the bread flour, less yeast, less sugar. if there's time to run to the grocery store i'll pick up some amaranth to roll the dough in, because my bread wants more texture and i love the sound of amaranth. it could be the name of a nation/state from one of the fantasy novels i read when i was little.

on sunday we played foursquare under the hobo bridge in prospect park. it's a better place than most to be terrible at something, and good company for it. i enjoyed watching the foursquare artisans and glowed with my little victories. it was a clear cold day. we all underdressed because we wanted winter to be over and done with already.

i wandered the library a touch:
bleak house- charles dickens
the collected poetry of dorothy parker
the brooklyn follies- paul auster

and did my taxes, though not without a great deal of talking to myself and cursing and one disconsolate phone call to sam regarding school district zones.

work is very dreary this week. a lingering cough and general unwellness make me feel clumsy and slow. i'm less inclined than usual to think the best of everyone, but shit passes and you muddle through. by the time i can smell again it will really feel like spring, and by the first of may i'll be in a place where i can get my feet in the mud. the honeymoon period of my love affair with the city is drawing to a close, to be replaced with either a more mature affection or a gradual dissatisfaction.

an anthology of new (american) poets
edited by lisa jarnot, leonard schwartz, and chris stroffolino

the book of illusions
paul auster

memoria de mis putas tristes
gabriel garcia marquez

i am a strange loop
douglas hofstadter

and my brain won't go back to sleep. stephanie decided to start a book club, so here i am reading "i am a strange loop" on the subway, and getting overanalytical about everything. he (hofstadter) seems like a kindred spirit, a vegetarian and pragmatist. he has a gift for putting his thoughts down in such a way that i keep thinking, but that's what i think! i should have written this book! when clearly that is not the case. he makes it seem easy, which is a good way to get philosophy into the people. it seems so easy that barely into the third chapter i begin to question his assumptions. am i being snowed by his easy confidence? the use of silly jargon makes me think of specious self-help books, with his "soul shards" and "simmbolism." will this turn out to be some corny "chicken soup for the atheist?" this book club was a good idea. i am waiting for people who understand and care about these arguments more than i to trounce me in debate so i don't just write the whole thing off. but first i shall finish it.
thinking critically with a goal in mind is energizing.

the transformation, by juliana spahr

reaffirmed my polyamory and gave my doubts comfort. we suffer doubts, we make mistakes. there's no conclusion; we try to work through our messes. as work grows more intolerable and difficult i'm learning to float above the stress. get the job done, and let the niceties go. support the people around you and look out for your own sanity. i stayed late because i had no where to be and certain individuals seemed to think i had time for more projects. after, i went into the courtyard and bummed a smoke from gaston, more overworked and cheerful than i. i lay on my back on the dance floor and spread out my arms. blue blue sky, drifting clouds, the red walls of a building i love surrounding me on three sides. a perfect summer evening. when i come home drunk on the subway i feel tall and stretchy. feist coos to me and i try to look more fierce than vulnerable. there were thoughts i wanted to write down and no pen in my bag. now it's time for sleep. in the morning i take another crack at it.

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.

modernism's masculine subjects, by some chick
darkness visible, by william styron
my name is red, by orhan pamuk

petals of blood, by ngugi wa thiongo
things fall apart, by chinua achebe
kafka on the shore, by haruki murakami

the orient express, graham greene
our man in havana, graham greene
snow, orhan pamuk