Today is April 13 of 2010. It is a Tuesday. The wind blows with strength and sunshine and I am sitting upstairs in my parents' home, in the office that used to be my bedroom. This is not as nostalgic as it may seem. But that is not the story for today.
I have just posted 4 other blogs. Two of them bear today's date. Two of them are dated earlier.
Lent of 2010 was an extremely change-filled time for me. It is barely over and already I understand how much more alive and involved I feel. I kept a couple of journals during that time, and enter their contents as I get the chance. I change the post options to reflect the date on which I wrote the entries, though I very deliberately did not make them public until after Easter. The tag is Lent.
I have also got myself all excited about a reading list that I started to create in December of 2008, and begin to have things to say about it and the books that I've read and other work that I find helps to construct a foundation and shape for this massive project. And you know, I knew it was huge. I knew it was, and did I realize it? Nope. As such, there are blogs about that. The tag is LRP.
I hope that as you read, you do follow links within this blog and around the internet. I have a great deal of fun linking to sites other than imdb, amazon and wiki-anything when I can, though I will when the other options are icky, slow-loading or questionable.
Constantly striving to change one's life bores me. Which means that life is in a constant state of flux and therefore I am never bored. It makes sense. In context.
Showing posts with label LRP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LRP. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Reading, 2.
How does art manifest itself in life?
How do those classes on the Humanities relate to anything lived in a life like mine: underemployed, un-ambitious, poverty level, un-consumer, un-insured, etc.
Where do those works of times past play into the world of writers of books that I can find and read, whether in my own library or the public library’s collection?
How important are they really?
And could a deliberate focus on non-fiction or a reading list comprised of an almost randomly selected group of titles be meaningful or have any connection whatsoever that would eventually lead it to be definable in some way?
*
I had and have another, much less esoteric motivation. Consistency and accomplishment have not been the defining themes of my life, though they have been the defining absences in many of my relationships (including interpersonal and scholarly). It is absolutely necessary for the success of my future self that I lose that attitude and gain something more like definition and direction. To that end, I saw this Grand Absurd Reading List as a way to delve into as many different areas of thought, time, space, geography, and style as I could without losing all potential coherence. As I write, it occurs to me that what I’ve ended up with has been a sort of Noah’s ark of cataloging. Which is a totally different story.
I’ve discovered many new ideas and ways of thinking. I’ve read books that have challenged my own self-imposed ignorance. I’ve read books that have annoyed me, and I am not done, which means that there are many more possibilities to be given life. I’ve begun to keep another list, one of movies, and another of books that I’ve read, not simply for The List.
I was keeping track of the music I listened to, and then that got to be too much, so I just keep track of it in my brain, which has a ton more room for holding onto information now that I’ve begun connecting loose bits with other loose bits and pulling ideas together, even loosely and absurdly. The patterns exist, even in books that seem totally unrelated or styles that have no rational connection whatsoever.
They are expressions of a living human, and they may just be enough.
I’ve put all of the titles that I could on my LibraryThing page.
Frida (scroll down until you see Salma Hayek) and Omkara are movies, and so excluded.
*Can you change your life without wealth, power, prestige or great beauty?
How do those classes on the Humanities relate to anything lived in a life like mine: underemployed, un-ambitious, poverty level, un-consumer, un-insured, etc.
Where do those works of times past play into the world of writers of books that I can find and read, whether in my own library or the public library’s collection?
How important are they really?
And could a deliberate focus on non-fiction or a reading list comprised of an almost randomly selected group of titles be meaningful or have any connection whatsoever that would eventually lead it to be definable in some way?
*
I had and have another, much less esoteric motivation. Consistency and accomplishment have not been the defining themes of my life, though they have been the defining absences in many of my relationships (including interpersonal and scholarly). It is absolutely necessary for the success of my future self that I lose that attitude and gain something more like definition and direction. To that end, I saw this Grand Absurd Reading List as a way to delve into as many different areas of thought, time, space, geography, and style as I could without losing all potential coherence. As I write, it occurs to me that what I’ve ended up with has been a sort of Noah’s ark of cataloging. Which is a totally different story.
I’ve discovered many new ideas and ways of thinking. I’ve read books that have challenged my own self-imposed ignorance. I’ve read books that have annoyed me, and I am not done, which means that there are many more possibilities to be given life. I’ve begun to keep another list, one of movies, and another of books that I’ve read, not simply for The List.
I was keeping track of the music I listened to, and then that got to be too much, so I just keep track of it in my brain, which has a ton more room for holding onto information now that I’ve begun connecting loose bits with other loose bits and pulling ideas together, even loosely and absurdly. The patterns exist, even in books that seem totally unrelated or styles that have no rational connection whatsoever.
They are expressions of a living human, and they may just be enough.
I’ve put all of the titles that I could on my LibraryThing page.
Frida (scroll down until you see Salma Hayek) and Omkara are movies, and so excluded.
*Can you change your life without wealth, power, prestige or great beauty?
Reading, 1.
Writing reviews for my LibraryThing account has become a new sort of exercise for me. There is this struggle between how much I read and how much of that reading turns into something else, like a new link in my knowledge or a review or renewed vigor working toward a goal. It is difficult to know how to approach the desire and ability to read too much and temper it without abandoning it entirely. To that end, I have found that some requirements help. I concoct reading lists and goals and use them to gauge what I’m doing and how much of it I’m doing and then once I’ve pondered the goal I’ve reached, I make a new one that is modified and so on. It is in that relatively constant pendulum swing of thought and planning and action and result that I begin to find that my life looks like something that is more like what I believe a well-lived life is.
It is aware, involved, compassionate, decisive, disciplined, gentle, quiet, joyful and not without absurdity. I believe that moderation is a good touchstone, even when it is for itself. I believe that the best way to learn a thing is to do it, and there is no reason that a book cannot be as instructive as any other method of learning, provided that the learner take the time to give air to the words of his or her instructor as they cannot do it for themselves from within the pages of a closed or silently chewed over text.
As I considered the words I chose for my review of Journey to Portugal by Jose Saramago, it occurred to me that more than just a desire to travel to that country myself was kindled. Saramago is so infuriatingly specific with his words, particularly his terminology and architectural awareness that it almost drove me to despair. I read the book slowly, though, over a period of time that was longer in events that chronology.
The first time I read the book, I did not finish it. This had more to do with my health at the time than anything else.
By the time I got around to reading it again, I had a road map of Portugal from the 1980’s pinned to my wall and worked very hard to trace his route. My notes from the first part of that reading are just incredible, they are lists of place names and monuments and styles of architecture. I am deeply happy with them.
The third time I picked up the book, I finished it in a profound amazement.
My sense of distance from his specificity was countered very strongly by my sense of the richness of his experience and I began to ask some questions about my own experiences in the world.
It is aware, involved, compassionate, decisive, disciplined, gentle, quiet, joyful and not without absurdity. I believe that moderation is a good touchstone, even when it is for itself. I believe that the best way to learn a thing is to do it, and there is no reason that a book cannot be as instructive as any other method of learning, provided that the learner take the time to give air to the words of his or her instructor as they cannot do it for themselves from within the pages of a closed or silently chewed over text.
As I considered the words I chose for my review of Journey to Portugal by Jose Saramago, it occurred to me that more than just a desire to travel to that country myself was kindled. Saramago is so infuriatingly specific with his words, particularly his terminology and architectural awareness that it almost drove me to despair. I read the book slowly, though, over a period of time that was longer in events that chronology.
The first time I read the book, I did not finish it. This had more to do with my health at the time than anything else.
By the time I got around to reading it again, I had a road map of Portugal from the 1980’s pinned to my wall and worked very hard to trace his route. My notes from the first part of that reading are just incredible, they are lists of place names and monuments and styles of architecture. I am deeply happy with them.
The third time I picked up the book, I finished it in a profound amazement.
My sense of distance from his specificity was countered very strongly by my sense of the richness of his experience and I began to ask some questions about my own experiences in the world.
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