Burning Clove

Extra Nerdy

burningclove — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:00:28 +0000

Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play by Jennifer DeVere Brody

The first bit is mostly cute jargony wordplay for its own sake, but the later chapters on “Hyphen-nation” and “Queer Quotation Marks” are more interesting. Basically I liked it better the further I got in it.

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Vacation is over, and so is my reading binge.

burningclove — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:37:31 +0000

The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I had the power to describe e.e. cummings’s prose, I’d be even more of a genius than he was. I can’t understand why he spent so much time writing poetry instead. Who else speaks of “a spic, not to say span, gentleman”? Observes a man “buckle his personality” and “bang forward with bigger and bigger feet”? Explains that he “hoisted my suspicious utterances upon my shoulder, which recognized the renewal of hostilities with a neuralgic throb”? Says that “rain did, from time to time, not fall: from time to time a sort of unhealthy almost-light leaked from the large uncrisp corpse of the sky”? And introduces a character thus: “By some mistake he had three mustaches, two of them being eyebrows. In speaking to you his kind face is reduced to triangles. And his tie buttons on every morning with a Bang! And off he goes; led about by his celluloid collar, gently worried about himself, delicately worried about the world” . . . ?

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Vacationing is Hard

burningclove — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:02:02 +0000

This fall was one of the busiest semesters of my life, and I could not have gotten through it without thoughts of the upcoming winter break. The last day of school before vacation was lovely: I woke up energized, got done everything on my to-do list, and even bought my students chocolate to make up for the fact that I was being that Grinch of a teacher who doesn’t throw parties in class and assigns essays over break.

Then the final bell tolled, everyone left the building, and suddenly I was miserable. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything. I went home and sat on the couch blankly until my husband got there. And as soon as he walked in, he knew: “Uh oh. Vacation syndrome again?” Because–guess what? This happens EVERY time.

In college every Friday afternoon was a nightmare. A couple summers ago I spent the first two weeks of my time off in tears. The severity and the details vary, but the pattern is clear: when the work lets up, I lose it.

Since that first miserable afternoon last week, this vacation has been wonderful. I’ve slept, run errands, spent time with family, hung out with my husband, had long talks with friends, caught up on housework, gotten ahead on schoolwork, and read book after book after book. All this, too, happens every time. After the initial shock, I’m fine.

But still. I’m pretty sure I’m doing something wrong.

I discovered Dostoevsky’s soulmate, guys.

burningclove — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:57:18 +0000

Hunger by Knut Hamsun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s like Raskolnikov and the Underground Man had a baby (and forgot to teach it about tenses). “A dray rolls slowly by, and I notice there are potatoes in it; but out of sheer fury and stubbornness, I take it into my head to assert that they are not potatoes, but cabbages, and I swore frightful oaths that they were cabbages. I heard quite well what I was saying, and I swore this lie wittingly; repeating time after time, just to have the vicious satisfaction of perjuring myself. I got intoxicated with the thought of this matchless sin of mine.” Et cetera.

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Still!

burningclove — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:26:16 +0000

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Still

burningclove — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:25:30 +0000

I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Too busy for real posts

burningclove — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:41:12 +0000

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m going to need a few days (or decades) to process this before I can write about it…

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“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”

burningclove — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:17:05 +0000

“Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

More Kierkegaard (i.e., Repetition?)

burningclove — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:23:16 +0000

“Hope is a charming maiden but slips through the fingers, recollection is a beautiful old woman but of no use at the instant, repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never tires. For it is only of the new one grows tired. Of the old one never tires. When one possesses that, one is happy, and only he is thoroughly happy who does not delude himself with the vain notion that repetition ought to be something new, for then one becomes tired of it. . . . When one has circumnavigated existence, it will appear whether one has courage to understand that life is a repetition and is inclined to delight in it. He who has not circumnavigated life before beginning to live will never come to the point of living; he who circumnavigated it but grew tired had a poor constitution; he who chose repetition really lives. . . . Indeed, if there were no repetition, what then would life be? Who would wish to be a tablet upon which time writes every instant a new inscription? Or to be a mere memorial of the past?” – Constantine Constantius, Repetition

INFJ

burningclove — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:56:49 +0000

The more gregarious I become, the more I realize how intensely introverted I am.

I once heard introverts defined as people who derive their energy from themselves rather than from others. That seems pretty accurate. I don’t particularly dislike socializing anymore, now that I’m no longer painfully shy and no longer busy being suicidal in my bedroom all the time–but now that nothing prevents me from talking to others, I’m discovering just how much it takes out of me.

I have what they call “engagements” every night for the rest of this week. I am sincerely looking forward to all of them, but I also feel like I need to carbo-load or something if I’m going to make it to Sunday without losing my shit. That would not be true, by the way, if I simply knew I’d have to stay really late at work for several days in a row. And often when I’m inexplicably cranky, I realize that it’s because I’ve had too much company for too long–no matter how good the company happens to be.

Of course I’ve got my share of misanthropy too. Perhaps more than my share. But most of the time I don’t hate people. It’s just that they’re so damn tiring.