when words lose their meaning (1)

Atrocities is such an empty word. Journalists love it. You hear it everyday on the news. You hear it mentioned concerning the events of human history both past and present. The atrocities of Darfur. The atrocities of Rwanda. The atrocities of the Holocaust. And so on and so forth. Does it mean anything any more? Does it mean anything more than a four syllable sound that you hear coming from your plasma screen television, causing you to pause ever so momentarily before you return to eating your dinner?

there are trees and these are splinters

"She preferred not to think about such things"

~ paraphrase from y tu mama tambien

strange the way death potentially unravels the meaning we spend a lifetime trying to make. undone in a moment...

.... Eliot's poetry is not a question of meaning in the first place. The meaning of a poem for Eliot was a fairly trifling matter. It was, he once remarked, like the piece of meat which the burglar throws to the guard dog to keep him occupied. In true symbolist fashion, Eliot was interested in what a poem did, not in what it said—in the resonance of the signifier, the echoes of its archetypes, the ghostly associations haunting its grains and textures, the stealthy, subliminal workings of its unconscious. Meaning was for the birds, or perhaps for the petit bourgeoisie. Eliot was a primitivist as well as a sophisticate, a writer who made guerrilla raids on the collective unconscious. For all his intellectualism, he was averse to rationality. Meaning in his poetry is like the mysterious figure who walks beside you in The Waste Land, vanishing when you look at it straight. When Raine enquires of a couple of lines in one of Eliot's poems whether we are supposed to be in a brothel, the only answer which would be true to Eliot's own aesthetic is that we are in a poem...

~ Terry Eagleton

of long obediences in the same direction

Those who seek fulfillment in adultery have little hope in love.

work that speaks for itself*

scattered thoughts on knitting**

As a privileged white collar worker, repetitive manual labour is not a burden. After hours of producing digitized pages of data, screens of code, and stacks of written decks, it is refreshing to slowly and meticulously create something physical and tangible.

There are no hard and fast deadlines. Though it is always satisfying to hold a finished product in your hand, much of the fulfillment comes from watching the fabric emerge from your fingertips, stitch by stitch, inch by inch.

I don't need to interpret my work. I don't have to explain how it creates value. The work speaks for itself.


It is tragic that our society has devalued manual labour and turned it into a commodity... alienated workers hunched over rows and rows of sewing machines. Is anyone else nostalgic for times when craftmanship was still common? For times when people designed, laboured and ultimately created with their own hands. And when that process of creation was not endless toil for survival, but a joyful engagement of the mind and body-- But I think I am nostalgic for times that never existed. (That's why I say, I have the privilege of enjoying manual labour, because I am not sweating 80 hours a week cleaning toilets in order to pay the bills)

In any case, I just don't want this craft to turn into a justified excuse for me to bolster my wardrobe, since in my endless knitting blog browsing, I've seen far too many people take knitting as an alternate form of consumerism-- something that I can easily see myself becoming. I would like to knit in order to give. To give to those in needs. Or to give to friends and family and implicitly say, 'I spent 60 hours (or more!) making this for you."


*this is also for teri who taught me how to knit
** this could also be called - reflections of an "N" knitter
*** the photos are of half of the sweater I am currently working on for http://www.knitforkids.org. (my 3rd official project, 4th one if you count my disaster pot-holders/dish rags.)

why new york is so unhappy

The large points first: Most happiness researchers agree that being surrounded by friends and family is one of the most crucial determinants of our well-being. Yet New York, as surprisingly neighborly a city as it is, is still predicated on a certain principle of atomization. Being married would help in this instance, obviously. But New York City’s percentage of unmarried adults is nine points higher than the national average, at 52 percent.

Then there’s the question of the hedonic treadmill, such a demonic little term, so vivid, so apt. Isn’t that what New York, the city of 24-hour gyms, is? More charitably put, one could say that New York is a city of aspirants, the destination people come to to realize dreams. And of course we should feel indebted to the world’s dreamers (and I thank each and every one, for creating jet travel, indoor plumbing, The Simpsons), but there’s a line between heartfelt aspiration and a mindless state of yearning. Darrin McMahon, the author of Happiness: A History, shrewdly points out that the Big Apple is a perfect moniker for the city: “The apple is the cause of the fall of human happiness,” he says. “It’s the symbol of that desire for something more. Even though paradise was paradise, they were still restless.”

Which is where the subtle thesis of Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice comes in. He argues, with terrible persuasiveness, that a superabundance of options is not a blessing but a certain recipe for madness. Nowhere do people have more choices than in New York. “New Yorkers should probably be the most unhappy people on the planet,” says Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore. “On every block, there’s a lifetime’s worth of opportunities. And if I’m right, either they won’t be able to choose or they will choose, and they’ll be convinced they chose badly.”

Economists have a term for those who seek out the best options in life. They call them maximizers. And maximizers, in practically every study one can find, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do (economists call these people satisficers). “My suspicion,” says Schwartz, “is that all this choice creates maximizers.” If that’s the case, New York doesn’t just attract ambitious neurotics; it creates them. It also creates desires for things we don’t need—which, not coincidentally, is the business of Madison Avenue—and, as a corollary, pointless regrets, turning us all into a city of counterfactual historians, men and women who obsessively imagine different and better outcomes for ourselves.

~ excerpts from an article I didn't finish reading because it was too long, but seems to have some fairly good things to say

New York is an unhappy place because it trades the deep and meaningful relationships for endless nights of restaurants, clubbing, bar hopping, and consumption of 'interesting things to do' and 'interesting things to see.' It is precisely, a city of interminable choice. It is a city for consumers. You come here. You take what you can get out of it and you leave (and probably go to Jersey). *

New York is not a city of neighbours. (Who knows their neighbours?) Neighbours care about the place where they live. People don't come to New York because they want to contribute to making this place better, help the homeless or get to know the people who live next door to them. No, they come here because they want to experience New York City. To soak up its sights, its sounds, its foods, its drinks, its clothes, its people and then return to their overpriced, shoe-box sized apartments..... But if you are constantly taking, you are inevitably going to leave empty.

It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only an agglomeration of private cells. In the city as nowhere else we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains; it is the god of the city that we pursue, in vain.

Its heart must have lain somewhere. But the god of the city was elusive. The tram was filled with individuals, each man returning to his own cell.

V.S. Naipaul wrote that about London. Perhaps this is also true about New York. Except every city has a different god. For New York, the glittering, flashing billboard forever reminds you that if you buy the rights things, see the right shows and go to the right restaurants, you will indeed experience New York City.... **


* Obviously, I'm not saying that everyone has no true friends in New York. In fact, alot of people I know have close friends in the city. But what I'm referring to, is a general spirit of the city, and the millions of people that come filtering in (and out) each year.
** But what is New York City? Does it even exist? Is it not just an elusive idea? A vain myth? If you follow the chain of signs, you'll soon seen that it only returns back to itself, and never leads to anywhere real.

the most important thing

[2] the ramblings of a not-so-single girl before Valentine’s Day [2]

the most important thing i have learned from being in a relationship is how to forgive.

the best decisions

usually the best choices in life are the ones that we are most scared of taking. they feel a bit like stepping off the firm edge of a rock cliff, into a hazy, insubstantial fog. but really, we just have what is solid and what is mist confused.

Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.
Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches! Walk by the light of your fire, and by the torches that you have kindled! This you have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.

~ Isaiah 50