The Art of Losing

I lost my mother's watch. Actually, I lost the watch my mother gave me. And my favorite teaspoon. It should take me some time before I misplace this house and I can't really see myself hiding the continent from everyone, but I do feel like my losses are a disaster.

And a sign of a serious disability.

Card purchased at a store with vintage jewelry and trinkets, DeWitt Mall, Ithaca, NY.

Both domestic and foreign, given who I am and where.

Documenting Another Attempt to Wake Up and Stop Daydreaming

and get to work.

Somehow, that's not really happening...



As Mr. G. says, well, it's really July and we're in a meadow. Lazy.
(That last detail is true for this Monday morning in February.)

I Wish...

Mini Book Earrings, originally uploaded by MyHandboundBooks.

... I wasn't allergic to every possible kind of metal. I can't wear earrings. I got my ears pierced when I was 5 because I desperately wanted to wear earrings. After several painful infections I eventually realized I was not destined to have pretty things dangling from my earlobes.

But gosh I wish I could wear these...

Additional Reasons for Happiness (If You're Not Polish)

Please raise a glass to not being Polish (unless you're Polish):

you don't have to deal with Polish pseudodiplomacy, you're not dependent on those people's whims. Since your legal needs are not sabotaging their deepest desire to sit on their asses and do nothing all day, you are already so much better off.

Without going into all the disgusting detail, after waiting for our appointment for an insane amount of time and paying through the nose for the legal proceedings and ceremony, we learned that we cannot set the date of our own wedding. The date will be announced to us perhaps on the phone, who knows, some three or two weeks before the wedding, that is maybe, you never know...

Having told me and Mr. G. as much (after we had paid, of course), the official smiled and said: "Don't worry, we'll let you know at some point. I guess it's an important day for you."

No, you know, not at all. Let's all relax and screw it all, because it's not like we have jobs or any sort of responsibilities, and certainly the witnesses and guests don't have any of those stinking job-things. Also, we all spend our days hanging around Manhattan, so no one needs to book anything. No one has to fly to NYC, why we'll walk over water to get there for the ceremony. We'll put on our seven-mile boots and get there in five minutes, so actually, I don't even have to know when it is exactly. You can tell me on that day just as well. I will come in my bathrobe and rubber boots, au naturel, and sans photographer or flowers. And as for hotels and such crap, I suppose we can stay under a bridge, it will be like camping. Fun, fun, fun...

#@&!!!%

I never had a fantasy about my wedding day being 'the most beautiful day of my life.' But that doesn't mean I wanted it to be the worst. As scandalous as it may sound, I wanted it to be a good day on which I sign a bunch of documents and then me, my brand new husband, and our guests go and have ice cream.

I never would have guessed everything would depend on a bunch of knobheads who first cheat me out of money and then try to make it all impossible, disgusting, and sad.

Powitanie zamówienia

W mojej skrzynce znalazłem email pt. "Powitanie zamówienia". A w nim co następuje:

Może jesteś zajęty i nie mają czasu, aby znaleźć prezenty dla swoich kochanek, znajomych lub rodziny, na naszej stronie internetowej: (adres usunąłem). Wybierz najlepszy prezent dla nich. Możemy pakiet Twój pakiet jako dar i wysyłać je bezpośrednio do Twojej pokazać miłość.
Możemy dać ci przynajmniej masz czas na opakowanie.

Fairy Tale Generator

Based on Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale. Here's what I got after randomly ticking 'complicity,' 'beginning counteraction,' 'receipt of a magical agent,' 'pursuit,' 'difficult task,' and 'transfiguration':

All of the people's voices came prying into me, digging through the hairs of my scalp to find answers to their questions. They sifted through my body like water sifts through rice. I felt their presence probing through the deep recesses of my head until they discovered what they longed to know. I told them how I was searching for my father. I told them that his shoes brought me here. I told them about his satchel and the magic that was inside. That magic would take me back home whenever I needed to leave.

"Let me go then," I said.

When I placed the needle I had taken on my palm, it moved in the direction where I needed to go. The bones taken from the ground shielded me from any harm.

With each step I took, the people of soil tried to clench my feet harder and began to pull me down.

"And who are you boy?" Mother asked me. Her weak eyes did not recognize my much-changed face and form. I told her I was her son but she did not believe me. "If you are the son that left so many days ago, and if you are the one who brought back this jade figure of father, then you are the one who will be able to restore him to his normal shape." She flicked her wrist and flung the jade piece at me.

Mother licked her fingers and placed them to my face, wiping the thick layer of dirt away. Then I truly began to look like my father's son, in form, face, and color.

Jade figure of the father? Ostentatious.

Tęsknicz

wiewiórka, originally uploaded by Christ0ff.

Tęsknicz:

rodzaj zwierzęcia z rodziny wiewiórkowatych, pochodzenie nieznane. Występuje w przypadkach oddalenia od bliskich i znudzenia pracą. W przeciwieństwie do wilkołaka ma świeży oddech. Zwierzę dość leniwe, czasem nie chce mu się nawet robić herbaty. Na ogół unika pisania esejów oraz innych form pracy umysłowej na rzecz pisania listów, emocjonalnych notek oraz zwyczajnego tęsknego patrzenia w przestrzeń.

Gryzmaki, pćmy, murkwie*

We're reading Lem's Cyberiada. It's terribly cold outside and although it's not like I don't have other things to read for class, I really prefer reading this.

Back when I was younger and more naive, I thought more people realized that Solaris was not merely a movie in which George Clooney doesn't play a doctor, but, primarily, good book. One that makes you think twice before you swim in the ocean again, lest it should be a god of some kind.

Stories in The Cyberiad don't seek to provoke theological fears. They're daunting in a different way: the linguistic ingenuity of the inventors Trurl and Klapaucius makes my head spin. After reading "Trurl's Electronic Bard" I sat down to write my final paper in the literature and theory course (last semester). Barthes, Kristeva, and a poetry machine that made planets explode. On the whole, I find most attempts at weaving pop-lit into a theoretical argument forced, because it's usually too formulaic to propose any novel perceptions of reality. After all, The DaVinci Code didn't start a religious schism. It only made the claims about Jesus' potential marriage more dubious, if anything.

With Lem, the label sci-fi complicates things more than explains them. You can of course find some guys in spacesuits in Lem. If you're looking for them. But in his fables of artificial intelligence you'll also find intimations of present-day technology dilemmas, the internet, and post-humanism (if you give the thinking ocean in Solaris some more thought).

In the 1990s, Lem became more skeptical of technological progress and switched to non-fiction. He would say that he was living in a state of constant amazement that the world became what he had unintentionally prophesied in his fiction.

You can read a good bit of The Cyberiad here and think about what he possibly could have meant. I don't really know.

*Sadly, the story featuring those creatures was not included in the google books excerpts, so I have no idea what they're called in English.