Coffee Breath

I'm sitting in Unicorn reading the newspaper, listening to Shosta 4, and suddenly the humor slaps me with gusto. A large man wearing a thin mustache and holding his belly laughing with deliberate power. In a sinister way I think. That's what's coming through my headphones, molded from earwax; if that doesn't steel your breath to a deep metal-hue then I'm not sure what will. But then again who am I to pass judgement.

Love in the time of Boredom

I once told friends that life around me tasted bland, like my mind's tongue had turned into a dusty piece of cardboard. I feel now that I was right. But I can't help from thinking how hackneyed my feelings are, how utterly and exactly average. At the risk of sounding like I need gallons of self-pity poured down my throat, i recall a time when I went to the doctor in high school for a check up and was confused to hear that I was exactly average height and average weight; someone please tell me I have average sentiments as well. Thankfully I have been successfully bred to have a violent gut-reaction to average-ness, so that I feel horrible about it. In a society where labeling is a thinly-veiled substitute for intellect and value, the paradox seems to be lost on everyone including me, or, rather, its simply accepted and brushed under the rug.

What is needed is a firm, irrefutable passion to walk through the door wearing robes of thyme and singing odes of joy at the top of its translucent lungs that fill the entire room, wall to wall. I need to drown in an endless golden pond, going down and down to its depths weighted by my own, seeing singing fish holding lutes with their mouths full; a lightness like day-dreaming. Mmm... cloudberries. I'm glad I no nothing of poetry. Imagine the trouble I'd get in if I did.

I just read that McCain proposed forming an organization of true "democratic" states to promote and protect the democratic spirit, something he says the UN is hopelessly failing at. Discuss.

Spring Inspiration

or lack there of. This spring quarter ranks unmistakeably and prominently among the tired and soiled dregs of the past 5 years of college quarters. Outside the sun shines, flowers blossom, trees regain foliage, hyped students fresh from their winter hide-aways run around on fields of new grass throwing flirtatious glances at one another. Impervious to all the world's reinvigorated sparkle, I sit thinking of things I should be thinking about, not doing any of them. And there are indeed important things that need to be done right now (as I write about doing them), like making sure the Registrar knows that I'm graduating next month.

but it ruffles the feathers of my equanimity. i dont picture myself as the lazy, unmotivated type, but that's exactly what I have become over the last few weeks. it would be a cop out to lay the blame on senioritis, but what else is there. I am tired of the classes, the homework that doesn't lead anywhere, that seems so incongruous to what I feel. and online TV doesnt help at all. its probably the best worst part of the internet. i'm looking forward to lausanne where internet connections are scarce and email isnt the default crutch i lean on everytime i'm in my apartment. with graduation just around the corner, lets all hope for a gentle end to this chapter.

Summer list addendum

Reading This Side of Paradise has added some members to my reading list [1][2]:

Rupert Brooke: Collected poems
Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Tennyson: suggestions?
Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality, Social Contract
Shaw: Pygmalion (maybe)
Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned
Oppen
Faulkner: A Fable
T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land

5 best things post-trip

This article is just too fun to pass up. Famous outdoor athletes name their 5 favorite things about returning to civilization after an extended trip into the brush.

Fun Snowboarding/Skiing Video

I found this video over on the GoBlog earlier. Great clips of some beautiful carving and even cooler paragliding/skiing.

EXTREME - RIDE THE PLANETS
by tv8montblanc

Teton Gravity Research

If you're into cliff jumping on skis, or even if you've never done it but still consider it a worthwhile way to wile away those empty hours, then you may find this video from the Teton Gravity Research site riveting:

http://www.tetongravity.com/viewer/Clip_RECORDCLIFFHUCK.aspx

Rafters Get Last Look at the Great Bend of the Yangtze

"A year from now, it will be impossible to repeat the eight-day rafting trip we just completed down the Great Bend of the Yangtze. This 120-mile section of the Yangtze, like many of China's rivers, will be dammed in 2009. It was amazing to experience this world-class stretch of whitewater before it changes forever...."

View some pictures and read the rest of the story>>>

Summer reading list

Going through Daniel Marcus' book on Number Fields, completing the proofs of the elementary results about number rings in Microsoft Word is getting tedious so I'm extending my break again. In the same vain as the post on my summer poetry list, I'm starting to compile another list. The two are really one list, but we can think of them as subgroups or, more aptly, orders. ok -

Goethe: Götz von Berlichingen, and maybe Faust part 1


Bertrand Russell: Principles of Mathematics

Wittgenstein: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics), or Philosophische Bemerkungen (Philosophical Remarks) if I don't like Russell's

Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise, The Last Tycoon


Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Mann: The Magic Mountain
Hesse: Steppenwolf(!), The Glass Bead Game


Nietzsche: The Genealogy of Morals

Secondaries:

Schiller: William Tell (maybe)
Sophocles: Antigone
Vasilii Semenovich Grossman: Life and Fate

Have any recommendations?

Poets to read

I'm taking a break from writing my thesis, which is due in a week, and I started thinking about all the post-graduation reading I'd like to do. And this got me thinking about poetry. With the internet at my fingertips, I searched for poets I'd like to invite to sit on my never-ending reading list. Given the sheer volume of the poetic repertoire, one can easily imagine the difficulty anyone has in narrowing down the potentials to a manageable collection. I've come up with the following poets so far. Feel free to add or subtract, keeping in mind my position as a genuine new-comer to the world of poetry and the limited amount of time and energy I have to gobble up these works. (Remember, this is not a complete list, but rather a realistic list of the poets I can approach this summer and next year)

Homer: the Iliad and/or Odyssey
Dante: Divine Comedy
Shakespeare: sonnets
Lord Tennyson: Ulysses

Emily Dickinson

Dylan Thomas

Keats

Sylvia Plath


What does your list look like?