…the almost right word

For nearly ten years, I was a vegetarian. Okay, a pescetarian — Because honestly, how can anyone give up sushi?

It was actually an easy transition into vegetarianism. I was never a big meat-eater. At a young age, I knew that I didn’t want to eat meat.

The first time I realized this was on a trip with my dad. We were heading on one of our usual father-daughter camping trips in our old-school, Volkswagen van. He was patting the steering wheel while Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young played on the stereo. He stepped on the gas in order to pass a freight truck. As we gained speed, I noticed that this truck wasn’t filled with boxes, but with sheep. They seemed almost stacked on top of one another, as if they were just freight. This image haunted me, but I also couldn’t bare to look away. I was, and have always been, an animal lover.

Years later, I remember celebrating a Thanksgiving. The turkey was done, sitting on a cutting board in the kitchen. I felt for the bird. For a moment, I wished that I could rewind time and spare its life. Yes, it’s cliché, but I promised myself, in that moment, that I would give up meat.

At the beginning of this year, something changed. It wasn’t as if I woke up one day and thought, “That’s it. This vegetarianism thing has been fun, but I’m ready to be a carnivore again.” To be honest, I never thought I’d go back to eating meat. I was quite comfortable with my dietary choices. I never second-guessed myself. Suddenly, it became something I craved. I would watch friends devour a hamburger and my mouth watered with desire. It seemed that nothing would satisfy me like a Reuben sandwich or a cheeseburger. So I did it.

I was wine tasting in Northern California. We stopped at a small deli and the only thing on the menu I could consider was a Reuben. Needless to say, I bit the bullet. I loved every second of it.

Last night, while enjoying a wonderful Elk Tenderloin with Garlic Mash Potatoes, Morels and Applewood Smoked Bacon, a thought occurred to me: Did my vegetarianism have anything to do with my ten-year on-again-off-again struggle with depression? Could meat be a serotonin-booster, like exercise? Could this have been part of the reason that, after leaving home and going to college, I withdrew and became the most anti-social version of myself I could imagine?

Today, I feel so far from depression. Could meat have been part of my cure?

Although I’ve seen a few films that I wouldn’t recommend, these two are certainly worthwhile:

Kids directed by Larry Clark — I first saw this when I was sixteen. Needless to say, I never got it. I was too young to understand the point, the message of the film. However, watching it now, ten years later, it hits me hard. This movie is historical, whether you appreciate it or not. It speaks honestly of our generation, of children growing into teenagers, growing into adults. I think it’s easy for some to ignore the harsh reality in which we live — we can get HIV, we are not invincible. Wikipedia says that Larry Clark is known for casting first-time actors in his work. Indeed, this was the theatrical debut for the four main characters — all of whom went on to become professionals: Rosario Dawson is Ruby (no introduction needed, but if I must: The 25th Hour, Rent, Sin City etc. You know her…she’s hot. ‘Nuff said); Chloë Sevigny is Jennie (professional model, also in Broken Flowers, Zodiac and currently Big Love); Leo Fitzpatrick is the notorious Telly (Fitzpatrick hasn’t done much, but he has made appearances on Law and Order and Carnivàle); Justin Pierce is Casper. Pierce had the potential to be a Hollywood success case, just like his co-stars Dawson and Sevigny. In 2000, he was discovered dead in a Las Vegas hotel room — he had hung himself. The dark nature of the film was only emphasized after Pierce’ suicide. I cannot separate Casper, the character, from Pierce, the person. Overall, Kids is truly haunting.

Grizzly Man directed by Werner Herzog — Herzog is a German filmmaker who has worked on the production of nearly 60 films. With Grizzly Man, Herzog explores the world of Timothy Treadwell, an enthusiast of the dangerous brown grizzly bear. Treadwell lived among grizzlies for thirteen summers in Alaska, filming over 100 hours worth of their interactions. He befriended them, gave them names and observed as a peaceful protector. The film is a splicing of this footage, accompanied by Herzog’s narrative. As an audience, we see the progressive demise of Treadwell’s desire to interact with human society. Instead, Treadwell retreats further and further into his life among the wild. By the end of the film, Herzog exposes us to various takes Treadwell did in order to wrap up his last season in Alaska. In these scenes, Treadwell is furious — he felt targeted by the National Park Service, he felt misunderstood. Days after he filmed these last scenes, he was attacked and killed by an angry grizzly. The movie is reminiscent of Into the Wild or John Muir, but the footage is real. Herzog honors this reality and the man behind it.

One of the most influential skateboarders of all time is “re-emering,” claims the NYTimes. Serving the final months of a four year jail sentence in a half-way house, Jay Adams is hoping to attend the upcoming X Games in Los Angeles, California.

Adams was a member of the Z-Boys, the skateboarding rebels sponsored by Zephyr Skateboards in the mid-1970s. You’ve probably heard of him from the movie, Lords of Dogtown, or the documentary by his pal, Stacy Peralta, Dogtown and Z-Boys. He has been called “the original seed,” “the soul” of the Dogtown movement — he was spontaneous, creative, and ruthless. Adams said, in an interview via mail while he was in prison, “I believed we paved the road people are going down right now. Somebody’s always gotta be the first ones. We just got a li’l bit radical and rowdy before anybody else.”

He was originally arrested in 2005, after being caught in a Hawaii-California drug deal. Adams is now 47 years old and still struggling with the aftereffects of a nearly life-long drug addiction. Since his release, he has been the facilities manager at an indoor skate-park in Southern California. He literally cannot escape his passion for the sport: “I love skateboarding, always have and always will…I get the same feeling now as I did when I was a seven-year-old boy.”

Scenes from Dogtown and Z-Boys show Adams as a punk-kid, always pushing the boundaries and questioning authority. He was, and remains today, a revolutionary.

…and hijinks ensued tagged me with a meme. As you’ve probably already realized, I’m not a big fan of the whole meme-movement, but I’ll play every now and then…I guess.

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It looks like General Augusto Pinochet’s daughter is entering the political realm. The BBC reports that Lucía Pinochet Hiriart will run in a Santiago municipal election in October. In 2007, Lucía, along with her mother and siblings, were all detained based on the suspicion of aiding Pinochet in embezzlement during the dictatorship. The eldest son was the only not cleared of the charges.

In 2006, Lucía praised her father for having fought a “flame of freedom” during the military junta of 1973. She had intended to run for an independent seat in Parliament in 2007 prior to her arrest. Although a municipal position has limited power, speculations are being made that the acquisition of this seat would “test the political climate for the 2009 presidential election.”

The country’s first female president was elected in 2006 — Michelle Bachelet was one of the many who disappeared during Pinochet’s regime. She was held and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, a notorious detention center in Santiago (I visited Villa Grimaldi in my time in Santiago. They’ve turned the concentration camp into a public park of sorts, commemorating the deaths and losses with beautiful trees and statues, while still mainting the enormous watchtower that existed during the dictatorship). In 1975, Bachelet and her mother were exiled to Australia. She did not return to Chile until 1979, when the totalitarian regime was brought to an end with a plebiscite. Despite Bachelet’s personal experience with such atrocities, she has led Chile on a path of true progress. In 2007, she passed a law allowing girls, 14 years and older, to receive the morning-after pill without their parent’s consent. This is an enormous step in a nation which has been controlled by the Church for decades.

I can only wonder if progress like this will continue if Chile’s citizens support the election of Pinochet’s offspring.

Contrariwise.org was originally a website used for the owner’s high school photography assignment. Today, she maintains a series of literary tattoo photographs — “tattoos based on books, poems, lyrics, and many other things.” It appears that many tattoo fans like Kurt Vonnegut, The Little Prince, E.E. Cummings and Walt Whitman. This site is literally tattoo inspiration for the literary.

♦ On the subject of tattoos and blogs, check out The Tattooed Mama’s All Things Cupcake blog which features a page of cupcake tattoos!

Editorial Postscript: Apparently I am not the only one noticing this blog! Paper Cuts, a NYTimes book blog, just published a post about it, as did the London Telegraph and Gawker.

Unfortunately my head must have been buried in the proverbial sand when the art exhibit, The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos, came to Santa Fe. The term references the many people who were kidnapped, tortured, or murdered during the totalitarian regimes of Latin America in the late 20th century. This chapter of history was the main motivation behind my choice to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Politics and Latin American Studies — I was, and still am, enamored by the struggle of countries like Argentina and Chile. During the 1960s and 1970s, Americans were fighting for Civil Rights and “Making Love, Not War.” Meanwhile, just south of us, people were losing their freedom and basic rights in order to secure economic progress and a “free market.” In Argentina, 30,000 people “disappeared.” When General Pinochet took control in Santiago, Chile (1973) and overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, 40,000 people were imprisoned in a makeshift concentration camp at the National Stadium. Locker rooms and corridors became torture halls. Today, the stadium is still used to host concerts, soccer games, as well as a public gymnasium. In fact, when I spent a year living in Chile, I saw Shakira perform there. I was in awe with the knowledge that this contemporary place of celebration was once used during the ugly dictatorship.

The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos is an art exhibit traveling across North and South America. The show features 15 Latin American artists who have all personally experienced the affects of these regimes. Work ranges from photographs to installations and includes simple yet also extravagant, emotionally charged pieces. In 2007, The New York Times reviewed the exhibit:

Whatever its practical results may be, it gives an overpowering sense of the sheer statistical enormity of loss. You think you’ve reached the end; you turn a corner and find more…This all may seem long ago and far away to us, but every Thursday in Buenos Aires, groups of women continue to hold their protests demanding a full accounting of their children’s fates.

It’s true, Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo convene weekly to remember the disappeared. These countries are still fighting for retribution. Although General Pinochet was arrested and put on trial, he never received punishment for the atrocities his government inflicted on the Chilean public (Pinochet died in 2006).

This is what art should be — a way to remember, to question and challenge; a form of activism in a world where power is less and less in the hands of the people.

So does mine. But sometimes, I actually do wear it like that in public.

Ramble John Krohn goes by the pseudonym RJD2 and he’s badass. Clearly influenced by DJ Shadow, RJD2’s first solo album was released in 2002. Dead Ringer is a genius mix of samples, hip hop, electronic and ambient music. The New York Times called Dead Ringer an “extraordinarily fluid, meticulous disc of instrumental hip-hop.” RJD2’s second album, Since We Last Spoke (2004), incorporated more of a rock flavor, and The Third Hand (2007) departed from sample-based hip hop/rock to feature RJD2’s own singing and musicianship. Originally, RJD2 was signed to Definitive Jux, an independent record label that hosts artists like Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, El-P, Del the Funkee Homosapien and more. Recently however, he has joined forces with XL Recordings (Beck, Radiohead, M.I.A, and then some) to create a more poppy sound.

Places you may have heard RJD2? Prime, Wimbledon, CSI, and various skateboarding/snowboarding videos.

Specific tracks to check out? Ghostwriter, The Gentle Rain, and De l’alouette.

According to wikipedia, RJD2 currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I know I’m probably one of the few remaining women in the United States who has not yet seen Sex and the City, the movie. I don’t mean to imply that I’m not interested — I watched the show like everyone else. I just wasn’t prepared to run out and pay ten bucks to sit in an uncomfortable theater and surround myself with people who actually answer their phones during films (!!). I’ll wait patiently for Netflix to deliver, thank you.

Apparently a book is mentioned in the movie that everyone immediately googled (or g••gl•d, as the un would say) — “Love Letters of Great Men.” A New York Times book blog informs us that this, once fictional, book will now be published. It’s true, the collection of love letters never actually existed, but the film references letters that are real. So publisher Macmillan has decided to create it.

Darwin and Flaubert, Mozart and Twain, Browning and Wilde — “every shade of love is here,” the book site proclaims.

Perhaps this is a marketing ploy. Perhaps women across the world have been searching for this book since the film premiered. But honestly, don’t we have tons of books of letters to read?

Hulu.com
Free streaming video of all kinds of shows: St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, Buffy, WKRP in Cincinnati, Picket Fences. The video looks pretty good, and, like we said, for now, it’s free.

I have yet to find another site that offers as much as this one. Then again, I should probably just stay away from television altogether. If you are interested, however, Hulu offers an array of classics (i.e. Party of Five, as well as Battlestar Galactica!) — Go on and check it out, you know you want to.

It may have taken me two years to finally watch The Lives of Others, but it certainly won’t take me another two to watch it a second time — This was the first thing I thought of while finishing the film — I must see it again.

Leben der Anderen, Das chronicles East Germany in 1984, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this period, many German citizens were called upon to watch their comrades and report supsicious activity. It was typical of dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, etc. In a sense, more recent acts of national security against terrorists are not very different — Arrest anyone whose loyalty is uncertain. In the film, one man strays from his path to professional success by withholding information from the “Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, better known as the Stasi—the state security service, which, by the mid-nineteen-eighties, employed more than ninety thousand personnel.”*

I don’t want to give away too much of the story — One of my personal pet peeves is spoiling a film with the review. The movie is quiet, yet haunting. It captures a piece of history that is easily forgotten, yet just as easily repeated.

[Editorial Note: ...the almost right word is experimenting with capitalization. Please be patient and, if you have any opinions on the matter, let me know!]

* Anthony Lane of The New Yorker: “Guilty Parties“

dorothea lange has always been one of my favorite photographers. she won me over with the classic “migrant mother” (shown here), which is “one of the most reproduced photographs in history.” an m.i.t. professor has chronicled lange’s work in a new book titled Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field. in addition to the photographs, the book includes notes and descriptions written by lange herself.

originally a portrait photographer in san francisco, she left behind her wealthy clients to delve into the depression era. in fact, she was part of the legendary group of photographers who documented the conditions of the american people during the new deal. the work of these photographers was supposed to “help build public support for government improvement programs.” the book concentrates on lange’s most prolific year — 1939. during that year, lange took thousands of photographs in addition to documenting field reports. she was hoping to re-characterize her professional identity:

She decided then to “concentrate upon people, only people. All kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn’t.” Whether or not the conversion was really so melodramatic, Lange’s transformation from portrait photographer of the urbane wealthy to “field investigator, photographer” (the title of her first job with the federal government in 1935), was life-changing.

i am enamored with revolutionaries, artists who challenge the mainstream. dorothea lange was, indeed, one of these revolutionary artists — “We unearthed and discovered what had been… neglected, or not known.” in 1965, lange died of cancer. late in her career, she commented on her work and her process: “No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually. … I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.”

quotes and facts from dorothea lange: daring to look, at npr.org.

And it’s hard to want to stay awake
When everyone you need, they all seem to be asleep.
And you wonder if you missed your dream.

– death cab for cutie

it may be the only spontaneous thing in mine.

a friend sent me an article, published by new york magazine, titled “au revoir, new york ‘literary’ scene.” the article is about a blog post that caught the mag’s eye — the revolution will be tumblrized, written by a 20 year old nyu student, jessica roy (of this blog). she’s a typical indie kid — dark eyeliner, a headband on her head, blogging about “stuff.” this girl, however, “had just recently suffered her first really demoralizing new york media experience.” she wound up at a new york-writers party in “multi-million-dollar brownstone in brooklyn:”

A part of me longed to be absorbed into that elite circle of Ivy-educated literature nuts who have co-opted what it means to be a writer in New York. Because these days, if you’re not with them, you’re being mocked by them. I have thin skin, so I figured the former would be my best bet.

Until the other night, when the people whose Internet personas I had admired appeared to me in the flesh…

It just was all so fucking fake. These people that I had admired my entire New York existence — they all disappointed me. I don’t understand how people can exist in such a dishonest way and still call themselves writers. Isn’t it the responsibility of a writer to be honest? And why would you uphold a conversation with someone whom you’re going to talk shit on while walking back to the G train? They’re living in a box, where they only talk to others who have read Gessen’s book and think it sucks but will tell him it’s brilliant because they need his approval.

I did not move to New York to return to high school, but that’s exactly what it felt like.

in a sense, she appears to be emily gould reincarnated. in case you’re just tuning in, gould is a blogger who published an article (months ago) in the new york times magazine entitled, “exposed,” in which she publicly reevaluated her career and her participation in the controversial manhattan gossip site known as gawker. although i notice similarities between jessica roy’s article and gould’s, roy actually notes that gould was at this disappointing new york writer’s party — she is mentioned in the article as someone who was part of the “demoralizing new york media experience.” roy’s article isn’t nearly as long as gould’s nytimes piece, so…read it.

i recommend it because i get it — i have always believed that i would have to move to new york if i wanted to become a “writer.” i believed i could never “make it” anywhere else. i’m only recently abandoning this concept, and i admit that it’s an ongoing struggle. obviously this girl, jessica, feels similarly: new york = success. unfortunately disappointment can be a big part of this so-called “success.” i know it, even though i haven’t quite experienced it. ::side note…i guess i should give myself some credit for actually having published my writing (thanks to the sfreporter and the santa fean, both of which deemed my stuff publishable). sometimes i forget that i can call myself a writer, but i guess that’s a different story, for a different time::

of course, jessica roy is heading to paris in an effort to escape new york before it poisons her. me? yeah, i’m jealous.

p.s. yesterday’s post at jessica’s blog is titled about that elephant in the room. (a la emily gould herself who, after her nytimes article, acknowledged the “elephant in the room” in a blog post. isn’t there a contradiction here? isn’t jessica claiming that gould is part of the poison?) jessica’s post is a retort to all the petty assumptions one can make after reading the nymag piece — mighty bold of her, if i do say so myself.

i have great respect for websites that highlight quality writing on the internet. indie bloggers (r.i.p.) was about just that. it appears fray does the same. the site has recently morphed into a quarterly series of independently published books. the website states: Fray is the web’s original storytelling magazine, telling true stories online and off since 1996. the first quarterly was titled busted! true stories of getting caught in the act. the website offers a few of the published stories for your sampling pleasure. i particularly enjoyed how i blew it in the 80s and ropeswing season. it appears that their second issue is titled geek: stories of people taking things too seriously which sounds rather intriguing. plus, the artwork on the site is really unusual.

this is the second in a series of posts i am writing about my relationship experiences…more to come.

there is a quote from carrie on sex and the city (that i somehow cannot find) concerning relationship red flags and the ease at which we, as women, ignore them (perhaps men do too?). i have identified with this quote all too well. it often appears that i am capable of ignoring so much in a relationship, i.e. my own happiness.

we met in college. i stayed with him way too long. when i finally gathered the courage to end it, i went back for more.

i knew before we even got involved that it would be a bad idea. i had seen a good friend experience horrible things with him — endless arguing and emotional abuse. somehow, i convinced myself that things would be different between he and i, things would be better, we would make more sense. it took me a long time to admit that the relationship was unhealthy. it first had to cost me a few friendships. then, it had to cost me any sense of financial stability (he had no job and i was almost entirely supporting him). we were codependent, to say the least.

he screamed at me almost every night — i would wake up, at some point, and realize that he had all of the blankets. when i attempted to pull some away from him, and cover myself, he would yell at me, call me names. every time, i swore to myself that i’d end it in the morning. it continued like that for almost a year. once, he gave me an unexpected gift — a beautiful orchid. hours later, when the arguing began, he used the gift as ammunition. he was an addict, and i fell, effortlessly, into his addictions.

i saw all the red flags, i just chose to ignore them. the emotional abuse worsened over time. it was as if he had no concept of me as a human being. he never knew how to respect me.

what am i trying to do with this post? i want to write honestly. i want to be true to myself and my past. i don’t want to gloss over my errors in judgment or the way these experiences affected me. i want to delve into the world of emotional abuse without naming people, without painting a picture of myself as some helpless, love-struck fool. emotional abuse is hard to recognize — people yell and argue, people slam doors out of anger, but there is a line whereupon it becomes abuse and, for the abused individual, it becomes self-destructive. i want to address this line, this vague notion of abuse that is not manifested physically. emotional abuse can be even more dangerous, more consuming. it can be easy to ignore. it can become so familiar that you seek it out. perhaps, on some level, you believe you deserve it.

i must have believed this. why else would i have subjected myself to such treatment for so long?

one night, after we had broken up (we were still seeing one another for an ongoing bout of the unhealthiest break-up sex known to humankind), he called to come over. i finally stood up for myself — i told him no. later that night, while changing in my room, i was startled when i noticed someone at my window. he was watching me, waiting for me to notice him and let him in. i did. that was the last time we saw one another.

one might expect an act of “closure.” we never had one and i’m okay with that. i have vague memories of missed calls and unanswered text messages — i was finally able to ignore his attempts to reach me. i don’t mean to imply that i “learned my lesson.” sometimes you have to repeat bad habits before you realize that they’re just that.

thanks to the random reader viewer in crete, nebraska
you were number 2,000
sorry, i have no prizes to offer