sun-reading

Two of my favorite pastimes from childhood: 

(1) whiling away the hours lost in a book (and, being the world's slowest reader, I can take care of a lot of hours with just one book)

(2) tumbling in the backyard (when I wasn't on the balance beam or sprinting toward the vaulting horse at the gym)

I wish I could still do those things, whenever I wanted.

Yesterday afternoon I spent a few hours in a grassy field, enjoying the sunshine and one of the Murakami novels I had picked up at the library the day before. There may have been a few handstands and cartwheels in there, too. It's hard to say for sure.

I just finished the book. It was my fifth Murakami title in just a couple of months (see note re: world's slowest reader, above). I have two more waiting for me on my bookshelf, and I intend to get my hands on all of his published (and translated—since I don't read Japanese) work before year's end. 

I'm addicted.

I could, if I tried, craft a passable explanation of why Haruki Murakami's narrative is so gripping. I could analyze his techniques of character development, explore the effects of his writing's structural and stylistic characteristics, offer a few examples of his especially inventive imagery, attempt to bring to light the underlying themes that are at once repulsive and magnetic, absurdly particular and painfully universal.

That's what I've been trained to do, after all.

But I won't.

Having an academic background in literary analysis helps me to appreciate more deeply the nuances of good writing, in other words, to wrap my head around the form of what I already sensed with my intuition. But one thing that's really nice about reading books outside of school is that I can just read them and enjoy them without having to explain to anyone else why I like them or, more precisely, how and/or why the author achieves the effect that he does with his writing. Ugh. See what I mean?

My point is: Murakami is a gem of a fiction writer. So far I love his work. You might not. And that's okay. And I won't ask you for a detailed analysis explaining why. But I'd say it's worth a try. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, as recommended to me, is a good one to start with.

ten times ten and seven times seven

This is my one-hundredth post on Etxerantz.

As it happens, never in the first ninety-nine posts did I mention where the name etxerantz comes from. It is a Basque word, etxe meaning "house" or "home," -rantz being the directive case suffix (itself a compound of the allative -ra, "(going) to," and the destinitive -rentzat, "for"), indicating "toward." Hence the full title, Etxerantz - Toward Home. Now you know: both where the name comes from, and how nerdy I am. But you probably had a pretty good idea of the latter already.

I wanted to do something special to commemorate my hundredth post. Like it or not, I am conditioned to measure accomplishments in numbers. And the number 100, in our base-ten society and double-is-better culture (like it or not), is kind of a big deal. My first blog topped out at 55 posts before I retired it; interestingly, the next one ended up with exactly 55 posts as well. (In its defense, it was meant to be short-lived, documenting only my five-week stay in Peru.) My photo blog is marching steadily toward its centennial, but, being very young still, shan't celebrate the big three digits until February. Having reached one hundred posts here helps me to be optimistic about the future of this writing space. I hope to celebrate with you many hundreds more.

Let's do one thing at a time, though, shall we? The task at hand is, or at least my desire was, to write a special commemorative centennial post. However, I did not come up with anything meaningfully worthy of such a weighty calling, and rather than spend more time brooding over it, thus unnecessarily delaying the next etxerantz installment--who really cares that it's the one immediately following the ninety-ninth, anyway?--I opted to post something that has nothing to do with the number 100 (though number 3 under the second category comes pretty close).

That said, one might be surprised by how much time and energy I managed to put into what one might have expected to be something of a throwaway blog post. Ah, but I take these silly lists seriously, you see. I'm doing my duty here (not that I don't enjoy it): I was tagged, after all. And I liked Vanessa's variation on the sevens theme. That was a lot of v's. Here's my own slightly modified edition:

7 Things I Can Do:
1. ride a bike
2. write
3. host a slumber party
4. surprise people by speaking Spanish when they least expect it
5. get lost in strange cities (and enjoy the experience thoroughly)
6. play the oboe (and English horn, when I can get my hands on one)
7. cartwheels

7 Things I Cannot Do:
1. speed-read
2. fly a plane
3. control the size of my netflix queue
4. fall asleep with cold feet
5. understand everything
6. ski
7. survive without water

7 Favorite Foods:
1. lomo saltado
2. tacos al pastor
3. tofu
4. pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream
5. costa pork salad
6. snow day black bean soup (it's kind of a family recipe)
7. chocolate (pretty much any variety, but especially the hot, drinkable kind)

7 Books I am Currently Reading (or at least intending to read in the near future)
1. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
2. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
3. Casi una mujer by Esmeralda Santiago
4. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
5. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
6. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
7. A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters

7 Songs That I am Currently Listening to Obsessively *Note: if you follow no other link on this page, you really ought to click on the one labeled "Elephants on Parade." you won't regret it.*
1. Headphones by I'm From Barcelona
2. Airport Surroundings by Loney, Dear
3. Face to Face on High Places by School of Seven Bells
4. To Cure a Weakling Child + Boy/Girl Song by Adem
5. Mirando by Ratatat
6. Elephants on Parade by Podington Bear
7. Incubator by A.R.S.

7 Favorite Words:
1. cacophony
2. luciérnaga (Spanish for firefly)
3. Flugzeug (German for airplane, literally "flying stuff")
4. ma'muaang (my best shot at transliteration. Thai for "mango")
5. matzaqik (Maya K'iche', said at parting and roughly equivalent to "take care;" literally "don't fall")
6. q'omer (Quechua for green. the sound transcribed q' might be my favorite phoneme.)
7. sassafras

7 Travel Destinations Currently High on my Wishlist:
1. Toronto
2. Bolivia
3. Chile
4. Lassen Volcanic Park
5. Iceland
6. Berlin
7. Australia (all of it. yes, I know it's a whole continent. could take a while to save up enough vacation time.)

and now for something lighter

Paulette Huntinova (aka Paul Hunt) at the 1988 USA-USSR Gymnastics Summit:




(if you liked that, check the youtube vaults for his beam & bars routines)

go uzbekistan go!

In our post-Renaissance society, there is a tendency to value most highly the man or the woman who is the best at everything, but my personal preference in Olympic gymnastics is not for the all-around competitions but for the individual event finals. This is where several relatively unknown gymnasts get their chance to shine, if but for one brief moment, on their element of expertise. True, often the all-around best gymnast figures prominently in these competitions as well, but there is also a good chance that a medal-winning performance on any given apparatus is delivered by a gymnast who did not even qualify for the all-around final.

I have been supplementing the primetime network coverage of Olympic gymnastics, which isn't quite enough for me, with video footage from nbcolympics.com, whose video offerings essentially allow you to watch every minute of every competition, with the option of focusing on a particular apparatus or a particular grouping of gymnasts. While I haven't the time to watch all of it, I have seen some excellent performances from the preliminary competition that didn't make it to primetime. So, I have my eye on some specific gymnasts that I will be looking out for in the event finals. Most of them are on neither the American nor the Chinese team; indeed, many of them come from countries which do not have a full team competing in this year's Olympic gymnastics competition.

Take a look at my favorite contender on my favorite men's event, at last year's world championships. Not the best quality video, but just try and tell me that's not beautiful gymnastics.




All of my picks, by event:

Men

Floor - Diego Hypolito (Brazil)
Pommel horse - Alexander Artemev (USA)
Rings - Matteo Morandi (Italy)
Vault - Leszek Blanik (Poland)
Parallel bars - Anton Fokin (Uzbekistan)
High bar - Epke Zonderland (Netherlands)

Women

Vault - Anna Pavlova (Russia)
Uneven bars - He Kexin (China)
Balance beam - Nastia Liukin (USA)
Floor - Daiane Santos (Brazil)

For reference, here are the individual event rankings for men and women.

Gymnastics event finals are spread out over three days of competition: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I'll be watching; will you?