still life with bottles and mini-blinds

This is what happens when you go shopping at Whole Foods at 9:30pm with only a vague impression of what you are shopping for.

two reasons why i love california in the summer

1. Outdoor yoga.

Once a week I end the work day with yoga class, on a shady spot of lawn outside tile-roofed, arcade-lined building with a Spanish name on a peaceful, idyllic campus. Bliss. Then when I come home I feel like dancing. And I usually do. Like an idiot. But you'll have to take my word for it, since there are as of yet no witnesses to this phenomenon.

2. Fresh apricots.

When I was growing up—wait. I'm still doing that. Let's try that again: when I was a kid in Maryland, we always had dried apricots in the pantry. Always. Many a school lunch included a little sandwich bag (or snack bag, once they became available—remember how great they were?) full of dried apricots. Though I never grew to flat-out dislike them, I often tired of them. Every once in a while I wondered why other kids seemed not to come from environments so heavily saturated with dried apricots.

At the time of year when fresh apricots became available in the stores, Mom would always bring some home. But she was never satisfied. They were never as good as her memories of the fresh apricots of her California youth. I never understood what the fuss was about. I mean, I've always loved fresh fruit. Even in the days (and they were many—sorry Mom&Dad) when my I-will-eat-this list contained about fifteen specific items, fruit was always acceptable. But fresh apricots never impressed me. The ones I tried at home in Maryland were for the most part bland, mealy, or worse: both. I didn't see the point, but Mom kept buying them, kept trying and hoping that they would live up to her expectations of the apricot in its most exalted form.

Well. Mom: my apologies. Now I understand.

PS: if in the course of your grocery shopping you happen to see angelcots, get them. They are called Saintly with good reason.

we can still afford to not make sense at all

Fanfarlo: a British band with a Swedish frontman and a name that may well be Esperanto. Never heard of them? Neither had I.

On Monday, NPR began streaming Fanfarlo's new album, Reservoir, as part of the All Songs Considered "Exclusive First Listen" series.

I listened. I liked it. A lot. So I bought it. For a dollar. And it was totally legal.

The musicians, "in the spirit of 'why not,'" as they put it, are offering a download of their new album for US$1 until July 4th, after which the CD & vinyl will hit stores.

Check out this video of Fanfarlo playing "Finish Line" in an English garden (naturally). For more, hear the whole album over at NPR, and find more audio and video plus the $1 download at the band's website.

Guess which one I have a crush on.

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.

okay, okay

Every once in a while, when the planets are aligned just right... I go to relief society and, in spite of myself, find it a little bit wonderful.

nevermind that we're nearly the same age

My baby came home on Saturday, April 18, 2009. 

She is 29.5 inches tall and weighs—um, I have no idea, but she's light and speedy! 

[click to enlarge]

Isn't she a beauty?

clearly, i do not really know portuguese

I just like to pretend that I do.

Today it was brought to my attention that in my advertising a talk about a Brazilian film, I have been spelling the film's title in two different languages. It starts out in Portuguese just fine—Tropa de—but abruptly switches to French—Élite. 

Oops.

Incidentally, the title of the talk does mention Foucault. So maybe I was just channeling him.

For the record, I don't really know French, either. As with Portuguese, though, that doesn't always stop me from pretending that I do. 

And now that I'm talking about French, I just want to add: isn't Saint-Saëns such a perfect name for a French composer? It just sounds so French (this from the girl who only pretends that she speaks French), and with just a bit of imagination, the Saëns sounds something like song. Plus, he wrote good stuff. So whenever I see or hear the name Saint-Saëns and I proceed to hear in my head that jaunty, guttural French laugh (I don't know how to spell it, but maybe Vanessa does? You know what I mean, right? Think Ha-ha-ha, only rhyming with Saëns), it is a gesture of endearment, mon ami, and not of mocking.

fellowshipping in the 21st century, or, why i still don't go to relief society

In my inbox this morning:

Okay, okay, so I took a little itsy bit of photoshopetic license. But seriously, a form letter email? Yeah, that really makes me want to go next week.

It's too bad they bcc'd us on this. I'd like to know who the other apostates are so that we could get together for some remedial sunday school.