10x1000=2008

[explicit]

for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me yet, my dad really wants an organized catalogue of all the movies they own. being the dutiful daughter he's always dreamed of, i've recently spent a whooole lot of time working on that. data-entry can be mindnumbing, but my boundless love for lists and categories has trumped all that.

on the other hand, definitions have been nagging at me. see, if the point is to make movie retrieval more straightforward, the system (i.e. um, me) needs to make good guesses about genre. but genres aren't always intuitive... and certainly they're not objective. case in point: the american president - drama or comedy? (it turns out aaron sorkin himself doesn't think in those categories.) what makes a movie "romantic?" what qualifies as "action?"

oh, and what is a mystery?

apostoholic

i've been thinking a lot about traditions lately. my dad eschews them on principle while my mom is more ambivalent. regardless, we have family traditions, most of them unspoken (like so many other aspects of our clan). tonight, we're sharing christmas dinner, replete with such classic family motifs as:

- my dad and i trying to make my mom laugh and forget the stress (these attempts tend to make things worse but they're about all we have in our arsenal :S)
- senseless discussions about wardrobe and hairstyle
- dad remembering to play chauffeur but forgetting to offer people drinks
- reminding myself not to say, "i'm ok" when manu (my dad's oldest friend's dad) asks me how i am, lest he should muse, "oh, just ok?"
- james consistently impressing me with how well he fits into the family
- wicked appetizer menu (i'm in charge this year!)
- sarmale cu mamaliga!!! (cabbage rolls with corn "mush")
- discussions about philosophy, religion, books, family news, and politics, conducted in at least two languages, sometimes simultaneously (poor james!)
- demonstrations that manu knows everything
- james and i fighting over the orange juice
- thoughtful gifts
- missing ioana and dov

in the old days, cori and i (and, eventually, james) did all the cleaning while mom and dad drove manu home... this year everyone but mom is packing into the car for a ride downtown.

yet another case of everything/nothing has changed. :)

timeless

watching my parents age terrifies me.

tell me a story...

i love to hear. to close my eyes and imagine the people and crises and triumphs you describe. they needn't be new stories. i dream that reading won't always be a solitary enterprise. maybe that's why i so long to one day have children: they will make a storyteller of me. it's been a long time now since i realized that i could never marry a man who wouldn't read to me at night... or whisper bedtime stories in my ear in the dark stillness.

perhaps that is why the reader has completely overwhelmed me. surely it is not the only reason... but i feel i'm almost drowning in it all.

standing at a distance, from my comfortable seat, my heart shouted it out, plead with him: "you know what you must do! you know what is at stake! put yourself aside!"

but knowing right from wrong is rarely the difficulty: ethics can never grip us, mobilize us, paralyze us, so much as our fears and hurts do.

there is a moment in this movie when one touch, one smile, one infinitesimal drop of kindness might have made a tremendous difference. but it was withheld. because it was impossible. sometimes we find ourselves at the end of our compassion and love. there is only so far any one of us can go, and we are, perhaps, surprised to discover we are at that border. crossing over would be right - so virtuous, so noble, so good - but it is not within our strength. we are at the end of ourselves.

there is pain that goodwill cannot erase. our best hope is to love as fiercely and give as freely as we can - as we can - and learn to forgive ourselves for the rest.

together

"... most mathematicians don't like to be lonely, and they have trouble staying excited about a subject, even if they are personally making progress, unless they have colleagues who share their excitement."

~william p. thurston

play it again...

a friend of a friend challenged his blog's audience to consider what their most frequently listened to songs reveal.

#1 - "another kind of green" by john mayer trio
this is a distillation of exactly what i would want to hear from the man i'm with. even the blackjack allusion is perfect.


#2 - "speed of trees" by ellis paul
i hold this song in tension with the freedom and taste for adventure that love inspire in me... i don't think we have to decide. but "i've grown a head full of make believe" is still a beautiful line.



#3 - "the world ain't slowing down" by ellis paul
like a sad smile, paul's poetry makes me feel that i am not alone in the craziness... it even helps me laugh along.


#4 - "ordinary day" by great big sea
also my ring tone, it's an energizing reminder that it's all going to be ok and there's so much to be grateful for!


#5 - "you can't always get what you want" by band from tv
hugh laurie singing greg house's theme song and mine...

wish list!

updated!

hmmmm

i dreamt it last night. that thing that will never ever happen in real life.
you made a decision, and it was the right one. then we both made life decisions that made it even more right.
we wouldn't have been happy.
sometimes i think that, at least, we would have been less lonely. but is there anything lonelier than being with someone who can't understand you?

it's strange to know it'll never happen. not sad. just... very strange. because, you see, never seems like an awfully long time.

i wish you love.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

seriously. wow.

p.s. two choice quotes from that blog:
"i was 32 when i started cooking; up until then, i just ate."
~ miss julia child

"you never forget a beautiful thing that you have made. even after you eat it, it stays with you - always."
~ julia's instructor, chef bugnard

wish list (under construction)

with 33 days left until i go back to school, i'm composing a holiday wish list... any recommendations?

- prepare a turkey dinner (and find people to feed it to... volunteers?)
- spend an evening playing hoopla, drinking egg nog, and listening to carols. while wearing sweaters. it's a tommy hilfiger ad! [(c) aaron sorkin]
- invest some time in the archives at uoft/york/conrad grebel
- look for a job
- make a snow fort
- work on scrapbooks with mike and kevin
- set up the tree with mom and dad
- read "alias grace"
- see "rachel getting married" and all the other movies i've been missing out on because i live in hamilton
- eat sushi at least once a week (x5)
- draught-proof my apartment
- pad my agatha christie collection
- read two of the textbooks for my "women in xn history" class
- knit or crochet something. (seriously, it just feels wrong not to.)
- finally check out all the music paul has ever recommended to me

secret irony

last sunday's postsecret batch included a picture that has circulated online for some time. it was a photoshopped depiction of what a particularly disgusting ailment might look like and was viscerally, knee-jerk yucky. the secret was something like, "even though i know this isn't real, it still haunts me."

i mentioned some of my reaction here, but i wanted to add this: most of the online debate (at least 120 pages' worth as of tuesday) revolved around a) whether the picture was offensive and b) whether removing it constituted censorship. let's deal with those, for just a minute.

a) corina is very much affected by pictures of dry, cracked soil, maps that emphasize topography, and that scene in splash when daryl hannah's legs turn back into her mer-tail. she just is. i don't have to understand why something upsets her, or be upset by it myself, in order to care enough to protect her from it. so, i warn her when especially gross scenes are coming up on episodes of house. the ridiculous online argument about whether this picture was offensive is a waste of time. people are not offended by the secret or plotting to track down whoever sent it in... they're just viscerally upset by the image. given that little good can come from the picture's presence (see my previous post), why continue upsetting them? to what end?

b) ok, but would removing it be "wrong"? no. frank, the aptly-named founder and moderator of postsecret, picks and chooses what he puts online. from the hundreds of postcards he receives each week, one or two dozen make it to the blog. more make it into his books, but the process nevertheless involves selectivity, the criteria for which are entirely frank's prerogative. hence, the censorship issue is moot.

(actually, this whole debate is moot, because the secrets are new this week, as always. regardless...)

one final note: some people expressed concern that whoever sent the postcard would be hurt by having it removed. i somehow doubt that. part of the goal of the project is to remind us how connected we are. how, even in our darkest secrets, we are not alone. like countless others, this secret resonated with many of us. ironically, by removing the secret, we would have been standing in solidarity with the secret-sharer. we would have been saying, "hey, it haunts us, too. let's stop looking."