Update

How did I not mention this here already? Such an awesome discovery, and I love that the people who found it were from la Musee d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris because that is one of my favorite places on earth (and I saw an amazing whale exhibit there a few years ago!). 

In other news, I had my first big cooking day in a while. Over the course of the evening I made seitan, two different kinds of tofu, and raspberry scones. I don't know if it's because I really felt like cooking or if I was just trying to avoid doing homework, but it worked out pretty well; the seitan turned out to be one of my best batches yet, and my newest room mate, Dan, has never had my scones before. Now I'm just bummin' around, making pathetic attempts at revising my French composition before I go to Joe's parent's house for the 10 o'clock Mad Men, though I'd rather continue reading "Richard II" for Shakespeare class. It's so good! I think I'm going to like the histories best.

I've been back around Eclipse Records lately, and I have basically no self control when faced with a bunch of music I want to buy, so over the past few days I've picked up a few things that I may talk about in the relatively near future.

• Leonard Cohen, Songs of Love and Hate
• Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness
• Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones
• Jawbox, Novelty
• Some kind of Nuggets II promo CD
• M.I.A., Kala
• Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, to revisit my 6th grade self
• Staring at the Sea, a compilation of singles by the Cure that was mysteriously abandoned at the store, so I gave it a good home.
• Nick Cave, From Her to Eternity

In 100% different news, I'm still thinking about Moby-Dick almost constantly. It's weird--I started reading it almost a year ago, and since then it's never really left my mind. I'm still amazed that something I had such low expectations for ended up kind of changing my life (at least in a literary sort of way). I'm getting a little hung up on the idea of re-reading it soon, but I can't be distracted from my goal of reading Ulysses before the summer is over. A goal that, unfortunately, keeps getting more complicated and lengthy.
I was able to talk to my adviser about this plan the other day, and he was kind enough to tell me all the things I'll need to do/read before I even start the book as well as a few things I should be reading while reading Ulysses. Obviously it was very cool of him to help me out, but blaaaaah that just added like, 6 books to my reading list, and those 6 books are only extensions of the Ulysses project! I am going to be so pissed off if this book turns out to suck.

Update/Likes

Oh my god! Jonathan Richman has such dance moves! Awesome. I love this song, and everything else on this album, especially side one. What a weird, wonderful, goofy group of people, and what a great band.

I started Leviathan today, and 30 pages in it's so good! Philip Hoare bounces a lot of his own great insight off of already good ideas from Moby-Dick, and he does it in a way that's sensitive and exciting rather than just redundant or unimaginative.

I also have been productive in the kitchen again recently; no pictures, but in the past two days I've made a good pasta sauce, homemade seitan, chocolate chip and walnut cookies (to go in the cat shaped cookie jar I made in Ceramics this past semester!), seitan steak sandwiches which involved homemade steak sauce, veggie burgers, and a roasted red pepper and sundried tomato spread. I've also discovered that avocado with Annie's Goddess Dressing is the best thing on planet earth. I've been putting that damn dressing on EVERYTHING lately, and hopefully Jordan and I are going to try to make it before she goes back to Alaska in a few weeks.

Also, did I mention the butter sauce? Oh. Oh wow. I guess maybe I've been on a fat kick lately (remember what I say about dressing on avocados?) but man, this stuff is so good. I came across the recipe on Yummy Vegan Dinners, and have made it a few times in the past month or so. It is amazing. Like, probably the best sauce I have ever made. I dice my onions, mince my garlic and just leave them in the sauce 'cause I roll like that, I cut down the amount of Earth Balance by a tablespoon or so, and I actually like mine better with just Hunt's canned tomatoes rather than the fancy schmancy organic ones from the co-op. For some reason the fancy tomatoes taste kind of bitter or something? Maybe I'm just unsophisticated. But anyway, this stuff is the best.

That's all for now. I can be more blog-productive now that I am out of school for the summer!

List

Some semblance of a reading list for this summer. I don't expect to get all of this in (an almost superhuman feat, surely), but I definitely need to finish the first five before school starts again.

- Ulysses by James Joyce
- Leviathan, or the Whale by Philip Hoare
I just have to say I'm so, SO excited to read this book. I nearly lost my damn mind when Joe (thank heavens for Joe!) pointed it out to me in Oxford. I keep feeling like I should check the dedication page to make sure my name isn't on it. It's like this person got inside my brain, picked up everything I'd been stirring around in there since September and turned it into an amazing book.

- Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas
- The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
- Short fiction by Jorge Luis Borges
- My big fat collection of 17th-19th century American Lit that I snatched up at Shakespeare & Co. for ten euro
- Realism by Linda Nochlin
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Any good poetry I come across

Like

Wish for a Young Wife

My lizard, my lively writher,
May your limbs never wither,
May the eyes in your face
Survive the green ice
Of envy’s mean gaze;
May you live out your life
Without hate, without grief,
And your hair ever blaze,
In the sun, in the sun,
When I am undone,
When I am no one.

--Theodore Roethke


Recently discovered thanks to my lovely and totally insane advisor/professor extraordinaire, who always has something exciting to teach me. He has sent a lot of good poetry my way lately.

Like

I have been reading/re-reading/analyzing/loving this poem for class recently.

Vespers

Even as you appeared to Moses, because
I need you, you appear to me, not
often, however. I live essentially
in darkness. You are perhaps training me to be
responsive to the slightest brightening. Or, like the poets,
are you stimulated by despair, does grief
move you to reveal your nature? This afternoon,
in the physical world to which you commonly
contribute your silence, I climbed
the small hill above the wild blueberries, metaphysically
descending, as on all my walks: did I go deep enough
for you to pity me, as you have sometimes pitied
others who suffer, favoring those
with theological gifts? As you anticipated,
I did not look up. So you came down to me:
at my feet, not the wax
leaves of the wild blueberry but your fiery self, a whole
pasture of fire, and beyond, the red sun neither falling
nor rising--
I was not a child; I could take advantage of illusions.

--Louise Gluck