Just to say that I'm keeping a close watch as Chris' stories unfold (with photos, no less). From a place to work, nothing fancy 080303 Galway [Christopher Ashley] (formerly "a place to write"):
The details and reasons aren't necessary. I only need say that the circumstances of my family have created in me a deep nostalgia for happy moments in my life. I often daydream very clear, specific, and powerful faraway memories.
Chris and I have both used BullFighter, the subject of a New York Times piece. Don't delay: Leverage your core competencies today in communications engineering, thus maximizing yourself in the value chain and the global competitive landscape.
If I had the energy of a supernova, there would be no need to sleep. I would work all day and all night -- through the seasons of the year. The sun would rise, the snow would fall, the moon wax and wane -- but I would unceasingly, unfailingly produce.
Wouldn't it be wonderful? I could stop eating, no longer waylaid by urgent demands of body or heart. Six days and rest -- no, not for me -- that's for wimps.
And in the end, I would arrive at everything I ever wanted. My masterpiece, my magnum opus. No one else would appreciate it (or me) -- then again, who would give a damn? Would I?
Yesterday, I
wrote about the different representations I want to have available in the BDL.
Perhaps a clearer statement of the BDL's scope is that everything of relevance
to Bach should be either be directly contained by the BDL or would referable
from the BDL. There is no way a BDL can subsume all the wonderful resources
that others are developing about Bach. However, it would be great if the BDL
could know about these other resouces and "interoperate" with them
so that it would be easy for someone to make the best use of all these materials
together.
Sometimes I don't know where my personal projects end and where my professional
interests begin. (Is that a good or bad thing?) Take the case of one of the
dream projects that I have recently been raving about to both friends and colleagues.
I want to build the Bach Digital Library (BDL). When I proceed to describe what
I mean by the BDL, I usually add the qualification that I don't have be the
one to mastermind the BDL -- I wouldn't mind if it came into being because of
the efforts of others. Yet's it clear that I'd be disappointed if I didn't get
to have some input into a BDL since the fun for me is not only in the Bach-part
but the digital library part.
When talking to my Dad, he would, on occasion, exhort me with a Chinese proverb. The one that rings in my ears these days is that of the man "who has a drawerful of knives, none of which is sharp". I am such a man in his estimation.
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I'm curious about GTU professor Kah-Jin (Jeffrey) Kuan, a specialist in Old Testament studies, because of his interest in "Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics". By the time I learned that he was teaching a summer course this year on the subject, it was already too late to attend. Hmmm....do I interpret the Bible differently from my non-Asian friends because of my ethnic background (yes, I know, as a Canadian, I'm not Asian-American).
Over the last week or so, as I've started to writing in much greater detail
about my life, I've felt both exhilarated and worried. I've kept a private personal
journal (off and on) since my early teens in which I have poured out my heart
and processed my doubts and deep heart questions. I continue to value that private
space -- and no one should think that my blog is exactly the same as my journal!
But the problem with my journal writing is that it was sometimes terribly lazy.
I'd write about the same thing over and over again; I make commitments that
I soon forget and to which no one could hold me accountable -- since no one
knew of my self-promises.
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq was reviewed in today's SF Chronicle. The article caught my eye since I have been having a sinking feeling that the techniques that I have been using to come to a putatively well-considered consideration of political issues are not up to the task of countering the culture and sophistication of spin (i.e., propaganda) practiced in this world. I haven't come to any conclusions yet about WMDs, the war in Iraq -- that is, what the heck is really going on, whom can I trust, am I just being paranoid.
The book goes on my "maybe read" list -- not because I don't think it will useful to read -- but because I need to figure out what I need to focus on right now. I'm not sure I should invest the effort it will take to get to the bottom of these issues right now. (It pains me to say that because American foreign policy, not to mention just the core issues of war, life, death, and justice, are so important for us as a society to wrestle with.)
From Joyce Carol Oates' recent review (in the TLS) of Alice Sebold's Lucky: A Memoir:
Ours is the age of what might be called the New Memoir: the memoir of sharply focused events, very often traumatic, in distinction to the traditional life-memoir. The New Memoir is frequently written by the young or relatively young, the traditional memoir is usually the province of the older. In this sub-genre, the motive isn't to write a memoir because one is an individual of stature or accomplishment, in whom presumably readers might be interested, but to set forth out of relative anonymity the terms of one's physical/psychological ordeal; in most cases, the ordeal is survived, so that the memoirist moves through trauma into coping and eventual recovery. Though the literary structure may sound formulaic, exemplary memoirs like Lucky break the formula with their originality of insight and expression. Like most good prose works, Lucky is far from un-ambiguous: the memoir can be read as an alarming and depressing document, and it can be read as genuinely "uplifting". The pivotal point in Sebold's recovery doesn't occur until years after the rape when, ironically, she comes upon her own case discussed in Dr Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery in terms of "post traumatic stress disorder".
It seems to me that Joyce Carol Oates has a gift for coinages. Last year I noted her explication of what she calls memoirist-reportage in the New York Review.