The Giving Tree

Now that I think about it, the first love story that I ever really appreciated was probably The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. And I don't think I really realized that The Giving Tree was a love story until recently, and a pretty tragic one at that.

Well, if you've read the story, then you know that [WARNING: SPOILER ALERT] the tree keeps giving to this one little boy until there's nothing left but stump. And the boy never does a single thing in return. In fact by the end, the boy (now grown into an old man) still finds a way to exploit the tree: he sits down on the stump.

That last part always infuriated me. I was infuriated mainly at the ungrateful boy, but a little bit of my anger found itself directed at the foolish tree as well.

Well, I'm older now. I think I've come to the point where I can appreciate the Giving Trees and forgive the Little Boys in my life.

Summer Reading

Read (or at least start):

• Fresh Air Fiend by Paul Theroux
• Ulysses by James Joyce (22 CDs of audiobook, aborted)
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (in progress)
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sachs
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
• Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle by Moritz Thomsen

Online book club, anyone?

Day 81

Another photodump day, covering the past few days.


Hollowed-out book (Swann's Way by Marcel Proust) that I used as a geocache. Not like I was ever going to read that thing.


Inside of the Hearst Mining and Metallurgy Building. Reminds me of a train station.


Art in the architecture building's courtyard.


Pastries intended not for the mere mortal.


The De Young museum at night. The whole park was very still and pleasant.

Day 56

Just finished East of Eden. Next up: One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Day 36

Went to the Morrison Library during my one-hour break. It's quite nice, the Morrison. There are large armchairs with ottomans. I didn't manage to snag one of the leather chairs, but I still got one with a footrest. The lighting is soft enough to take naps, and bright enough to read. The room carries the feeling of a kind of victorian sitting room, with its wood paneling and bronze busts of men with imposing facial expressions. Additionally, scattered through out the room are turntables and there's a big bin filled with classical music on vinyl. I think I'll bring my headphones next time and have a listen.

East of Eden completion: 24%

Day 35

Just got back from the Forestry Club Bean Feed, that most sacred of monthly rituals. The high priestesses and priests of Forestry descend from on high, bearing pots of chili and bottles of honeydew, that the peasantry might rejoice in the passage of another month, and herald the beginning of another. The hot beans and a cold brew were a welcome change from the nightly marathon homework sessions.

Last night I made my way through the first hundred pages of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I like the wandering passages that aren't in a hurry to go anywhere in particular.

Day 32

Strange how a near computer meltdown has left me in a similar mental state. It might be interesting, anyway, to try and live a personal computer-free life. As I type this, the words appear on the screen after a noticeable lag, and webpages take about a minute or two to load even though I subscribe to AT&T's ubernet.

Who knows, perhaps my life will become more productive if I don't own a computer. Unless I end up wasting all of my time with my face stuck in books, that is; the "facebook," some would even say. Today I acquired two such frivolous books of the novel genre: East of Eden and One Hundred Years of Solitude. However did people survive in analog times? Well, we'll see how it goes.

What a technology crisis.

Day 14

First, I finally went outside today after a long time spent shuttered in the apartment. It was a bit overwhelming; I had forgotten that I was in Berkley. For the past two days, my mind has been everywhere but here: Yuma, Bangladesh, central Mexico, the Mediterranean, Bolivia, Cuba. The consumption of books and movies has been dizzying and I was a bit startled to discover that I was in Berkeley all along.

Once I was out-and-about I thought I would do some of the things that normal people do when they are out-and-about, so I went to a local dealer of books and bought some textbooks today for next semester. I also got a used dictionary for $3.29, primarily for its excellent words to price ratio.

Second, I finally started up a correspondence game of chess with Ramon over the Facebook (not like I need more reasons to compulsively check and recheck that page). Current board position (Ramon plays white, I play black):
1. d4 f5
2. Nf3 Nf6

I am playing the Dutch Defense in response to Ramon's queen pawn opening. It's not a particularly strong response to the queen pawn, but it's different, and the game should be interesting.

Third, I finished reading The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. This is the second of his books that I have finished reading over my long winter break, and I definitely enjoyed Sea of Poppies more, by far. But both books satisfied a longing for faraway places in me. Ghosh's writing is so evocative of his native India that reading one of his novels is equal parts travelogue and human drama. I don't think that I will ever travel to India, but reading Ghosh's books has been a whole lot cheaper and more convenient. Perhaps I should renew my subscription to National Geographic? Pretty soon, I'll have sprouted muttonchops and developed a taste for shooting enormously large creatures, deep in the bush. The Empire will have to wait, I'm afraid.

Today's Expenditure: $252.98
Currently Reading: 1491 by Charles C. Mann
Miles Ran: 0

Post-Thanksgiving Analysis

2009 was a pretty good Thanksgiving in my book.

It started off with dim sum on Clement with my Grandma. First came turnip cake. Then the shrimp dumplings. Then the beef patty in the big floppy noodle and then the fatty steamed pork in a little dish. It didn't stop until I was nauseous with delight.

Afterward, I went and saw Fantastic Mr. Fox with Karyn at the Four Star Theatre. The Four Star is one of those few remaining holdout neighborhood theaters that lives in constant fear of an omniplex coming in the night to gobble it up. Verdict: Wes Anderson did Roald Dahl justice. George Clooney, being a fox himself, fit his role as Mr. Fox quite naturally.

For Black Friday (known in some circles as Buy Nothing Day), Karyn and I hung out in the Park. We had a pretty good time in the Botanical Garden learning the scientific names of trees (Monterey cyprus = Cupressus macrocarpa, the secret is to visualize HUGE fingers). A lot of the day was spent in playgrounds, and I was grateful for the hearty breakfast and multiple cups of coffee that propelled me to ever greater heights on the swingset. You know you're going the right speed when you can feel your fingers going slack on the chains because you're about to black out.

Anyway, it was probably the happiest I've been since the summer when Karyn and I explored the ruins of the Sutro Baths and went into this shady cave that smelled boozy and later climbed on this big rock that was being engulfed by the incoming tide before we went to watch the waves crash on the rocks and the pelicans fly around near the Cliff House, and then we ate mustard sardines with rye crackers and flew kites on the beach.

Eventually, we met up with Elena, and we had an afternoon snack at the Baghdad Cafe (ever since childhood, I've always passed by, but that was the first time I ate there). Apparently, Elena's still the same badass, having satiated her hunger for butt-kicking with ultimate frisbee down in San Diego. Restless and filled with french fries, we left the Baghdad. One impromptu hike later, we were on top of Corona Heights, near the Randall Museum. It had just rained, and we could see for miles. Corona Heights is one of my favorite places in the City to look at the rest of the Bay.

But now I'm back in reality and about to start finals, and I feel a bit daunted. I've been reading Bobby Fischer Goes to War to stall for time and forget about the clouds on the horizon. It's quite good; I'm at the part where Fischer and Spassky are about to have a showdown in Iceland for the world chess championship. I bought it last night at Moe's Books on Telegraph, where there's an entire shelf of chess literature. My choice was one of the less intimidating books; the others, books like Beating the Sicilian II, were about equal parts chess notation and English.

I suppose this is the part where I get all cheesy and wrap things up, about how my Thanksgiving really made me appreciate all the wonderful, special people in my life and all. Well, there's really nothing I can write that will adequately express the feeling of gratefulness for living a charmed life. Instead, I think I will sit here and smile.

Aircraft Carriers

He liked to sit on the carpeted stairs and read. Each step was just wide enough for him to stretch his legs out, back against the wall, head beneath the wooden banister. He liked to look in the books with cut-aways of tanks and airplanes, cathedrals and castles, the heart and the spleen. Nuts and bolts and bricks and mortar and blood and guts spilled out of the pages. He couldn't get enough. The best times to read were during the golden hours of the afternoon that stretched on endlessly, when the light soaked in through the windows and stained everything with a luminous glow. The sun traced the shape of the window across the carpet, but he did not notice. He had more important things to attend to; the castle was under seige and the invaders with the battering ram were having boiling oil poured on their heads.

Many years later.

He sat in the library of the university, staring into one of the beige boxes bolted down to the table. The keyboard clacked satisfyingly. He was reading about nuclear-powered aircraft carriers on en.wikipedia.org. Nimitz-class supercarriers can stay at sea without refuelling for up to 20 years. They displace 100,000 tons of water. They carry over 3,000 aviators and seamen and a compliment of over 50 aircraft. And for a little while, he sat on carpeted stairs on a golden afternoon.

BART

He took a seat on the coffee-stained upholstery. He let his head rest against the place where thousands of heads had rested before his. He fidgeted a little bit with his bags. He got out a book that he read with enough interest to keep him distracted for a stop or two before his mind started wandering again. He just couldn't help himself from eavesdropping. He overheard a first-person account of a man's harrowing experience of seeing the gross gay couple from across the hall kiss.

He sat there, half-interested in the middle part of a paragraph he couldn't seem to finish, and half-interested in the angst of another man's homophobia.

Meta-List

Shopping

• ox-tail (for stew)
• used pants
• return textbooks
• a donut
  

To do (today)

• go to bank (deposit birthday check)
• go to post office (mail thank you card to Auntie Norma)
• go running
  

To do (this week)

• pack things for moving out
• move into Berkeley apartment
  
• negotiate work hours with employers
• celebrate 19th birthday
• hang out with Kyle
  
• withdraw from summer school

To do (this month)

• take Karyn somewhere nice for dinner
• get dad a birthday gift
  

Reading

• The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
  
• Why We are Hungry, Dave Eggers
• Fresh Air Fiend, Paul Theroux
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
  

Pretentious Blog Photography

Behold the power of a $150 camera.