Did you see the movie?
Did you love Maggie Gyllenhaal in a full-sleeve tattoo as much as Will Ferrell and I did?
She worked in a bakery, and the dweeby Ferrell was able to go everyday and buy a bread and see her, and cultivate his love for her crumb by crumb. She plays the part perfectly: engaging yet aloof, caring yet too busy to really care, a little tough (huge tat) and wistful. With her kerchief and half-smile, she makes anybody just feel like, "I KNOW her, man." Cuz we've all had that coffeeshop girl crush, whether she's the hipster behind the counter or the cutie on the laptop alone at the two-top.
The coffeeshop is an interesting place, because it is luring, but it's not quite intimate. Borges would show that a coffeeshop is a hall of mirrors. It's not exactly what it seems to be. It feels like your living room, but really it's not. It feels like "your place" but really you're just there buying the product. That person behind the counter says hello every day, smiles, gives you something delicious. You have a little ten-second relationship every day. But they're not
really your friend. You don't know anything about them. You can make hundreds of assumptions about who they are, and you do, but only because of the mirrors. It's a trick of the eye.
A coffeeshop is a reflection of the world. And Maggie Gyllenhaal isn't really a baker or a barista, because she's and actor, and movies are another reflection of the world. Its about mirrors. Borges said that basically all literature comes down to four central metaphors. Infinity and zero, knowledge and ignorance, language, and mirrors.
In this case, we have two instances of mirrors. 1) the coffeeshop as a mirror of the world. 2) Movies as a mirror on reality. Now, if you remember the movie Stranger than Fiction, our analysis can go leagues deeper, because it was a Borges-like story of a man living his "non-fiction" life, while a narrator who was creating "fiction" was actually dictating everything he did and everything that was done to him. So now we play on language, because language has the ability to create worlds, to define reality, and to destroy it. The narrator, remember, was famous for always killing her main characters, therefore Ferrel was on a quest to find her and convince her not to kill him.
Back to the issue at hand: Maggie Gyllenhaal. I was just enamored by her in that movie. Perhaps her character was influential in encouraging me to get a job as a barista. And since I've been working at Blue Marble, I've seen it happen: I've watched girls crush on me over that counter. I'm there serving coffee or ice cream, and they don't know anything about me, but the assumptions made in that mirror are strong, and somehow build a shortcut to amor. So when Maggie Gyllenhaal came in for ice cream today, I felt like I was looking into mirrors in a hotel bathroom, where you can see hundreds or thousands of yourself expanding to infinity in either direction. She got frozen yogurt and blackberry, and I looked her in her green eyes, and she paused looking into mine, and I wondered if she was falling in love with me. I saw her as a tattooed baker, but I wasn't a heartsore accountant. And she was just a lady who lives in New York, and I was the one behind the counter. The arching corridors of repeating images gave an illusion of infinite space, even though it's just two mirrors in parallel.
Borges is wonderful. He wrote short stories, and also poems. He claims that "I never have been much of a writer, but I'd like to think that I was a formidable reader." He is being ridiculous, because he was a fantastic writer, but he also was arguably the most prolific reader to have ever lived. He read everything, and memorized much of it. He's like Chomsky; you are left feeling like, "is there anything this guy doesn't know?"
Monday, February 16, 2009
Setting Intentions, 2009
I sort of figure I'm the hero. I'm just sitting around right now, but pretty soon I'm gonna do the biggest thing that's ever been done. I'm gonna fight the good fight. I'm gonna inspire a nation, unite the world, make grown men sob, ignite a global ecological consciousness. Granted, today I just work in an ice cream shop, but I've got tomorrow off, so I'll probably do something incredible then. Now, I don't like New York City much, so I probably won't stick around here long enough to do anything great. But I'm learning Portuguese right now, so maybe I'll go down to Brazil soon. And when I take trips they are really profound. Really. I'm looking at outdoor educator jobs in Colorado, and that's not the BIG thing that I'm working on. I'm just going to do that for a while, while I'm working on the big hero thing. You'll see.
Friday, February 6, 2009
It's Your Birdo!
Today is Will's 25th birthday, so in honor of him, I'm going to make a short comment about the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, not that that has anything to do with Will...
I know that the Ute people used to pick wild strawberries in the valley where I was born, and I know that they soaked in the same hot springs in which I first made out with Katie L or saw the Corona Borealis. I also spent a few days with Jackson, a 300-pound Hopi guy at Dinosaur, and through his easy laugh and trunk of flatbread, I learned a titch about the reservation. Even though I know little about Native American people, I "know" why they are different, and I "know" that they are different.
Tonight my Norwegian roommate Ingrid told me about the Sami, who live in Northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and take the brunt of a serious dose of racism. Ingrid told George and I that they look very distinct, and that her boyfriend "looks quite like a Sami." But when she tried to show George and I pictures of what Sami people look like, we laughed, cuz these were "just white people."
"This person has classic Sami cheeks," she'd say. Or, "do you see how their eyes are?" But we just saw blond people in high-collared jackets with reindeer. "It's Mrs. Claus!" we'd say.
In the United States, we have learned to look for certain characteristics to single out the "people who are different." Most often it is skin color. It makes sense to the American-trained mind that a dark-skinned person would be the brunt of political or social prejudice. But here I was looking at pictures of blue-eyed europeans who, for some reason, "looked Sami."
It really reinforces for me the concept that Alejandro de la Fuente recently shared, and that Dennis van Gerven once stated, that there is no such thing as race. If the world would have been discovered by walking, instead of by boat, we never could have made racial distinctions, only acknowledged a gradient. There is no such thing as race, only the perception of race. That was painted clearly tonight by a Norwegian girl looking at a picture of a perfectly "white" person and saying, "Yeah, this person has the Sami look, and would definitely be discriminated against.
Whoa.
I know that the Ute people used to pick wild strawberries in the valley where I was born, and I know that they soaked in the same hot springs in which I first made out with Katie L or saw the Corona Borealis. I also spent a few days with Jackson, a 300-pound Hopi guy at Dinosaur, and through his easy laugh and trunk of flatbread, I learned a titch about the reservation. Even though I know little about Native American people, I "know" why they are different, and I "know" that they are different.
Tonight my Norwegian roommate Ingrid told me about the Sami, who live in Northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and take the brunt of a serious dose of racism. Ingrid told George and I that they look very distinct, and that her boyfriend "looks quite like a Sami." But when she tried to show George and I pictures of what Sami people look like, we laughed, cuz these were "just white people."
"This person has classic Sami cheeks," she'd say. Or, "do you see how their eyes are?" But we just saw blond people in high-collared jackets with reindeer. "It's Mrs. Claus!" we'd say.
In the United States, we have learned to look for certain characteristics to single out the "people who are different." Most often it is skin color. It makes sense to the American-trained mind that a dark-skinned person would be the brunt of political or social prejudice. But here I was looking at pictures of blue-eyed europeans who, for some reason, "looked Sami."
It really reinforces for me the concept that Alejandro de la Fuente recently shared, and that Dennis van Gerven once stated, that there is no such thing as race. If the world would have been discovered by walking, instead of by boat, we never could have made racial distinctions, only acknowledged a gradient. There is no such thing as race, only the perception of race. That was painted clearly tonight by a Norwegian girl looking at a picture of a perfectly "white" person and saying, "Yeah, this person has the Sami look, and would definitely be discriminated against.
Whoa.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Dedication, Commitment
Ahh, yes, the blog I was going to write in EVERY DAY for a year...
The only proper way to tip-toe back into this thing after a month-long hiatus is to comment on the idea itself. Because if I am honest, I can see that I fell off as soon as I started. So what gives?
The idea was to write every day. To be in a routine, like the newspaper that I read every morning or the push-ups/sit-ups that I do every night before bed.
Yeah right. I've almost constantly dreamed of having a constant work-out routine, fantasized about the strength I could gain, about the way I could look, but motivation comes in spurts. I watch a Michael Bay movie and run to crank out pull-ups. I watch an hour of YouTube break dancing and then do pushups until I'm panting and sticky and get distracted by "Hot Girl Dancing on Cam!"
And reading the newspaper every day? Oh man. I was all over that thing during the election. Now I'm just taking a couple days off. What? It's February?
I'm not a total douchebag: I arrive nearly on-time for all my cafe shifts and tutoring sessions, I agree to monogamy in emotionally-committed relationships, and I generally try to respect people that I meet. I uphold the law when it makes sense, and I try to take good care of myself. But this concept of "driving unwaveringly toward a distant goal" alludes me.
I'm reading "Dreams From my Father," and it is incredibly reassuring to hear President Obama talk of feeling lost, angry, and directionless. And yet in the midst of all that turmoil, he felt something that I also feel: a drive to do good things, help others, and effect positive change. I think he knows me. And I think that my lack of routine discipline will not ruin me. If I continue to look for ways to involve myself positively, sporadic as my motivation and action may be, I'll continue driving forward, waveringly, stumblingly, but alright.
The only proper way to tip-toe back into this thing after a month-long hiatus is to comment on the idea itself. Because if I am honest, I can see that I fell off as soon as I started. So what gives?
The idea was to write every day. To be in a routine, like the newspaper that I read every morning or the push-ups/sit-ups that I do every night before bed.
Yeah right. I've almost constantly dreamed of having a constant work-out routine, fantasized about the strength I could gain, about the way I could look, but motivation comes in spurts. I watch a Michael Bay movie and run to crank out pull-ups. I watch an hour of YouTube break dancing and then do pushups until I'm panting and sticky and get distracted by "Hot Girl Dancing on Cam!"
And reading the newspaper every day? Oh man. I was all over that thing during the election. Now I'm just taking a couple days off. What? It's February?
I'm not a total douchebag: I arrive nearly on-time for all my cafe shifts and tutoring sessions, I agree to monogamy in emotionally-committed relationships, and I generally try to respect people that I meet. I uphold the law when it makes sense, and I try to take good care of myself. But this concept of "driving unwaveringly toward a distant goal" alludes me.
I'm reading "Dreams From my Father," and it is incredibly reassuring to hear President Obama talk of feeling lost, angry, and directionless. And yet in the midst of all that turmoil, he felt something that I also feel: a drive to do good things, help others, and effect positive change. I think he knows me. And I think that my lack of routine discipline will not ruin me. If I continue to look for ways to involve myself positively, sporadic as my motivation and action may be, I'll continue driving forward, waveringly, stumblingly, but alright.
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