Author: Nada Gordon

Just finished Haruki Murakami’s The Windup Bird Chronicle. I read it in a little more than a day, I was so possessed by it. The first half of the book a series of losses, absurd seductions, and weird new elements, the second a gradual ravelling up again but only after a total descent into total strangeness. The ending sad — actually, the whole book is sad; one of the qualities that makes it so compelling. I said to Gary it reminded me of a cross between Kafka and Stephen King. The metaphors Kafka, the crystalline suspenseful structure King.

I’ve been also trying to read Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, but when I do I notice two things happening: 1) I realize I don’t necessarily agree with all the constructs and analogies she’s setting up, so I have a hard time getting to the end of her arguments intact, and 2) my body starts to hurt! I think it’s probably a great book, but these two things are stumbling points.

Read Drew G. on Alli W.

FYI

It’s KAH RAH OH KEH.

Karaoke. Just thought you might like to know.

How many of you saw The Corporation? I loved that CEO of the carpet company (Interface?) who had an environmental epiphany about the damage his company was doing. He is aiming to make his products more and more earth-friendly. I think his last name was Anderson. He was highly articulate, like an old-fashioned southern preacher — words chosen carefully but almost Victorian-ly, with furbelows attached.

I keep thinking… I want to tell him… that if he’s looking for the perfect renewable carpet material… what about TATAMI?

It’s the perfect renewable resource. It’s completely non-toxic (except for those with hay and dust allergies) if grown organically. It smells divine and looks soooo lovely.

It entails a few cultural changes, like not wearing shoes, but they are well worth its multitude of virtues. Tatami. It could be The New Foundation. Think about it.

Not only do I VERY STRONGLY disagree that “song is a very different discipline” from poetry, but I think such a statement disregards the fact that in some cultures and histories poetry by definition is (or was) sung. I am reluctant to refer to Pound as any kind of expert on anything, but when he wrote that “Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music,” when I first read those words as a teenager (someone gave me The ABC of Reading on my 14th birthday), I instantly, emphatically, and intuitively agreed.

Poetry needs to be grasped by its very horns and wrenched back into the arena of song.

The more I hear poetry in its current fashion of oral presentation, the more I am convinced of this.

The more carefully I listen to singers, the more I am convinced of this.

Trying to do my part…

If — no, when — Bush is ousted, we are all going to be dancing, really literally out there dancing in the streets. I keep holding this in my mind’s eye.

It won’t be like when the US media toppled the statue of Saddam. This time they won’t have to pay anybody. And there will be more than a dozen people. There will be some seriously primal Breughelesque rejoicing.

I used to be very exclusive in my eating and really should be so again.

As in no or very little meat.

No refined sugar.

No cheese.

Mostly just beautiful vegetables.

I promise, I promise, if the Democrats win, I’ll stop eating everything so attentively and capaciously! I’ll be more discerning and think beyond the next five minutes. Really truly I will!

(Do bargains like that actually work? Who or what might I actually be bargaining with — fate? They always seem to work in Bollywood movies. The character is at a shrine to Shiva or Krishna, praying for someone’s — usually the heroine’s — life: “Please, please, take me instead!” And of course, the god always takes them up on their offer.)

Last Wednesday’s lunch in Harlem at Sylvia’s famous soul food restaurant:

Barbecued ribs (with famous “sassy” sauce)

collard greens with smoked turkey

macaroni ‘n’ cheese

cornbread (real pieces of corn)

peach cobbler

I thought I might die of pleasure. I might yet.

Delightful foods:

Bangladeshi aromatic rice (like Basmati but with a tiny grain)

Turkish preserved lemons (for mixing with green olives and chilis)

Chorizo

Black raspberry juice (delicious in “juicy pops!)

Tamarind (I have learned how to use it in cooking daal — yeah baby!)

Hong Kong style pan fried noodles (my kingdom for these)

Stonyfield Farm organic ice cream (we’re trying hard to reduce our pus cell intake. Then we’ll try to move on to our waistlines)

Tarama (as in taramasalata. Try this — without the salata part — on hot vermicelli with sauteed garlic, shredded nori, and cayenne pepper. A little parmesan can’t hurt.)

Black mushrooms.

Of course, I’ve read the biological explanations for why we crave what is the worst for us.

Nonetheless, I find it very disappointing.

And in my case, at certain times more than others, those cravings are overweaning — notably, for vermicelli. Also, copious amounts of ice cream.

I actually like the things that are supposed to be good for me (kale, tofu, avocado, carrots, quinoa, etc.) quite a lot (I know, there’s now some kind of controversy about tofu. I just find it hard to believe the arguments against it given the Japanese predilection for it, and their long history of eating it happily and healthily. I especially love it with Lee Kum Kee black bean & garlic sauce — tho I wonder if the MSG might not cancel out any health benefits).

But the bad things… sometimes… are like a hydra!

Overleaning…

I think there is a connection between eating the wrong foods knowingly and a deep sense (however wrongheaded) of a lack of political & personal agency. Is it too much to say that eating wrongly is an a- or anti-political act?

(Thinking, suddenly, of eating disorders.)

The incredible sudden gratification of certain foods. How one is completely absorbed in them. I know a diabetic who will wait at the Krispy Kreme factory for the freshest donuts — his description of them profoundly poetic… he brings others there to try to convert them, even! And it is true, once they have tasted that melting sugar, the lardy smoosh of the donut meat as it dissolves on the tongue, and smelled that heady smell, they are surely doomed…