Questions and Answers

I was tagged from Sarah's blog to fill out one of these things.

"If you were going to allow us to spend a night at your home, we'd like to know the following:
1. What books are on your favorite shelf?

Yeah okay, so I have two books by Hemingway. So WHAT? I love his style. You either love or hate his style. There is no in-between with Papa Hem. However, if you are one of those that hates his style you probably just don't get it. Not that you're stupid or anything. You are simply overlooking its subtly. Papa Hem believed that there should be no wasted words. He painstakingly selected each of his words, weilding them into razor-sharp sentences with an aficionado's clarity. Thus, The Sun Also Rises is about much more than bullfighting and its Spanish setting (though the narrative space provided much of the appeal for me) and A Moveable Feast is not a plot-driven novel, but driven by what the reader is able to pull out of the narrative as meaningful. I love Hemingway's depections of the narrative space in his novels. I was already in Spain when I read The Sun Also Rises and experienced France in A Moveable Feast.

Bless Me, Ultima is the story of a young Mexican boy's coming of age as he struggles whether to associate himself with the Catholic origins of his mother or the pagan roots of his father. It has amazing writing and, of course, your narrative space enthusiast was thrilled by the New Mexico setting. Probably the best part of this book, however, is that it provides such amazing closure. Though open endings are nice, the closure in Bless Me, Ultima has the fuzzy factor; that is, you feel all warm and satisfied inside as you shut the back cover.

JANE EYRE IS FREAKING BOMB. There is fuzzy factor to the max. It's a nice long period piece that sucks you in and makes you wish that you, too, could be as eloquent as the governess Jane Eyre. Such a clever woman, that Jane!

2. What DVDs are on your favorite shelf?

Sabrina and Gigi I grew up watching with my mom. They were the movies that I fell asleep to every night and from which I still can recite every line, including accents. I love Penelope and Almovodar is a pretty neat director, thus, my choice of Volver. Frida I watched in high school. The movie is the biography of artist Frida Kahlo and it has great cinematography. Also, if you're at all interested in the Mexican Revolution, the bouts with Communism in Mexico, or Mexican art, Frida shows how all those things tie together to create the discourse for an avant-garde generation of people and the misguided artists of that generation, such as Frida herself. Frida had such a fascinating life overall.

3. What are your favorite cookbooks?

Definitely this one by Giada di Laurentiis. She now has released many cookbooks, but this was her first and we bought it just after it came out a few years ago. My favorite recipe in it is a pasta with broccoli rabe, orecciette pasta, spicy italian sausage, and tomatoes with an olive oil and garlic sauce. My family has cooked the recipe so many times and we have modified it to our liking. Once for my birthday my parents made enough of this pasta to serve all of my fifteen guests at my party. Everyone enjoyed it.

4. Select 1-3 recipes you will cook for your special guests.
No. Since they're such special guests to me, I'd just ask them what they wanted and then go from there.

5. What will we be drinking that's available?
Water, ginger ale, iced tea, and coffee are a few of my favorites. Also, I love wine. I have developed a taste for it growing up because my step dad LOVES it. We have a wine cellar in our basement, visit wineries around the country, and have wine shipped to the house regularly. A few years ago when my family took a vacation to Sonoma in California, we visited this winery called Imagery, among many other wineries. They have the neatest wine labels that always feature the Parthenon, whether subtely or blatantly.

But yeah, there would definitely be wine at my party. Riesling is my favorite. It's nice and sweet.

Books and Storms

I have rediscovered the loft in my house. It's such a glorious place. Because my house has an open floor plan (meaning that there are no walls separating the kitchen, living room, reading room, etc.), the sound carries from room to room. No matter where I go I can hear The Young and the Restless booming from the living room everyday at noon. Yet, when I go upstairs to the loft it's so pieceful. Because the room is on a higher level than the rest of the house, you feel somewhat disconnected, and though you can still hear the noise from the house, it is not bothersome. Of course, I go in the loft to read. I feel like it's my own corner of the world where nobody can touch me. I secretly wish that I could install bookshelves along the walls and make it into a partial library.

This is a view of the side of our house from the stairway leading up to the loft, and normally there wouldn't be a green dumpster in view, but the house next to us is still being built. That's the vegetable garden to which my step dad eagerly tends and there is a stone path that goes around the perimeter of the house. The backyard view is so cute with the garden railroad. The little house is a children's playhouse that my step dad constructed and uses as a shed for garden tools.

I spent all of yesterday morning upstairs in the loft, huddled in a blanket and reading The Shadow of the Wind. The latter is a gothic novel set in Barcelona (yay!) with wonderfully ominous passages. I love gothic literature. It was an appropriate read for yesterday because just after I took the above photos, a huge thunderstorm rolled in. The clouds were absolutely treacherous and very promising of the storm to come. As I mentioned, I was reading my book when I looked up and peered out the window. I watched as the sky turned black and the yard light in our backyard clicked on, sensing night time. Still in my pajamas, I skipped down the stairs and ran outside to take a picture of the clouds. Just as I stepped through the door the rain began and pelted me in the face. Nonetheless, here are the resulting photos.

It was beautiful. Summer storms are definitely something that I never experienced when I lived in Los Angeles. I love them.

Beauty in the Ordinary

"lovers alone wear sunlight" -e.e. cummings

I love east-facing rooms. Waking up to natural sunlight in the morning and drinking a cup of coffee while reading a book in bed is blissful. This room is in my dad's small house in West L.A. I found the the bare white wall and unfinished wood nightstand quite appealing. The bed is actually a small pull-out love seat and was very comfortable to sleep on.

"Cats sleep anywhere, any table, any chair, top of piano, window ledge, in the middle, on the edge, open drawer, empty shoe, anybody's lap will do, fitted in a cardboard box, in the cupboard with your frocks-- anywhere! they don't care! cats sleep anywhere." -Eleanor Farjeon
When I was walking on the beach path at Venice there is this little bookshop that is semi-hidden at the side of a popular outdoor restaurant. The bookshop is labeled, but unless you know it exists or are paying close attention, you would bypass it completely. Walking inside was surprising because the shop was a lot bigger than it's single nondescript door let on. Inside many of the books were little tabs with reviews and suggestions to guide visitors while perusing. The whole setting was cozy and felt like someone's personal library instead of a store. When I saw this cat snoozing on the stool, I had to take a picture. Two of my loves -- cats in bookstores. Precious.
No quote to go below this picture. It's just my desk. I don't like when my desk gets messy like this. Though I enjoy rediscovering random stuff I have, it sometimes takes me awhile to put it away again after rediscovery. During a recent adventure into the cave below my house (a.k.a. our basement), I found my Gameboy COLOR. It had Tetris inside and I suffered a temporarily addiction to the game. After a few days of incessant Tetris gaming, I forced myself to leave the Gameboy behind when I went to Chicago. My brain was turning to mush all too quickly. The Tetris music rocks by the way;) Other than the Gameboy, I found this photo of me and my two friends when we were all in eighth grade. It now resides with a few other of my beloved pictures in the photo album frame on my desk. Also, anyone ever read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli? Awesome stuff.
So I was sitting in what I call the Reading Room in my house in Illinois when I hear this giant whop to my immediate left. I whip my head around to see that our entire sliding glass door has been shattered and I'm assuming it's the fault of some amateur-flying bird. Though shattered, the glass remained in tact. It looked neat.
Another view of the shattered glass door. This time with the orchid bending toward the sunlight. I love my parents' rustic taste.

A Library Convert

I never used to like libraries so much. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved to read. It's just I preferred to buy my books. I didn't see the charm in having to drive to the library, to find a spot to park, to pay the meter, just so that I could check out a book with smudged print and ripped pages. Not to mention the possibility of my being exposed to the staphylococcal bacteria that has most likely been cultivating within the crevice of the binding since the book was last checked out in 1974. And then I still had to return it.

But my dismissal of libraries changed last summer when I had to write a 15 page research paper about the Roman Republic's influence on the United States government. Sounds like a dry topic, no? My cat, Boubacar, sure thought so (see picture below).

Actually, it was quite fascinating (but that's besides the point). I visited my university library (I live only 20 minutes away from it so I have year-round access to it) and checked out 4 books that would help me write the paper. I knew nothing about the Roman Republic in the first place, so not only did I need the books to bulk up my works cited page, but I needed them to "get a clue" so that I could at least feign intelligence when discussing ancient governments and the syndication of power. Before I realized it, I had checked out 13 books. Almost one book per page of the paper. It was addicting. It was so easy. I needed more material; I ordered another book. I realized that using the library allowed me to have no commitment to the books I checked out. I was only borrowing them, and I didn't have to like the words inside because they were borrowed too.

This was different then buying books. When I buy books I own their words, in a sense. I am committed to them. Whether bombastic or approachable, drivel or life-changing, the words within each book I purchase are mine.

Admittedly, I liked the feeling of being uncommitted to the words. Perhaps it was the power that being uncomitted allowed me for I could tangibly declare someone's thoughts as trash. I wouldn't have to destroy the book, but I could make it disappear by returning it. I wouldn't even have to finish it. That's why this summer I have taken advantage of the local library in my small town. Sure, it's dark inside and smells a tad stale like your late Jewish grandfather's old Philadelphia row home. The library has plastic-covered titles and the row home had plastic covered couches. But, an abrasion from ripped plastic still hurts whether it's on your finger or your thigh so what is the difference really? Exactly, both have their charm.

It's been a great time, checking out those books from the library. I have to admit, though, that I still occasionally think about who sneezed on the page that I have just fervently touched all over with my own grummy paws. But I figure it was worth it. The words on that page were just so poignant that I had to re-read the page more closely and follow along with my finger. I guess exposure to fatal disease is just a risk I'll have to take when borrowing words. (Though I avoid setting the book down on my sheets because not doing so makes me feel like I am, in turn, avoiding the plague altogether.)

With that, I close with a brief excerpt from the most recent book that I finished. And yes, it came from the library.

"She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Fuhrer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or worldly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words?" -Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Papa Hem

I love Ernest Hemingway. His nickname was Papa. I like it. With Papa, it's always about what he doesn't say rather than what he does say. Also, the man loved cats. I actually have a collection of photos of him and his cats with the latter crawling around his writing space. It reminds me of when my kitty sits on my desk as I'm writing. Everyone's writing space is different. I prefer the isolated locale, silent, with ample light. Only my thoughts to distract me.

Anywho...
A Moveable Feast. Beautiful. Here are some of my favorites.

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

"When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed."

" 'Don't be silly. This is serious. Tell me, did you and your wife sleep together before you were married?'
'I don't know.'
'What do you mean you don't know?'
'I don't remember.'"

"Paris was never to be the same again although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed."

"There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this was how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."

This was not from A Moveable Feast... It's just Papa being flippant. Surprise.

Gertrude Stein once said
"A rose is a rose is a rose."
..and Ernest replied
"A bitch is a bitch is a bitch."