 After finishing the
dreadful Lolita, I had to cleanse myself with a different book
immediately. Two of the women in my reading club had just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and
they both loved it. I borrowed it from my friend Nicole and started
reading it Sunday morning. My day was relatively full. I had a shoot
at 7:15am and had to process all the photos, feed David’s meals,
nurse him for his naps, play with him, work on the site and respond to the tons of emails
sitting in my inbox. I started the novel and ended up doing nothing
but reading. By, 10:30pm, I had finished the novel (and done all the
necessary tasks of the day including processing my photos.)
This novel was wonderful. Light but not trivial read. Three-
dimensional characters and a completely character-driven story. I
learned a lot about Chinese culture I didn’t know and confirmed some
of the sad things I did know. I enjoyed every page of it and it was
exactly what I needed after Lolita.
 I have met many book-lovers
over the years. Several of them, upon learning of my passion about
books, have recommended that I read Lolita.
I knew the premise of the book and refused to read it out of
principle. “But it’s literature, it’s Nabokov.” I heard so many
arguments, but I still refused to read it.
A few weeks ago, my bookclub met and we were told that the Mark Twain
book we’d picked for April was dreadful and decided to switch it. I
recommended we read Lolita. None of us were too thrilled about the
prospect but we all felt that it was a book we had to read before we
died. And now that were were in our 30s, and “mature,” we might as
well get to it. Semi-reluctantly, we all agreed to pick it as our
April book.
Knowing it would be a form of torture, I bought and started the book
immediately. The text was much less dense than I had imagined and the
story moved relatively quickly. There were some interesting bits here
and there and the writing was quite impeccable. But that’s it.
I wish I could say all those people were right and I was wrong. I
wish I could say I totally changed my mind on it and it was
phenomenal. The truth is, I could never get past the child-
molestation. I could never get past what a disgusting (and I find
that to be the very perfect fit adjective in this case) man he was.
There was no second in which I could relate to him or empathize.
Thank God I don’t have a daughter, I might have hated it even more.
There was no room for my pity in the character. No explanation why he
might have become such a despicable person. Nothing that spoke to me
in a way that allowed me to enjoy the book, the story and the people.
I ask you, if you’re one of those “Lolita is amazing” people:
please tell me what I missed? Why is this book such a must-read?
The complex where I live has a calendar of events that they publish
each month. It notes community-wide events like easter egg hunt and
gym classes as well as national or religious holidays. In April’s
calendar, they had “National Honesty Day” under April 30th. I have
never heard of this holiday but I am glad it’s on the calendar and I
wish it would encourage people, even if just for one day.
I am not naive enough to think that people don’t lie. Everybody lies
and they all have their reasons. When I was little, my mom would lie
to her clients and tell them that their merchandise was ready but she
couldn’t deliver it cause I was so sick, she had to stay home and
take care of me. All the while, I would sit next to her, perfectly
healthy. I asked her why she lied and she said that these were
“little lies” and they didn’t matter. Sure they matter. But today’s
post is not about lying. It’s about not telling the truth.
Most of us live our lives sheepishly, not passionate enough to stand
for something. My first night of Teach For America training, they
showed us a video of the previous year’s class and the
accomplishments they achieved and all the goals the organization had
for the country. I felt so proud to be a part of something so
phenomenal that I went back to my room and I called Jake. “I don’t
know why everyone wouldn’t want to be a part of this,” I said. “It’s
amazing.” I truly believed it. I still do. I have the utmost respect
for organizations like TFA who stand for something and fight like
crazy to get it. Most of us, give up way too easily. Most of us learn
to be complacent early on in life and stick to saving our opinions to
ourselves in most situations. Not lying, per se, but omitting the truth.
Not being honest with your boss’ bad taste or incorrect preferences
is one thing. The boss might fire you for disagreeing. While I still
think it sucks to work for someone like that, I can understand one’s
choice to be complacent in that situation. But not when it comes to
friendship. And not with a significant other. These people are in
your life by choice. You picked them. Why not pick people who respect
you for your thoughts and be honest with them? A friend of mine
thinks truth is overrated, that it isn’t necessary to be honest at
all times and that sparing someone’s feelings is more valuable. I
respectfully disagree.
I choose the people in my life because I trust them to be good
thinkers. I trust that when they tell me their opinion on things,
these opinions are not judgments. They aren’t superficial, they
aren’t spiteful. They are well-thought-out opinions of people whom I
trust and respect. I want them to tell me what they think and trust
that I can handle the truth. I am independent enough to weigh their
opinions without letting them cloud mine. I want them to trust that
when I said I want to know what they think, I meant it. Their honest
thoughts help me grow and expand my own thoughts. They help me see
things from different perspectives.
Of course there are nice and not-so-nice ways to say things. There’s
bashing and there’s constructive feedback. I always expect the people
I care about to take the time to put their words in a non-hurtful
form. Adjectives without explanations are useless. If my friends are
some of the most intelligent and most caring people I know, why
wouldn’t I want to know their true thoughts?
That’s one of the reasons I loved college. In college, people tend to
be passionate. They tell you what they think. For hours. Tedious as
it might become, the conversation is deep, meaningful, and often
honest. Then we grow up, life gets in the way, we never take the time
to be honest. We never really listen and really answer. We make
decisions on behalf of the other person. (Oh she wouldn’t want to
hear this. Poor so-and-so, how could I tell her what I really think)
We talk about the people we love to other people but never to their
face. We wouldn’t want to hurt them. Well, you may not be hurting
them, but you’re also not helping them. You’re depriving them of the
true friend or partner they thought they had.
And what if you do tell the truth (nicely, gently, constructively)
and they get hurt irrevocably? Well, in my opinion, those friends
were lost long ago. A relationship based on eggshells and half-truths
is not a relationship worth the energy or the time. Especially with a
significant other. This person may be there for the rest of your
life, do you really want to live with someone to whom you cannot tell
your true thoughts/feelings, for the rest of your life?
I don’t know where between college and life people give up on honesty
but I wish it hadn’t become the accepted social norm. I really think
we could all benefit from more of it. Even if only on April 30th.
 When I was telling my friend
Michelle that most of the books I read last year sucked, she
recommended The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson
McCullers. For some reason, I let the book sit for weeks before I
picked it up. I would look at the cover and keep putting off reading
it. I thought it was going to be really depressing and I wasn’t in
the mood. Once I did pick it up, I couldn’t put it down. I loved
every minute of it. I loved the characters, I loved how intricately
their lives were intertwined yet so very isolated. I loved how they
all felt close to Singer and yet they knew nothing about him. It was
a really enjoyable read and I am glad I finally did actually pick it
up. Both this one and The Solace of Leaving early were Michelle’s
recommendations. Now I’m going to have to beg for more.
 I can’t decide how I feel
about Yukio Mishima’s Temple
of the Golden Pavillion. Similar to the other two Japanese novels
I read in the last few weeks, it’s mostly about the main character’s
inner life. His thoughts, his ideas. The main character is a young
adult and is quite resentful of life. It’s a slow-paced novel full of
wisdom and thought-provoking writing. Here are a few sections that
spoke to me:
Perhaps a lyrical port lucked within that huge
body of his, but I felt that there was cruelty in his clear, blue
eyes. The Western nursery-rhyme “Mother Goose” refers to black eyes
as being cruel and malicious; the fact is that when people imagine
cruelty, they normally assign some foreign character to it.
and another
Cripples and lovely women are both tired of
being looked at, they are weary of an existence that involves
constantly being observed, they feel hemmed in; and they return the
gaze by means of that very existence itself. The one who really looks
is the one who wins.
one final one
I just wanted to make you understand. What
transforms this world is – knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing
else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of
transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as
it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that
things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being
transformed. You may ask what good it does us. Let’s put it this way
– human being possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life
bearable. For animals such things aren’t necessary. Animals don’t
need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable. But
human beings do need something, and with knowledge they can make the
very intolerableness of life a weapon, though at the sam time that
intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest. That’s all there is
to it.
At a swap meet a few weeks ago, I bought David a plastic guitar. It
has buttons on it that play classical or pop music depending on its
mode. David carries this guitar all over the house and puts it down
wherever he rests. He then presses the buttons and dances while the
plastic guitar sings. I have never ever danced in front of this
little boy. I haven’t danced in over ten years. There’s no way he
observed this. I am wondering if moving to music might be a genetic
or inherent thing. Any ideas?
I used to be a scared, lonely little girl who cried a lot. I hung to
my mom’s skirt often. David, on the other hand, is an independent and
happy little boy. Making him giggle takes two seconds. Last weekend,
on the plane to St. Louis, he made friends with the stewardess and
ran up and down the aisle to hug her. When she pointed at me and told
him to come to me, he ignored me and went back to hugging her. He
smiles at everyone, especially girls and women. I am not sure how he
can tell the difference but he seems to ignore men for the most part.
Maybe it’s the makeup or the hair.
I am regularly amazed at David’s sweet nature. Not that he doesn’t have his moments but he’s such a joy. If they all turn out like him, maybe having a few more is not such a crazy idea after all.
 Recommended as one of two
self-help books that gives practical, usable advice, I picked up How to be an Adult from the library.
It was an extremely quick and very useful read. So much so that I
will write excerpts from it for the next few weeks probably. Many of
the ideas were reinforcements of prior courses I took of beliefs I
already had. These are the sort of ideas that need constant reminders
so that I get used to thinking that way. His writings on
relationships were also very practical, very sensible and very much
along the lines of what I hope to accomplish. This little book made
me think a lot and I will be referring back to it in the next few
weeks over and over again.
 A
Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe is one of two Japanese books I
checked out after I read Kokoro. This story is about a man named Bird
who is the father to a newborn baby who has a major birth defect. The
story is about the father’s reaction and dealing (or not dealing)
with the issue. To be honest, about thirty pages into the story, I
hated the main character and wanted to put the book down immediately.
It depressed me so much that I didn’t even want to pick up another book.
For some inexplicable reason, I decided to stick with it and I am
glad I did. While this book was much more modern than Kokoro, it also
was character based and full of ideas, morals and issues surrounding
making difficult and immoral decisions. The book finally redeemed
itself to me in its final pages and at the end I felt better about
reading it.
I’ve been in a slight technical slump lately. There were many things
I hated about my investment bank job in New York: middle-management
was full of incompetent managers who found a way to make your life
miserable. There were many 120-hour weeks. I ate dinner at work at
least three out of five nights. Often more. The users weren’t all the
sweetest people you’ve ever met and technology is a male field and
combining that with the male-world of finance made the place a real
joy. (There’s a specific incident with one of my managers and a photo
of a woman and a horse that is somehow etched into my brain
permanently.)
Of course not everything was terrible. The pay was relatively good
but more importantly, the people I worked with were very competent.
Some of them were downright brilliant. I gained more practical
knowledge in one year of working with some of these people then I did
in my four years at Carnegie Mellon. Some of my coworkers inspired me
and made me a better coder. And I miss that. I miss it a lot.
In my current job I have more responsibility in some ways and I do a
wider variety of technology. I never had to administer servers on
Wall Street, they had other people to do that. And to boot machines,
and to configure files and compile unix programs (even though I did
download, compile, and install the latest version of emacs on every
machine I’ve ever used; this girl cannot live without emacs.) While I
enjoy learning about the intricacies of freeBSD and ini files as much
as the next gal, my main love is programming. And PHP just doesn’t
cut it for me. It was fun for the first few weeks while it was still
relatively novel. I liked the cleanness of Smarty and how it let me
separate stuff so I didn’t have to fill my PHP code with html crap
etc. However, two years into it, my fascination with PHP is long gone
and I need something else. I’ve coded a bunch of Python a while back
for fun and I am hoping to get back into it if only to preserve my
sanity.
Actually, my point was that I haven’t been feeling very technically
challenged lately so Jake’s been encouraging me to create a project
for myself that would be fun. After months of his badgering me, I
finally broke down and came up with an idea I liked. I’ve spent the
last week coding night and day and even though it didn’t make me a
fantastic coder, I’ve learned some new stuff I didn’t know and I have
a new website/domain now. I am hoping to roll it out for pre-alpha
testing in a week or so. If you’re interested in photography,
writing, knitting or scrapbooking (any of them) and would like to be
one of my guinea pigs, drop me a line: karen at karenika dot com.
Only if you’re going to play along tho and feel free to pass it on.
That’s why I haven’t been writing the past week. All my free time has
been 100% consumed by this. To be honest, it felt great to be
consumed by anything (other than David who’s my favorite thing to be
consumed by of course) and even if the site is a bust, I loved
working on it. College was probably the last time I felt like staying
up and working on one of my own projects as much as I did this past
week.
Jake was right after all. What a shocker.
 After the mistake with The
Cloud Atlas, I put the correct book on hold at the library and picked
it up last week. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell came
highly recommended by several members of AskMe. I made an effort to
spend my week with it and so read large chunks of it at a time. The
book has six stories. The first halves of five stories are told in
the first part, then the sixth story, and then each story is finished
going in the reverse order. The first story takes place on a ship
around 1850s and it’s the journal of a notary traveling in the
Pacific. This was the hardest story for me to get through. I had a
hard time with the language and the character. It got a bit better
towards the end of the first half but I knew the book would get
better so I kept going.
The second story takes place in 1930’s and it’s about a musician
exchanging letters with a scientist friend of his while he works with
a maestro. I enjoyed this story very much and found it easy to read
with entertaining characters. The third story is about a newspaper
journalist who discovers a plot to a corporate coverup that could
cause a disaster and it involves the scientist from the second story.
The fourth story is about a book publisher who gets signed into a
retirement institution against his will. The fifth one is a sci-fi
story about a cloned human who is part of a scientific project. And
the final story takes place in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. I wasn’t
crazy about the last story either but loved the other four. Each
story briefly mentions the previous one and there are tones of
reincarnation and strong moral lessons in each story. The writing is
forced in some parts but great in others. Overall, I found it to be a
fascinating book and I want to read more of his work.
Here’s what one reviewer says about the book, “Here is not only the
academic pessimism of Marx, Hobbes and Nietzsche but also the
frightening portents of Aldous Huxley and the linguistic daring of
Anthony Burgess. Here, too, are Melville’s maritime tableaux, the
mordant satire of Kingsley Amis and, in the voice of Robert Frobisher
— Mitchell’s most poignant and fully realized character — the
unmistakable ghost of Paul Bowles. Here is a veritable film festival
of unembarrassed cinematic references and inspirations, from “Soylent
Green” to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to “The Graduate” to the
postwar comedies of England’s Ealing Studios. Here is an obviously
sincere affection for the oft-maligned genres of mystery, science
fiction and fantasy.”
 My second short story collection of the
year was another AskMe recommendation. You
Are Not A Stranger Here by Adam Haslett is a fantastic, fantastic
collection of magnificently well-written stories. This author is a
fantastic, published writer and a law student at Yale. A major
loser :). Each story involves some aspect of sorrow, depression,
sadness, disappointment, family, friendship. The stories are simple
and elegant. The characters are very relatable and memorable, even in
the short space of a little story. I got attached to each and every
one of them.
After Kissing in Manhattan and this book, I might have to start
reading more short story collections. Either these two are major
exceptions, or I am finally beginning to gain the maturity to enjoy
short stories. Either way, I am delighted to have discovered Haslett.
I am not a particularly big sports fan. Actually, I can go so far as
to say I am not a sports fan in any way. I get incredibly frustrated
watching football because I have a really hard time following the
actual ball since it’s so small compared to the players and the
field. Last time I watched basketball I must have been fourteen. I
have never ever watched hockey as far as I can remember. Golf is
boring to me in concept let alone on TV. The only game I might be
into is baseball and only in very rare cases. So it might make little
sense that Jake emailed me this article by an ESPN writer.
Until you realize that he’s “talking” with Malcolm Gladwell. Probably
my favorite non-fiction writer of all time. I find Gladwell’s writing
to be consistently thought-provoking. His topics are always
interesting to me. His writing is plain, unpretentious and flows
beautifully. An amazingly rare accomplishment for a non-fiction
writer in my albeit narrow experience. Despite the fact that most of
the sports talk completely went over my head, I found some real gems
in this article. Here are a few I wanted to share.
As for your (very kind) question about my
writing, I’m not sure I can answer that either, except to say that I
really love writing, in a totally uncomplicated way. When I was in
high school, I ran track and in the beginning I thought of training
as a kind of necessary evil on the way to racing. But then, the more
I ran, the more I realized that what I loved was running, and it
didn’t much matter to me whether it came in the training form or the
racing form. I feel the same way about writing. I’m happy writing
anywhere and under any circumstances and in fact I’m now to the point
where I’m suspicious of people who don’t love what they do in the
same way. I was watching golf, before Christmas, and the announcer
said of Phil Mickelson that the tournament was the first time he’d
picked up a golf club in five weeks. Assuming that’s true, isn’t that
profoundly weird? How can you be one of the top two or three golfers
of your generation and go five weeks without doing the thing you
love? Did Mickelson also not have sex with his wife for five weeks?
Did he give up chocolate for five weeks? Is this some weird golfer’s
version of Lent that I’m unaware of? They say that Wayne Gretzky, as
a 2-year-old, would cry when the Saturday night hockey game on TV was
over, because it seemed to him at that age unbearably sad that
something he loved so much had to come to end, and I’ve always
thought that was the simplest explanation for why Gretzky was
Gretzky. And surely it’s the explanation as well for why Mickelson
will never be Tiger Woods.
and a few lines down, Simmons replies with:
On Mickelson and Sports Lent, I remember
watching one of those 20/20-Dateline-type pieces about him once, and
he was adamant about remaining a family man, taking breaks from golf
and never letting the sport consume him … and I remember thinking
to myself, “Right now Tiger is watching this and thinking, ‘I got
him. Cross Phil off the list. This guy will never pass me.'” The
great ones aren’t just great, they enjoy what they’re doing —
I find this to be completely true. If you love what you do and do it
constantly, you are bound to master it eventually. And if you truly
love it, can you stop doing it, even for a moment? Many writers carry
little notebooks with them and take notes constantly. Photographers
never leave the house without at least one camera. Musicians practice
night and day. People are often surprised at the overnight success of
a now famous person, but in most cases there is a multi-year effort
behind the success. I can completely understand taking a break
from something to recharge and relax. However, if you want to be
really really fantastic at something, I think the trick is to love it
obsessively. Then, it consumes you.
That’s sort of why I constantly
have the breadth vs depth argument with myself. If you want to do
everything and are unwilling to choose one over the others, it’s
impossible for all your interests to consume you. You have a limited
amount of time and energy and you have to make choices. Thus, it
shall be that I am never going to get the opportunity to master
anything until I give up on some things.
This is actually a question I’m obsessed with:
Why don’t people work hard when it’s in their best interest to do so?
Why does Eddy Curry come to camp every year overweight?
The (short) answer is that it’s really risky to work hard, because
then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you
didn’t work hard. It’s a form of self-protection. I swear that’s why
Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can
always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I
will and I’ll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself?
He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else
in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and
dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare
kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is
focused on why some kids don’t study for tests — which is a much
more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night
before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is
that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that
you’re stupid — and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The
point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult
to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is
tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is
tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder.
This is something I’ve often discussed with Jake since he hates
taking exams so much and makes sure not to study for them. I am never
sure if he’s genuinely having problems studying of he’s just not
trying hard enough because he’s scared that if he gives it all he has
and still fails, he’ll have to admit he couldn’t achieve despite
trying as hard as possible.
I work very hard not to regret my past. I tend to get hung up on the
past as is so I try regularly to make sure my decisions are as sound
as they can be at the time I make them. I also give the things I do
all I have. I want to be able to look back and say that there was
nothing more I could have done. I used every single ounce of ability,
power, and strength in my body and soul to make something happen. If,
then, it still doesn’t happen, it’s time to move on and realize it
wasn’t meant to be.
That’s not to say that I have followed my own
advice all the time. A few years ago, I applied to Stanford Business
School. My intention was to do a joint Education and Business degree
and to get accepted, you had to apply to the business school first. I
have always hated business school but I know Stanford is the bast and
I loved the idea of this particular program. I applied to it at the
same time I applied to Teach For America. I knew that if I got into
both I would choose TFA. Most people might think that’s stupid but
TFA was what I wanted to do at the time. I figured if I couldn’t get
in and could get in to Stanford, I’d study Education Policy and hope
to start some kind of education non-profit after I graduated. I knew
TFA would get me first-hand experience and that’s more useful than
any education in most cases. (and in the end it turned out to be invaluable).
I had taken my GMATs four and a half years before I applied and since
they are good for five years, I just used those scores. I asked for
recommendations from my boss and a co-worker. I really did work hard
on the essays. Overall, it’s not fair to say that I didn’t try but I
am sure I could have tried harder to perfect my application. I am not
sure if it was on purpose or sheer neglect. I knew the acceptance
rate was very low and chances were that I wouldn’t get in. And when I
didn’t get in, I kept telling myself I didn’t want to get in anyway.
I hadn’t even bothered to retake my GMATs. It was obvious that
Stanford wasn’t my first choice. Which is all bullshit. I didn’t get
in and that’s that. If I didn’t try to make my application as strong
as it could have been, that’s sheer stupidity on my part. Why waste
time writing essays, bothering to fill out an application, and taking
other people’s time to write recommendations if I wasn’t dying to get
in? I was completely retarded to not give it my best effort. And if
this was my best effort, I should admit that I wasn’t good enough to
get in. To not try my hardest just to have some excuse to use when I
don’t succeed is really setting myself up for failure. Life’s too
short to live like that.
There’s a famous experiment done by a wonderful
psychologist at Columbia University named Dan Goldstein. He goes to a
class of American college students and asks them which city they
think is bigger — San Antonio or San Diego. The students are
divided. Then he goes to an equivalent class of German college
students and asks the same question. This time the class votes
overwhelmingly for San Diego. The right answer? San Diego. So the
Germans are smarter, at least on this question, than the American
kids. But that’s not because they know more about American geography.
It’s because they know less. They’ve never heard of San Antonio. But
they’ve heard of San Diego and using only that rule of thumb, they
figure San Diego must be bigger. The American students know way more.
They know all about San Antonio. They know it’s in Texas and that
Texas is booming. They know it has a pro basketball team, so it must
be a pretty big market. Some of them may have been in San Antonio and
taken forever to drive from one side of town to another — and that,
and a thousand other stray facts about Texas and San Antonio, have
the effect of muddling their judgment and preventing them from
getting the right answer.
This comment reminded me of The Wisdom of Crowds. Sometimes it’s hard be
objective when you know the subject too well. It’s hard to not make
assumptions and to not overcomplicate the situation. I guess the
trick is to know when you’re in that kind of situation and to seek
the help of people who are less involved for those particular situation.
All interesting points, all gathered from a sports article that I
wouldn’t have even seen had Jake not sent it to me. Shows you that an
interesting person like Gladwell is worth reading regardless of the
context.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
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projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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