 I first read Philip Roth last year when I
read The Human Stain and enjoyed it very much. I liked the writing. I
liked the story. I liked the pace. Since then, I made two separate
attempts to read him, both of which failed. Both of the other books I
tried were too “dirty-old-man” for me. When The
Plot Against America came out, I knew I wanted to read it.
Especially since it was political and there were many reviews that
equated it to the current administration. I asked for the book and
received it as a Christmas gift in 2004. It sat on my shelf for a
year and I knew I would never pick it up unless I forced myself so I
asked my reading group if they were interested in reading it.
Everyone agreed so we picked it and I finally got around to reading it.
The book is a what if story about Lindbergh winning the 1940
presidency instead of FDR, written from the perspective of a Jewish
family living in New York. The main character is a little boy named
Philip Roth. It was very well written and a relatively quick read.
For people, like me, who don’t know a lot about the correct political
history of the time, it’s a bit confusing to keep track of what
really happened and what’s made up. I am usually determined to avoid
any form of fiction or non-fiction that is set during the second
World War but I knew this book would be worthwhile. And it was. It
was also very disturbing and there was an engulfing sense of fear and
panic throughout the entire novel, making me thankful for the
thousandth time that I wasn’t alive during that particular time in
history even though this particular story was fictional.
As much as I despise the current administration, I would have to say
that the horrific tale of the book is not nearly as parallel to the
current times as the media made it out to be. If it really were, I do
think we’d see thousands flocking to Canada weekly. May it never ever
get to be an issue.
 Well the
little boy is getting more mischievous by the hour. He now likes to
open drawers that he cannot even see into. He pulls the handle,
reaches into the drawer and just picks an item at random. Whatever
comes his way. He then dutifully brings it to me to show his new
finding.
He is completely obsessed with screwing and unscrewing water bottles.
He cannot unscrew them all the way though and once he closes them, he
comes to me and whines and whines until I open it back up. Same for
the little bowls we feed him from. He can close them but cannot open
them. Every day, he finds a new item for me to open so he can close
it. Today, during music class, he was very upset that the little
bells on a shaker wouldn’t come off. He kept brining it to me,
thinking I could do it for him. I tried to explain to him that they
just don’t come off but he wasn’t very pleased with my answer.
He has also made the correlation between the water bottles we drink
from and his sippy cup. If he can’t find his cup and he’s thirsty, he
finds and empty or full water bottle somewhere in the house and
brings it to me. I then find his cup and he, happily, drinks in big
gulps. Who says babies can’t communicate? He has started to sign the
sign for milk, but tends to do it at random times, not necessarily
correlating with nursing. He does, however, come over throughout the
day and try to lift my shirt up so he can have some milk. Getting too
clever, David.
After several months of no more teeth, one little one left of the
middle bottom one is now peeking out. Maybe there’s more to come
soon. He’s completely mastered walking and even walks sideways now.
He also has mastered picking up an object by just bending down a bit.
He eats at least one meal a day completely on his own (veggie burger
+ turkey meatballs + peas or some other vegetable and fruits). He’s
gotten pickier about the food and likes to bang his body back and
forth in the seat if I don’t listen to him. Mother always wins in the
end though and David learns that veggies have to be finished before
he can have his grapes. He loves, loves, LOVES grapes and
blueberries. And bread. I never give him bread at home so he follows
people around for bread whenever we go out.
Throughout the day, he comes over to my desk and puts his head on my
lap. Just to say he loves me. Still as smiley as ever and funny and
sweet. Takes all his toys and comes to sit by my desk to play.
I love you, little boy.
My first job out of college was at a major investment bank in New
York City. I worked at this place for several years. I spent three
months in London and six months in Tokyo. I had over six different
managers in that time. When I decided to move departments a few years
into my job, I had decided that choosing the right manager was
important to my happiness at work. What I realized a few months later
was that my manager wasn’t just important, he was crucial to
the success of my career.
The manager I worked for in London was wonderful. He liked me and
thought highly of me and encouraged me constantly. He had me work
with intelligent people and I learned a lot working for him. He’s the
sole reason I was willing to live apart from Jake for six months to
take a position in Tokyo. The manager I worked with before him in New
York was totally the opposite and always yelled at me, never made
positive remarks about my work and constantly complained. The
situation got so bad that I was dreading going to work each and every
day. I figured the manager in London (and then Tokyo) was as good as
it got.
Until I moved to another department at the bank. When I moved back
from Tokyo, I was ready to be done with the company but at my
manager’s request, decided to look around internally before I quit. I
met with several departments, all of whom were only willing to hire
me for menial jobs since I had decided to work three days a week. One
department, however, seemed to have an interesting project and they
really wanted me on board. The head of the department, let’s call him
Carl, met with me and asked me when I’d be willing to start. The
original offer was to support and fix a specific piece of software
that was honestly built wrong and broken all over the place. After a
few weeks and many meetings, I was suddenly put in charge of
rewriting the software altogether. I spent the following two years or
so, managing a team of six in London, Tokyo and New York and working
only three days a week. What’s amazing about this isn’t that I was a
phenomenal worker. I hadn’t really changed all that much from the
previous year and my skills hadn’t improved that drastically.
But my manager had. Carl believed in me and he told me so daily. Even
though he was a Managing Director, he met with me several times a
week and congratulated me regularly. He brought me along to meetings
with partners and other important people. He asked my opinion in
public and in private. He made sure I got all the credit for all my
work. He gave me all the resources I asked for and was there to
answer all my questions. He truly supported me in every way. More
significantly, he believed in me. Everyone thought working three days
a week would be a career suicide but he put me in charge of a project
and he promoted me to Vice President.
Carl made me believe in myself. He made me feel like I was capable of
doing all that he was asking me to do. And, amazingly, I became
capable. I rose to his expectations. I became the person he saw me as.
A few years ago a friend told me to be careful about statements I
made out loud. She said that if I constantly complain about being
fat, people start thinking I am fat even if they didn’t previously
think so. I believe in the power of saying something to make it
happen. Carl believed in me, he supported it and I rose to his
expectations. If I say something out loud often enough, other people
believe it and start treating me as such and then I become that
thing. Obviously, this happens all the time in abuse cases. Someone
tells you you’re trash often enough, you start believing it. Soon you
forget what your personal thoughts were and you just see yourself
through other people’s eyes. That can cause a lot of damage depending
on the people around you.
It can also help you become a better person. It can help you have
faith in yourself. It can help you become the person you have the
potential to be. The person you already are.
It’s all about whose eyes you get see yourself through.
 The
Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan was a mistake. The AskMe
recommendation was Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell but I didn’t make
the distinction in the title until long after I’d started reading the
novel. Since I was already over 100 pages into the novel and enjoying
it, I decided to keep reading despite the confusion. The Cloud Atlas
is about a bomb diffuser in the army during second world war who is
sent to Alaska to dismantle the bombs the Japanese sent to the United
States inside air balloons. These balloons, of which there were over
nine thousand, fell all over Alaska and West Coast of Northern United
States. The balloons were rigged with explosives and are one of the
best kept secrets of the war. A completely fictional story based on a
true-world event.
The three main characters are all interesting, each a bit too extreme
in their flaws. But I got attached to the main character and to the
story in general. I cared about what happened and enjoyed reading it
from the first page to the very last. Especially since I had no idea
about the balloons and was quite amazed it was a true story.
 The
Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel was recommended to me by
my good friend Michelle. Probably one of the most beautiful books
I’ve read in my life. It’s a story about a woman who drops out of her
doctoral program and goes back to her hometown and a minister in the
same hometown, both of whom are dealing with their own personal
problems and who are put in a situation where they have to take care
of two little orphaned girls.
It’s so touching and so very emotional to read. It’s really
beautifully written and the characters are three dimensional and
flawed and honest. There’s a lot of color in the book and great
descriptions of the children’s reaction to the terrible tragedy and
the adults’ differing ways of treating the children. It’s really a
phenomenal read.
I haven’t read Kimmel’s more famous book, A Girl Named Zippy, but I
think I will have to after this.
This is a relatively older photo that I took but never got around to
posting. I have a bunch of photos that are sitting on the server just
like this one so I am trying to go through them and see if I like to
put them up. There’s something about this particular photo that makes
me feel lonely and sad. But I still like it. I hope you do, too.
 Another AskMe recommendation was Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. As far as I
can remember, I’ve never read Japanese fiction so this was my first.
And what an inspiring beginning. I loved this book pretty much from
the very first page. My preference is usually character-based books
and Kokoro was nothing but. I loved the simplicity of the language,
could relate to the main character almost immediately. Cared about
him, about his story, about his feelings towards his mentor. I
enjoyed how non-contrived the story felt to me. Even though I was
wondering what made the sensei who he was, it wasn’t crucial to me.
It wasn’t like a mystery, it was like an unraveling of a personality.
I swallowed the book in a day and thought about it for quite some
time afterwards.
I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to read more Japanese
books. My impression was that they were more about people and their
thoughts, their morals, their ideas as opposed to actual events in
their world. Maybe I am way off but I wanted to find out, so I went
through the recommendations and put two of the other Japanese books
on hold and encouraged my reading group to pick yet a third one as
our book of the month for June.
 The second book I read this year is Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout,
another AskMe recommendation. A quiet, beautiful story about a single
mother and her teenage daughter who has a relationship with her
teacher. It proves my disturbing thoughts about how little parents
actually know about their own children and where they are and what
they’re doing at any moment in time. Disturbing at times, frustrating
at others, this novel rang relatively true to me. I enjoyed the
writing style even though I thought the book was a little slow but
still enjoyed reading it. I really am not looking forward to David’s
teenage years. And while I am sort of glad not to have a girl for
that reason, I know boys can be their own bag full of troubles and
worries.
The photographs at pictures of the year are phenomenal. Some truly
inspiring work.
As I mentioned before, 2005 wasn’t the best
year for books, for me. Determined to do better this year, I posted
on AskMe to ask for recommendations of people’s favorite books. I got
a lot of answers and got started reading them one by one. This year,
I hope to post about each of the books as I read them. So to catch
up, I’ll write about the ten I’ve read so far in the next few days.
 First up, is Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler. I have never been a big fan of
short story collections so I am not even sure why I picked this out
to be my first book of the year. Maybe it’s because the MeFi reader
said it was the book that got her out of her 2005 book-slump.
Whatever prompted me, I am really glad I decided to read it. Kissing
in Manhattan is fantastic. It’s not the kind of book I would have
picked up in a million years. Each of the short stories is about a
different tenant who lives in a fictional building in Manhattan. The
stories, while different, sort of weave through each other in that
the same characters pop up in different stories and you sort of find
out some more about them through another tenant’s story. It’s very
well-written, sort of weird stories but good imagery, great character
development and very visual. I thought about the characters and the
stories well after I’d finished the book, which, for me, is a sign of
a great read. What a wonderful way to start the year.
Just so you know that I am not exaggerating when I tell you about
what a happy boy David is, I wanted to share with you a recent photo
I took while he and I were laughing at each other. Isn’t he so very
beautiful?
A friend of mine asked me about my favorite movie the other day.
Anyone who’s a movie-snob would cringe at some of my favorites and
probably think I am an uncultured, cheesy-movie-liking idiot. But I
don’t care much for movie-snobs (or any other snobs for that matter)
so I don’t really care what they think. Anyhow, my favorite movie of
all time is still the same as it was when I applied to college 14
years ago.
My favorite movie of all time is still Dead Poets Society. While I
was very lucky to not have parents like the ones in the movie and
wouldn’t nearly qualify my life as oppressed and predetermined as
those students, the message of sucking the marrow of life resonated
strongly with me then and still does today. There are so many things
I like to do and so many things I yearn to learn. So many things I
wish I could do like design and play an instrument and draw well and
write well and be more creative and artistic. I feel like the amount
of things I want to do/learn/be would easily cover several lifetimes.
I don’t know how to figure out which path to take. There are many
aspects of my life that I love and wouldn’t give up. I love being
married. I love that I’ve shared so much of my life with Jake and
that we have all these memories that we can unleash like a treasure
chest. I love reminiscing with him. I love being a mom. I love the
joy and wonder David has brought into my life. The little moments
where he does something completely unexpected, the minutes after he
wakes up from a nap all flushed, the hours we spend bonding while I
nurse him. I wouldn’t give those up for anything. I love reading. I
dedicate several hours of my week to reading books and those hours
are some of my most cherished. My little escape into the minds and
worlds of others. My opportunity to experience life in a different
way. That’s something else I am not willing to give up. Those are my
core three that need to be in my life. There are many other time-
consuming activities I like that I’d rather not stop doing like:
photography, writing this site, scrapbooking my son’s memories,
taking classes with/for David, etc.
But then there are others. Hours wasted having petty arguments around
office politics. Hours wasted trying to configure some kind of
installation or a piece of code that’s missing a stupid parenthesis
or semicolon (yey for python). Hours killed with being in a bad mood
or stuck in traffic or running stupid errands or having a fight. I
know it’s impossible to dispose of all of these. And maybe I am just
itching because it’s time to try something new. I think that my main
problem is that I feel insatiable. I feel like picking one thing is
not going to satisfy me since I still have to give up picking
something else.
I had told myself that if Jake did well enough for us to live on his
salary, I’d go back to school. Maybe get a PhD in Child Psychology.
Maybe get one in Computer Science. Or maybe I’d do a collection of
Masters degrees. One for math, one for computer science, one of
english, one for statistics. One for design. One for psychology. Art
history. Linguistics. Photography. Several individual languages. I
really can go on for quite some time. Now, I’m thinking maybe I
should just take classes. I don’t know if that’s even possible. I
don’t know that the schools I’d want to attend offer the option of
just taking classes. But I suppose theoretically if I had enough
money, I could convince them to let me. I wonder if that would quench
my thirst. Make me feel like I was finally sucking the marrow of life.
Make me feel like I was actually living several lifetimes in one.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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