I had all these interesting thoughts today that I planned to write about and now I can’t remember any of them. That should explain how long my day was.
Millions of people have already linked to this 13 Myths About the Results of the 2000 Election story that Derek originally linked to at MetaFilter but in case you haven’t seen it, I wanted to make sure to point it out. One of the most interesting points, to me, was the 13th. I never really thought of that and it’s an interesting point. The entire piece is quite thought provoking actually.
I’m still reading the political issue of the New Yorker from a few weeks ago. Today, I read the Joseph P. Kennedy letters. They were beautiful. The two I found most touching were the ones relating to the deaths of Joe Kennedy, Jr.and Kathleen Kennedy Hartington. It seems he was quite religious. Even though I’m not, I liked his strong emotions and eloquent wording. Here’s the one he wrote to Kick (Kathleen) 30 minutes after he found out about her death:
To Kick:
No one who ever knew her didn’t feel that life was much better that minute. And [ the word probably with a slash mark through it] we know so little about the next world that we must think that they wanted just such a wonderful girl for themselves. We must not feel sorry for her but for ourselves.
Here’s another part from a letter to Cissy Patterson, editor and publisher of the Wahington Times-Herald about Joe’s death.
I still find it very difficult to get over Joe’s death. God in His wisdom ordained so well that the young soon forget the sorrow of the death of older people, but I don’t think that the older people ever get over the death of the younger ones.
He also has a humorous letter to Teddy, correcting his broken English.
All in all, a very interesting read.
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So this afternoon I’m in a cab, going to class, down Broadway. In the middle of a stoplight, this woman opens my side of the door and looks at me as if I’m going to be getting off. I look at her with, “What the fuck’s your problem?” considering I was blocks away from my destination. She’s not fazed. She says “Where are you going? I need to go down to Wall Street.” The cabbie tells her to hop in on the passenger’s seat in the front and she does. Several more blocks and I’m at my destination where I pay my fare and get off. If this were Turkey, I wouldn’t have been surprised a bit, but in a city where people don’t even look at each other in the eye, the entire experience was all too strange for me.
While writing the next scene in my novel, I started thinking about shrinks and how the relationship is so one-sided. Here you are pouring your heart to a person whom you know very little about. You don’t even know if this person is married or has children. They never relay any personal stories of their own, yet you sit there and tell them every little thing about your soul. You pay them to listen and, hopefully, give you some clues into your problems and ways to find resolution. I’m sure this is no news to anyone, but it just made me think today.
In my art class, we looked at different paintings depicting the same story. It was interesting to see how the same biblical story was shown in so many different ways. Actually, the similarities were more interesting. The pose in which a character stood over and over again regardless of painter or period is really fascinating to me.
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If you’ve been here before, you might notice the small face lift. Feel free to let me know what you think. I have plans to add more to it, but I’ve been meaning to do the reorg for a while now, so I’m glad I finally got to it. I’m hoping this will motivate me to write the pieces I’ve been meaning to.
I can happily say that this has been a good weekend so far. I’ve written over 4,000 words of my novel and studied quite a bit of Japanese (not as much as I should have but still, I’m not complaining) and I got to do some of my redesign. On top of that, I went out to dinner with Jake and his parents last night and we got to see Mike and Steve today. All in all, a very successful weekend.
Last night, after dinner, the four of us walked over to the Empire State Building which is a few blocks from our house. If you ever visit New York, I highly recommend going there at night. Most tourists go to the building during the day, but the view is much better at night. Actually, it’s breathtaking. From that level, all the lights look like candles and the moving cars make a beautiful picture. I remember the first time Jake and I went up there and I saw the enormous Pepsi-Cola add. It’s so large that there is no way to ignore this terribly distasteful ad.
Checkout CNN’s election page. They took New Mexico’s electoral votes away from Gore but they forgot to decrement his “states won” section. It still says 19 states when it should say 18. Heh.
Apologies for not having an excerpt today, I still have several hours of writing and studying to do and it’s already almost 11pm here.
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Last night, Jake and I watched Hoosiers. A movie about coaching with Gene Hackman in the lead role. If you’re into sports movies, this is a true classic. It’s well acted both by Hackman and Dennis Hopper. It talks a lot about how close minded people are in small towns, a major reason I like living in the big city.
I spent the entire day writing my novel, literally. I started at 10am and wrote all the way till 5pm. It was draining but I wrote the most important chapter. I figure if I can write this chapter, I can write this book. So I think I can say that the day was successful. Yeay.
We also watched Microcosmos an amazing movie about insects. If you like animals as much as I do, you can’t miss this movie. I first saw it with my mother in London and I was so awestruck by it that I’ve been recommending it ever since. It’s truly a work of art. Trust me, you’ll love it.
I was talking to a friend the other day about the elections and he mentioned how different life would have turned out if Nixon hadn’t conceded in 1960. What would that have meant about Vietnam? Could Kennedy possibly still be alive if he hadn’t been president?
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The election is still not over, and it’s getting messier by the minute. I don’t even know when it’s gonna end but I can already tell it’s gonna be a total mess. The ending will be interesting, possibly devastating and definitely disputed.
One of the reasons I love living in New York City is cause you can hail cabs here. I’m used to being able to go out in the street, stick out my arm and have a yellow one stop right in front of me. When I moved from Istanbul to Pittsburgh, that was one of the things I missed most. In Pittsburgh, you call a cab and start praying for it to show. Anyhow, back to New York. The thing that baffles me is how few people know the simple taxi system. All cabs in New York use the same strategy to symbolize whether they are free or not. If the sign on top of the cab is not lit, it’s Occupied. If it’s totally lit, it’s Off Duty and if the mid section is lit, it’s Available. When hailing for a cab, all you need to do is look for the cabs whose middle light is on. How complicated is that? (And if my explanation sounds complicated, it’s only cause I suck at explaining not cause it’s actually confusing.) It took me all of a day or two to figure this out. For some reason, New York is full of people who have not. It really baffles me.
Thank God it’s Friday. This week has been long and draining so I am really glad it’s over. I’m tired of coming home with a whole set of ideas on what I need to do and how I’m going to get it all done and ending up on the couch, unable to move. I’m planning to use this weekend to recharge. And accomplish the millions of things on my list.
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My referrer logs aren’t usually that interesting. With the exception of this. I would like you to note that I am number One! Any ideas on what that symbolizes? Heh.
Everyone’s talking about voting. It’s all over the Fray ( you can even read my little comment) and all over MetaFilter. I know there are many people who are sick of all this talk, but I am still totally obsessed. I can’t think of anything else. I have MetaFilter and CNN up on my screens at work and I keep refreshing to get the most recent updates. Kinda freaky, I know, but I can’t stop myself. I promise to go back to normal as soon as Gore wins. Heh.
So much to do and so little time. I’m still feeling overwhelmed about this weekend. Trying to get my arms around all the Japanese I need to master in the next three weeks. I also need to produce some literary sounding scenes for my novel class on Monday. This one will go to the entire class so they can critique it, so it needs to be extra good. Let alone all the TiVo catching up I’m gonna have to do. Argh.
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Apologies for not having a book excerpt today, it’s slightly past midnight and I just got home. I am really tired so you’ll have to just have my thoughts for today.
My excuse? I went to the Opera baby! Not just any opera, it was Carmen, the queen of operas. I’d seen Carmen many years ago in Turkey and loved it. It’s a great opera to bring first-timers to since so many of the songs will sound familiar. Anyhow, it was magnificent and I’m glad I went.
If you ever wondered where the ideas for soap operas came from, here’s the culprit. When I was little, we never had subtitles in the opera. I would read the story and try to guess the point I was at. Three years ago, when I went to see my first Met Opera, La Traviata, I got to actually follow the story line by line for the first time. I bawled. I cried so hard that people were staring. Operas are so sad and they’re always about love. But the pace of the change of emotion is almost hilariously fast. There’s a scene where Don Jose says, “I will never leave you, Carmen. I will never leave you. All right, you win, I’m leaving.” All in one breath. We watch these operas with awe and excitement and yet we laugh at the soaps? Sure sounds inconsistent to me.
I stayed up till 2am last night. I heard Florida called for Gore, I heard it taken back. Jake woke me up at 3am, telling me that Bush won. I woke up at 6 to find out that Bush hadn’t won, yet. This year’s election is a historical one in so many ways that it was the perfect year to get obsessed with politics. This year, it all comes down to a single state. It possibly even comes down to the international absentee ballots in that state. We have a First Lady senator, a possible equality in the senate, a senator winning posthumously, and a case where the popular vote might be different than the electoral one. Too many incredible statistics all in one. How can you possibly not care? I’m just pissed I didn’t get to vote.
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He’s almost winning! Heh. Heh.
Thanks to Stewart I tracked down the double issue of The New Yorker and I am so glad I did. I don’t know why I suddenly became so fascinated with politics, but here I am yelling at my TV while Jake’s surfing the net. Maybe it is cause I can’t vote.
One of the articles in the New Yorker, titled The Word Lab, is about what language the candidates use and how they get selected. It has quite a few interesting points. For the article, they created a focus group and one of the things they discussed was death tax. People’s opinion of the amount you’re allowed to pass on after you die was a lot more than people had originally guessed. But even after the facts were given, almost none of the participants changed their opinion on whether to abolish to tax or not. “The point here was that if you introduce a subject using language that will produce a strong opinion no subsequent information will get people to change their minds.”
Another thing they did during the focus group was to make them put these five words in order of what matters most in their life. The list was opportunity, community, responsibility, accountability, and society. (I listed them in the same order as the magazine) What would be your order?
I gotta go back and yell at my TV some more.
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Today’s class day, making it a day of several thoughts. Let’s start with the art class. Let’s talk nudity. We spent a while discussing paintings that make you want to look away. How different cultures react to nudity is interesting. How do you feel when looking at a nude piece? Does it help if the piece was by a really famous artist? What if you’re in a gallery where you don’t know anyone, does that change whether you look at it or not? Does it change how long you loot at it for? What if you’re at the gallery with a lot of friends? What if these friends are artists? What if the painting is merely a close-up of a woman’s crotch? Makes you think? So I hope.
We also talked about perception. We looked at this wooden African piece where a woman sat kneeled. On top of her is a male figure. Many of us, who have been raised in a semi-Western culture, immediately assumed this to be a subservient position. Actually, in this example, the woman symbolized the woman as the higher being, the main cause of support. She’s the source of power. Isn’t it interesting how much we assume?
Did I mention that there is no equivalent of “bless you” in Japanese? I have an issue with that. It’s so weird to me that a society that places so much importance on being formal and correct and polite has no word for ‘bless you’. Talk about cultural differences….
Tomorrow is vote-day. Please vote. I can’t but if you can, please do. It makes a huge deal of difference, especially this time.
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Today was a little better than yesterday. I slept for over 12 hours and woke up rested, only to feel tired within three hours. I don’t know if the computer and studying is tiring my eyes but I keep having headaches. I hope that isn’t a side-effect of the Laser operation.
I wrote the entire outline of my novel today. Twenty chapters of three acts each. Considering the two main characters and beginning of the story had been in my mind for several months, it was neat to see whether I could form an entire book’s worth of a story out of it. I think I can. I hope I can. I really love this story and I am quite attached to these people. I want to do this one. I want to do it right. May the Muses help me out.
Derek says writing a book is hard. I couldn’t agree more.
I did spend some chunk of time studying for my Japanese test as well. Not as much as I would have liked to, but enough to not give up on this exam, yet. I just hope my brain holds up.
Self-confidence is a weird thing, everyone who lacks it thinks that she is the only one who does so. (I am tired of using the politically correct she or he thing. Since I am female, I am using she. If you’re male, please adjust accordingly. Thanks.) I look at some people and feel like they must be amazingly happy. I see this person who looks stunning, has a great job, wonderful boyfriend and friends who seem to love her. I think to myself that this person must feel delighted with her life. And then I find out that she, too, doubts herself and feels insecure and my jaw drops. I wish I could find a way to cure self-doubt. It’s such a crippling sensation and it seems that no one is spared. If you know the secret to how not to be insecure, please share with me.
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My Japanese exam is only four weeks away and I am so going to flunk it. I bought two books last week to prepare and the more I study, the more I realize how little I know. The thing is, it’s self-inflicted pain so I can’t even whine. While I am too tired to study as much as I’m going to have to, I’m also too masochistic to give it up. I’ve come so close, I can’t give up now. And I sure as hell am not willing to fail. So the only alternative is to bust my ass.
It’s times like these that make me reconsider my willingness to go back to school.
I wish I could tell you something pithy about today but I spent the entire day studying Japanese, desperately trying to come up with an outline for my novel and mostly running away from both chores by watching a week’s worth of TiVo. I’m sure tomorrow won’t be shockingly different.
I did see Charlie’s Angels last night and loved it. It was funny. It was witty. It was silly. It was fun. It was the perfect Friday night movie.
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I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tonight, for the first time ever. I’ve been to The Frick Museum several times and I love the collection there, but I’d never been to the mother of all museums before. And I’ve lived in New York for 4 years. The thing is, now I wish I’d never gone. The museum is so enormous and amazing and now that I know that (I mean I always ‘knew’ that but now I’ve actually seen how expansive it is)I can’t stop myself from dying to go back. I have to see all of it. Awful.
I went to the museum with my class and we looked at several pieces. We surrounded a painting and played a game called the Delayed Judgement Activity. In this activity, you reserve all of your judgement and make objective statements about the piece. For example, “This woman looks happy” is subjective while “This painting has four women and a man” is objective. So we went around three times and tried making our statements as objective as possible. The neat thing about the activity is that it’s a group-activity. One person makes a statement and we all ponder whether that’s really objective or not. This process causes each observer to notice things that she or he hadn’t paid attention to before the exercise. The painting, therefore, completely transforms right before your eyes. It’s really magical.
By the way, the practice of separating objective from subjective is really difficult and requires a personal effort, especially when talking about an artistic object.
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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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