Elsewhere

I've decided to blog elsewhere for the time being, as there are things I want to write about/through that I don't feel totally free expressing in this space. Blogs do this, I suppose. Move and change, and become something different than when one started out...

Library porn

I love these photographs, mostly because of the way they convey the distinct beauty and personality of each space so immediately. And OMG, the Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura Rio de Janeiro! So Spanish Baroque-feeling! So incredibly hot!

Dust

This article on the Perseid meteor shower is totally dorky, but good at explaining the different ways meteoroids collide with Earth's atmosphere.

This opinion piece in the NYT is not bad. I like the idea of dust telling stories.

(On another note, it was exactly a year ago today that I got on a plane and returned to the East Coast from Oakland. In the interim I've been neglecting Gogolgirl terribly, but I think I might start hanging out here again for a little while as I try to work through some things.

Even if blogging now seems so... retro.)

Someone told me recently

that it is unfair to update my blog without writing a new post.  I haven't been here in a long while, so long that it feels strange to drop in like this.  Like with a friend you haven't seen in ages, like maybe I needed an invitation.  Gogolgirl definitely needs some re-envisioning in light of my curtailed free time -- and a brain that's mostly taken up with graduate classes and teaching.  Had I purchased a camera over winter break as I'd intended, I would give a shot at populating this space with images.  It's still a good idea, I think, but the camera has to wait until summer.

However, perhaps now that I've broken the silence, I'll come back again soon and do a little writing.  I'm not quite clear what I'll write about (paper ideas? french translations? medieval reliquaries? my thoughts about what should happen to each of the characters on LOST?) but I'm also not quite ready to abandon ol' G.g. just yet. 

Oh, and how are you, my two dear readers?  I've missed you.

Objects and Things

"The testimony of objects, in other words, brings into the present not just what was lost but the tangible presence of loss, loss in the form of a thing. The recovery of history and its evidence is an imaginative and performative act. This is a fact often lost in the empirical presumptions of museums. The objects are not whole ("this is all that's left") and have lost the context in which they were used. Once staged -- in the theater or the museum -- they are no longer identical to themselves."

"Presenting Objects, Presenting Things," Alice Rayner

The city I hate and adore!

While others do their bloggerly duties, I have only lyrics to offer. Oh, there are posts in the works: a puppet review, an essay about my family's farm house in the wilds of northern PA, responses to the reading I've done lately. But I am too, too busy at the moment. Finishing and beginning. Writing fast. Grading slowly...

Autumn in New York
Why does it seem so inviting?
Autumn in New York
It spells the thrill of first nighting.

Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds
In canyons of steel,
They're making me feel
I'm home.

It's Autumn in New York
That brings the promise of new love.
Autumn in New York
Is often mingled with pain.

Dreamers with empty hands
May sigh for exotic lands
It's Autumn in New York
It's good to live it again.

Desire, Porter style

I'd like to make a tour of you
The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you
The East, West, North and South of you
I'd love to gain complete control of you
and handle even the heart and soul of you

(You'll have to forgive me if I randomly post song lyrics. I am beginning a torrid love affair with the poets of Tin Pan Alley.)