“Sweetheart” [CC licensed photo by Insidi0us]

This came across in a recent daily email from Delanceyplace and, given some recent experiences, it was interesting and informative. I’ve never really considered the mechanism of hearing loss…

“By far the most common [condition that destroys hearing is] exposure to either long-term moderately loud noise or sudden very loud noise. … What actually happens in the inner ear when it is exposed to … loud noise?

“The inner ear is home to the cochlea, a bony spiral cavity about the size of a pea, which turns on itself two and a half times and looks like a snail shell (‘cochlea’ comes from the Latin term for ‘snail’). Sound waves, or vibrations, enter the cochlea (having been given a boost by the middle ear’s three interconnected bones, including the stapes, the smallest bone in the body). As this happens, fluid in the cochlea sets in motion the thousands of hair cells located in the organ of Corti, deep in the inner ear. “The hair cells in the organ of Corti are organized into four rows. The three outer rows of cells pick up the movement and change it into a mechanical impulse, which amplifies the signal — now traveling through the cochlear bath and thus dulled, as sound would be if you were underwater. The inner hair cells, in a single row, each respond to a particular frequency. They are activated to release a neurotransmitter to the auditory nerve fibers, which also number in the thousands and also each respond to a different frequency. The neurons transmit the sound via the auditory nerve to the brain, ultimately reaching the auditory cortex, which translates the sound into something that we recognize as speech or birdsong or a car passing on the road. The translation that occurs in the auditory cortex allows us to distinguish between similar speech sounds like ‘ah’ and ‘eh,’ ‘b’ and ‘p,’ ‘ch’ and ‘sh.’ How the cortex does this is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that you hear with your brain. The auditory system merely transmits the signals. But if the signals can’t get to the brain, then the brain can’t do its job.

“In a lot of deafness, the first things you lose are the outer hair cells. The inner hair cells may be undamaged, but because you’ve lost the mechanical response of the outer cells, the cochlea is not as sensitive, not as fine-tuned in its response. The result is that some neurons respond to more frequencies than they should, sending a muddled signal to the brain. The primary damage is to speech recognition. ‘Bet’ sounds like ‘pet,’ ‘church’ sounds like ‘shirts.’ Brad May, of Johns Hopkins, calls this ‘brain deafness.’

[...]

“[This] type of hearing loss [is] often referred to as nerve damage but [it is] not, technically, since [it doesn't] affect the acoustic nerve, only the hair cells that communicate with it. …

“A person with mild to moderate hearing loss can still hear in a quiet room or other favorable environment. But when too many frequencies are destroyed, he or she may not understand speech, even under the best of conditions. The muddled transmissions also make it difficult for the auditory system to filter unwanted noise: the din and clatter of a restaurant, the engine of a bus, the hum of a fan or air conditioner. Intrusive noise may be simply two or three people talking at once, creating a background sound of indistinguishable voices, or it may be a large, resonant room echoing sound off the walls. … Since hearing aids aren’t as good as the human ear at screening out unwanted noise, using them can be frustrating, especially in noisy environments.

“Assuming my hair cells are damaged, they probably look flattened, like a field of wheat after a hailstorm. … Each cell in those four rows of cells (the single inner row, which communicates with the brain, and three outer rows) is topped by a tiny standing hair, or stereocilium. The hair cells, she said, are ‘connected to each other with fine little filaments, so that when sound comes in and they bend, it allows currents to flow through.’ This movement triggers the release of the neurotransmitter substances. After intense noise exposure, the hair cells lie flat. If the noise is not too loud, they eventually right themselves. The threshold shift is temporary.

“But Kujawa and Liberman have found that even though the threshold reverts to normal, permanent damage may have occurred. … [They] found that the damage occurs not in the hair cells themselves, which may recover, but in the spiral ganglion cells (SGCs — the cells in the cochlear neurons). The hair cells communicate with SGCs in the process of passing information to the brain.

“Although hearing is restored, the damage is done almost instantaneously. … Even though we think of this kind of hearing loss as related to aging, the truth is that ears are most vulnerable to noise damage when they’re young. … Teenagers — with their ubiquitous iPods and MP3 players, not to mention noise exposure from video games, loud stadiums, and rock concerts — are experiencing these loud noises at an especially vulnerable age. Another vulnerable population, newborn infants, might suffer damage from continuous noise in a neonatal ICU or from a white noise machines parents sometimes use to help fussy infants sleep.”

—by Katherine Bouton
from Shouting Won’t Help

Related posts:

1. (Abecedarium) N
2. Now Reading: The most persuasive words in English: The psychology of language
3. Jack Gilbert’s Time of Triumph and Loss

Related posts:

1. Black Snake Moan (2006)
2. Reading Log: Black Cross (Greg Iles)
3. Star Eating Black Holes

“Vice” Cathedrale Notre Dame, Strasbourg

Ahh, Richard III…he of the deformed body and silver-tongued eloquence. I’ve become used to seemingly abrupt changes of character in the necessarily compressed form of drama, but Richard’s power of persuasion is forcefully demonstrated when he manages to woo Anne even as she stands over her dead husband’s freshly bleeding corpse. The corpse of the man she knows Richard murdered.

But there’s something unconvincing about Richard as well, or more precisely about the manner in which Shakespeare portrays his conniving, persuasive malevolence. Richard’s closest kin in Shakespeare’s plays is Iago, Othello’s evil counselor. The extraordinary nature of Richard’s malignancy is demonstrated principally through the effects on—and sometimes through the eyes of—those suffering around him while Iago’s similarly thorough malevolence is much more directly evoked.

Iago, though, is evil of a whole different order. Richard is brutally evil; Iago is an artist. Richard’s motives are obvious, possibly even pedestrian; Iago’s motives are ambiguous—at best—and so all the more terrifying. The evil of Richard is told through the story and proved by the plot; Iago’s evil is elevated to the level of being art itself. Iago is an artist of corruption; Richard a corrupt craftsman.

Or is he? The mixture of fact and fiction leaves a fair amount of room for interpretation of Richard’s motives. Considered with the fact that Richmond, arguably the only good character in the play, finally kills Richard, and that he was born with a significant deformity, it might be that Richard is a pawn in a game being played by the divine. It might be that he has no real choice in the matter…or that his role is really to be a personification of Vice, that thinnest of characters.

On the other hand, I imagine this leaves a lot of room for the actor portraying Richard to employ his (or her) own craft. I don’t know for sure because I’ve yet to see Richard III on stage or screen.

Related posts:

1. Reading Log: Othello (William Shakespeare)
2. Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 2 (William Shakespeare)
3. Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 1 (William Shakespeare)

Russell Sutherland

I didn’t know Russell Sutherland at all nor had I ever communicated with him. But I know his work. One of my first exposures to a kind of origami art I didn’t even know existed was stumbling across Sutherland’s flickr feed and, from there, his website, Folded Expressions. I don’t remember how I ended up there, but I do remember that Sutherland’s site was my first pointer to Eric Joisel’s work, another fact for which I am grateful.

Sutherland’s origami busts, faces, and flowers—some constructed with paper and others with metal—immediately cracked my mind open. All at once I understood so many things about origami as an art, not just a paper craft. Origami could be rounded and shaped! Origami could be used to make faces! Origami didn’t need to be made of paper! Origami could be tiny! Origami could be crumpled!

“Crumpled Irises” by Russell Sutherland

His origami busts can be haunting, funny, regal.

“Talking Head” by Russell Sutherland

His netsuke (tiny faces) are amazing as handiwork and artistically rich.

Various netsuke by Russell Sutherland

His metal origami faces are technically innovative but more than experiments:

“Industrial Clown” by Russell Sutherland

Sutherland’s site is aptly named. His folds are, almost without fail, expressive. Seeing his work I appreciated, for the first time, origami as an art that couldn’t be distilled into diagrams in the same way paintings resist being duplicated with outlines and numbers or a good meal goes beyond any written recipe.

I am enthusiastic about origami, but unlikely ever to be even an average craftsman, and never a real artist with paper. In a strange way probably only sensical to those who suffer from a similar failing, I am also grateful that Sutherland’s work obliterated any vague notion that origami might be my art. Sutherland’s work was the first that let me relax and not worry about being “good” at origami. I knew I would simply never be that good; origami became, for me, a craft I could simply enjoy for what it was. Sutherland, like Joisel, was an artist whose work I admire all the more fully because I have no intention (or pretension) to equal…his work stands on its own as art that crosses a variety of boundaries.

Image credits: head image from havepaper; all other images from Folded Expressions.

Related posts:

1. RIP: Eric Joisel
2. Fit to be Bound
3. RIP: H. Palmer Hall

Interrobang

I love the interrobang because it’s elegant—the meaning is obvious at a glance, and visually funky at the same time. And I’m childish enough that the word “bang” sometimes makes me laugh even though I know it’s programmers lingo.

The interrobang is typographical shorthand for the slangy, yet so useful, phrase “right?” As in:

“Wow, that was some crazy YouTube video of the screaming goat.”

“Right?”

The interrobang is the shock-and-awe bringer of typography, incredulity and acceptance, confirmation and amazement rolled into one tasty glyph… Right‽

Ampersand

It’s a logogram! It’s a ligature! It’s a bit of Ancient Roman. I love and hate the ampersand. It’s often the coolest character in a typeface, but seemingly just as often ignored by the apparently fatigued typographer. It easily possesses the greatest design of the punctuation on U.S. keyboards… and it’s impossible for people like me to create by hand.

The ampersand’s importance speaks for itself. It’s the cool person who doesn’t have to do anything to show their coolness and whose total awesomeness doesn’t become pretension. It conveys a closeness the word “and” cannot. It reveals that plain “and” for the pedestrian word it is and “+” as suitable for nerds only. You can even graft on a period to create the unclassifiable &c.

Here’s the thing: you write most punctuation but you draw the semicolon. It’s a mini work of art. What other punctuation mark has an (interesting) Tumblr feed devoted to it?

Semicolon

Aldus Manutius invented italics and created the semicolon. Isn’t that enough typographic street-cred already?

Naysayers maintain that the semicolon is redundant and pretentious. Take a break from the tweed the whinge, just take that mutant offspring of the period and a comma off life support and use the full-stop.

But the semicolon is so not the same as the period or the comma. The semicolon is hip without Birkenstocks and elegant without a tie. The period marks a division; the semicolon marks a relationship. The comma claims that two have become one, hippy style; the semi-colon understands that a bond can exist alongside individuality. The period is an emphatic marking of territory; the semicolon is a winking lover’s embrace of one utterance to the next and—importantly—vice versa.

I am large; I contain multitudes. I enjoy the spare style of Raymond Carver. I don’t object to the short sentences. I like the punch of the single-breath line. But I also dig the David Foster Wallacian line, meandering and exploratory; the line that can’t stop, breathless with discovery; the implicit dare to the writer and the reader, can they handle it?

Ellipsis

First, let’s get one thing straight: the ellipsis (…) is not composed of three periods (…) or three periods separated by spaces (. . . ). Thanks to the lack of typographical prowess of most browsers and their typefaces, you might not see a difference between all three examples. So an image to illustrate:

Isn’t the first line the most beautiful? That puny ellipsis in the second line is three periods without spaces; the grotesque example in the third line has spaces between the periods.

I don’t know how three periods would function grammatically… Really stop this time? I’m like so totally done now?

Second, I don’t care about the boring use of the ellipsis as an omission of quoted text. Yes, I use it that way. No, it’s not worth talking about.

Third, I am not going to get into the debate about whether you put spaces before or after an ellipsis. I have a system of omitting the space before when used as a trailing off or a kind of elliptical pause, a space before and after when using it to represent a literal omission of text. But let’s just say some typophiles have met gruesome ends at the hands of other who disagree with them.

No one knows from whence the ellipsis came or how it came to mean what it does.

The ellipsis is not beautiful because of its physical form—in fact I’ve never seen an ellipsis that is remarkable typographically. The ellipsis is beautiful, breathtaking even, because it’s a bit of typographical poetry. It’s a line break for prose… not a full stop, but not as exclusive and strong a pause as that brute, the comma. It’s a myth-level transformation of the simple period glyph into something more than the sum of its parts… I can’t help but love it.

Pilcrow

Another punctuation mark of mysterious origins. One common there is that it represents the apex of an evolution from the capitulum character in Latin:

The pilcrow appeals to crazy conservationists, who appreciate the paper it saves by not adding all that wasted space between paragraphs, the classicists, who like that it hearkens back to the days of Medieval scribes—who took their writing seriously—and myself, because of its perfect balance: it’s unique shape is unmistakable, it’s solid enough to stand out from text in a glance, and it has just enough decoration to appear both a little bit baroque and a little bit rock and roll.

It doesn’t hurt that if you squint a little it looks a bit like my initials: cll.

Question and Exclamation Commas

Here we have typographic fraternal twins, marks so obvious in their necessity I can’t believe they’re only 20 years old.

The question and exclamation commas really shine in that language construction most useful to the long-winded: the list. I adore!, worship?, and can’t resist the list. I’ll even put up with the pedantry of the Oxford Comma if it’s one of these little guys.

If only there were a way to put them to use on the keyboard.

Irony Mark

Unlike the SarcMark, which some yahoo copyrighted, or the so called snark mark (.~), which is more emoticon than punctuation, the irony mark is both philosophically and practically fulfilling. How can I resist⸮

The problem? In most—maybe all—typefaces the irony mark can only be produced through the hack of interchanging it with the rhetorical question mark (see how I did that up there at the end of the last paragraph?) The irony mark should be smaller and elevated from the baseline…

Related posts:

1. Listography 12: Favorite Lost Things
2. BAP 2004 (5): “Your friend’s arriving on the bus” by Craig Arnold
3. Links, Links, Links (weekly)

“Studies for Shylock” (Richard Parkes Bonington). Wikimedia Commons

The Merchant of Venice inspires many questions, not least of which is both who is the play actually about and who (or what) is that person really? The “merchant” of the title is Antonio but it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing this as a play about anyone but Shylock. I’d bet most people who haven’t read the play (and probably many who have) think of the title as referring to Shylock.

And what are we to make of Shylock anyway?

The Merchant of Venice was categorized as a comedy in the First Folio, but the rom-com characteristics are eclipsed by the drama of love, hate, mercy and revenge. Shylock as a villainous buffoon might be the reading that most directly suits Merchant‘s placement in the catalog, but it also seems the shallowest approach to one of the most complex characters in any of Shakespeare’s plays.

Yes, it’s funny—absurdly and sadly so—to see Shylock raving, “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!” seemingly unable to settle on which loss is worse. His materialist appetite finally knows only the bounds cleverly tied around him by Portia. But Shylock has also been deeply wronged. He is routinely abused by those who are happy to use him when they have to. And they abuse Shylock not just by their actions of borrowing when necessary, but directly as Antonio acknowledges he has and will again:

SHYLOCK
Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
‘Shylock, we would have moneys:’ you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? [...]

ANTONIO
I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.

Shylock is twisted and stunted, but unless we embrace a deep anti-semitism we have to admit he wasn’t destined to be so. Who can remain what they once were in the face of serious injury? He has been grievously wounded, as evidence not just by the famous “if you prick us, do we not bleed” speech, but more so by his sadness at Jessica’s theft of the ring he’d given his late wife:

SHYLOCK
Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my
turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor:
I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Yes, it’s horrible and funny to witness Shylock so repetitively insist on having what is his by the “bond” between himself and Antonio. Shylock utters the word “bond” more then Al Gore used the term “lock box” in his famously terrible presidential debate. But there’s a heart-wrenching sadness in his desperation and his clinging to the bond, one thing he can be sure of and (arguably) until now could count on being sure of: money and the laws of commerce in a nation whose very survival depends explicitly on both.

I’m glad Antonio didn’t have to yield the pound of flesh, but the final degradation and destruction of Shylock is anything but funny. Taking away his money might have been itself a poetic justice, but forcing him to convert to Christianity? There’s something noble in Shylock’s refusal to renunciate his faith through all of those painful years…forcing him to do so at the end is a cruelty at least as great as Shylock’s intentions to gain a pound of Antonio’s flesh.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

The pound of flesh. What exactly is the pound of flesh that Shylock wants anyway? He proposes to cut it from Antonio’s breast “nearest his heart,” which I read to mean he wants to take Antonio’s heart. But might he be thinking of something a little more…personal? Merchant is rife with biblical allusions. Various bibles use the word “flesh” to refer to the penis, a practice Shakespeare adopted in his plays. Combine that with all of the myths in the conflict between Jews and Christians—that Jews circumcised Christians and used Christian blood for ceremonies—and I have to wonder…

Rings. There are a lot of rings in this play, literally and figuratively. Shylock’s ring provides crucial evidence of his humanity. The rings Portia and Nerissa give to Bassiano and Gratiano are both an important token of commitment and the heart of one of few truly comedic exchanges in the play. And the bawdy closing couplet spoken by Gratiano invokes rings as sexual euphemism: “Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing / So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.”

The Christians aren’t so great either. Were it not for the tragic aspects of the play, it might seem funnier that Bassanio is a debt-ridden playboy who borrows money to buy his way to a rich heiress, that Jessica steals her dead mother’s ring on the way out the door, and that Nerissa only agrees to marry Gratiano if his close buddy Bassanio chooses correctly and wins the hand of Portia, thus ensuring him some wealth as well. Even Portia, who is a pretty flawless character who we sympathize with thanks to her father’s manipulation from beyond the grave, cheats and has her musicians play a song that clearly indicates which casket Bassanio should choose.

Music. I’m sure a book or two could be—and has likely already been—written about the symbol, motif, and role of music in The Merchant of Venice. But I’m not going to.

Related posts:

1. Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 2 (William Shakespeare)
2. Reading Log: Romeo & Juliet
3. Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 1 (William Shakespeare)

POV I: A few weeks ago I lost my therapist. Worse, I discovered she had passed well after the fact when a friend-of-a-friend mentioned she might apply for her vacant position.

POV II: A few months ago, during a self-imposed trial separation, my therapist broke things off with me. “It’s not you,” she said, employing the kind of therapeutic cliche she rarely indulged in, “it’s me.” She needed to do something new. She couldn’t be the person she needed to be and still be with me.

My therapist—I’ll call her K—isn’t dead, though judging from the tall, therapist shaped hole in my psyche she might as well be. She was a medical provider, so she (probably) didn’t break up with me, but being totally unaware of her other relationships makes it feel personal. The kind of people who have years of therapy behind and ahead of them are almost certainly the kind of people who either don’t hear the rational side of their brain telling them it’s not personal or who can’t believe it when they do.

K left her practice to study industrial design. I think. I can’t recall specifically because I was so shocked at the news I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. Her choice of a new field—something involving designing and making things—isn’t surprising seeing that it’s completely the opposite of the always-incomplete work of therapy where success is intangible. I feel the same yearning at least once a week. Or every day.

But I was surprised she actually left. In the abstract, my own surprise shouldn’t be surprising. How could I know or predict it? My sum knowledge of her personal life is she was married (because that happened while we were together), she needed sleep or else she’d get really grumpy (because I have sleep issues and she once resorted to a personal story) and she was a runner (because I once ran into her at a coffee shop with a group of friends wearing skinny, stretchy athletic clothing and talking about some race or another). Maybe she left because I didn’t pay enough attention to her.

I was with a series of therapists before I met K. I could never commit. I dabbled with a few men, but that just wasn’t my thing. As Lord Macklemore would put it: I’ve liked the girls since I was Pre-K trippin’. I tried to make things work with therapists who were older, my age and sometimes even younger. I dropped a few who just weren’t smart enough. I gave up on a few who just wanted me for my insurance. I didn’t call some back because at the time I wasn’t serious about establishing anything long term.

I was skeptical about K at first too. She was a little too young to have sufficient experience, a little too pretty to be smart enough to slip through my well-established denial and practiced fictions. But somehow it worked.

I went through phases she assured me were not atypical, excessive wariness and withholding (and occasionally lying) then feeling like a john paying an escort for confession while secretly hoping she’d love me a little. For a time I thought I was in love with her. She handled it gracefully until I realized it was the kind of love someone with chronic back pain might feel for a great massage therapist. Who could be better than this person who gets it, who doesn’t judge and who doesn’t quit on me even when I’ve quit on myself?

Therapy isn’t like most other medical practice. Mental illness isn’t like physical illness. Therapy only works when the therapist and patient establish a connection, a relationship, something they build together over time. If I had a brain tumor I’d be content with any brain surgeon with a good reputation digging around up there. If that surgeon dropped dead (at any other time than in the middle of surgery) I’d be OK with another doctor taking over. A physical body is, in most respects, like other physical bodies.

Monkeying around in the often bleak part of my broken brain where my psyche hides out throwing critical feces around is different. I have no replacement for K. There are probably therapists as good as she was out there somewhere. There are many therapeutic fish in the sea. But the mere thought of trying to find one and go through the (years of) preliminaries to be sure she’s the (next) one makes me even more depressed. I don’t want to have to build up to the point I can tell someone else all the things I told K. I don’t want to have to try to build up to the point that I can hope, again, that I can be fixed.

None of those others will be her. It stings to know there’s someone running around out there who knows practically everything about me—certainly more than literally anyone else does—who thinks nothing of it or of me, who doesn’t miss me and who, thanks to a set of rules and conventions not dissimilar to those of therapist and patient, I can’t have contact with even to say goodbye. And she’d be the only person who could really understand that goodbye anyway.

This is all mixed up and rightly so. I don’t plan to revise this brain dump—I mean stream-of-consciousness piece—to forge a coherent picture or fake some grand conclusion where everything makes sense and that epiphany makes everything OK. There is no ending where where I look out over the city and know it’s my home, the tumor disappears of its own accord and I can dance like no one’s watching.

Because I can’t help but be angry. K said she’d never give up on me but she did. I can’t help but be hurt. I wasn’t fascinating enough to keep her inspired or even interested enough not to dump me in favor of designing water faucets. I can’t help but think maybe I am a hopeless case. Maybe I’m the one the young doctor couldn’t save, her professionally voiced inner-monologue leaving her so dispirited she left the profession, massive student loans, disappointed doctor father and all.

Maybe I can’t be saved because I’m a hostage to myself. Maybe this is the best I’ll be. Maybe this is the final alone in which I’m destined to live (too long).

Related posts:

1. On Suicide
2. Kindness and Generosity…Not.
3. Cruel to Be Kind

Anecdatally, those crazy kids nowadays love the Facebook.

Related posts:

1. Hopiates
2. ASCRAP
3. Wowledge

One can be generally wise without specific knowledge; one can have great knowledge without any wisdom at all.

Lewis Hyde has deep wowledge of intellectual property as a phenomenon of culture, anthropology and technology.

Related posts:

1. Obsoledge
2. Make Amazing Mistakes
3. Weekly Tweets (2010-08-27)

Romeo is an intellectual, impetuous, mercurial, idealistic, violent, love-sick man-child. In other words, he’s a smart teenager. He loves Rosaline ardently, or so he thinks, until he finds what is undeniably true love–or a kind of true love–with Juliet.

Adolescents are constantly trying to figure out how to be. When Romeo kisses Juliet for the first time, she notes that he kisses “by th’book.” What he feels at that moment is something that he has read about but that leads to a love he feels rather than one he has been trying on as it appears has been the case with Rosaline.

I understand Romeo because I’m not sure I ever stopped being some version of him. I suspect Romeo resonates with so many people because they are either eternally man-children, like myself, or some part of them wishes they were even as they are wincing while remembering the constant raw-nerve feeling of youth.

Juliet is, as girls often are in comparison to boys of the same age, at least more mature if not more intelligent. She teases Romeo for his “by th’book” comment but is soon enough nearly as lost in her own turbulent emotions as Romeo is. But where Romeo’s guilt and sadness diminishes greatly when it involves anyone other than Juliet, Juliet’s sadness over Tybalt’s death is significant enough to cause her to question her current circumstance, caught between love and family in the most direct way thus far in the play.

While the obvious theme of love in its various forms was the theme that I remembered most from my previous readings of Romeo and Juliet, what stood out for me now was was the heavy-handedness of the role of fate and the significance of the questions about Romeo’s masculinity.

The presumption that our lives are largely—if not completely—dictated by fate is everywhere in the play. Famously, the “star-cross’d” lovers’ relationship is “deathmark’d” in the prologue, but the emphasis is everywhere. Romeo sees his fate “hanging in the stars” as one of “Fortune’s fools.” Juliet foresees the grave as her wedding bed and notes she has an “ill-diving soul.” Friar Laurence blames “unhappy fortune” for the delayed letter whose tardiness ultimately results in the death of Romeo and Juliet.

But fate—or the perception of fate—isn’t necessarily a side-effect of violently passionate love and its consequences, or at least not only of “real” love as Romeo’s love for Juliet is as compared to his love for Rosaline. Romeo notes before going to the party where he meets Juliet that some “consequence yet hanging in the stars” is going to “bitterly begin his fearful date” that night. Does fate really play a role in every circumstance—does the universe toy with us all the time? And what of the smaller possibilities of fate that happen throughout the play: that Romeo knows an apothecary who can produce the poison, that he happens to be invited to the aforementioned party at all, that the letter is delayed, Romeo is tempted into the fight where he kills Tybalt, and on and on it goes. Are these fate or chance?

Of course at the meta-level they are neither…they are products of Shakespeare’s imagination. But things become dizzying rather quickly if we consider that possibility that “all the world’s a stage.” Fictional characters are by nature fateless, but are we?

The constant questions about Romeo’s masculinity didn’t register at all the first few times I read the play. Perhaps they only do so now because I’ve become so lost in my own readings that the meaning of just about everything in a play is potentially meaningful. I first took the exchanges about Romeo’s manhood to be the usual adolescent bravado of male banter. But while the exchanges with Mercutio before the part are in part comic, they aren’t solely a comedic interlude as is the exchange between the musicians after Juliet’s death. If the question that Romeo’s love for Rosaline has made him something less than a man—or what convention dictates a man should be—aren’t wholly serious, they become so when those same questions are considered when he is in a different, altogether too real, kind of love with Juliet. Nor is it just Romeo’s young friends who question him. After Tybalt stabs Mercutio, Romeo asks of himself whether “beauty hath made me effeminate / And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel,” referring to both masculinity as a concept and metaphorically to physical masculinity.

It may be my mood, my over-familiarity with the play or my routine exposure to elements of the play and characters in other media, but I came away from this reading of Romeo and Juliet feeling that it’s one of Shakespeare’s weakest efforts. Or, to be more accurate, for me at my age it is one of Shakespeare’s least effective. I have to believe it’s a flaw in myself because other plays that’ve been victim to as much more more media saturation, such as Hamlet, remain timeless; I am moved and inspired and get lost in my head every time I read one of them.

Finally, a few quotations that received my top-secret double underline + punctuation annotation:

▫ ▫ ▫

FRIAR LAURENCE
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

▫ ▫ ▫

ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

JULIET
You kiss by the book.

▫ ▫ ▫

MERCUTIO
You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.

ROMEO
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.

MERCUTIO
And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.

ROMEO
Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

▫ ▫ ▫

BENVOLIO
Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

ROMEO
She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

BENVOLIO
Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.

ROMEO
O, teach me how I should forget to think.

Related posts:

1. Reading Log: King Edward III (Shakespeare)
2. Reading Log: Henry IV, Part 2 (William Shakespeare)
3. Reading Log: Coriolanus

Good and evil matched perfect, it’s a great romance
I can deal with some psychic pain
If it’ll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in the kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link

This is not my life
It’s just a fond farewell to a friend
It’s not what I’m like
It’s just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn’t get things right
Fond farewell to a friend

I see you’re leaving me and taking up with the enemy
The cold comfort of the in-between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried

This is not my life
It’s just a fond farewell to a friend

–Elliott Smith

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elliott smith, lyrics, music, songs

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Look, I’m taken by the story of a rose
erased by snow (a living sign
your cigarette’s burning tip).
Look, the umbrellas on the Spanish Steps
climb out of sight in the dark.
If our steps sink deep
we’ll find peace in the kingdom
where no one’s waiting for us.

–Leonardo Sinisgalli (trans. by Ruth Ferrarelli)
found in I Saw the Muses

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralyzing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

–Alain de Botton

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Amid such an internal tohubohu, is it any wonder that I think fondly of the man of one book, the hedgehog who–in the phrase made famous by Isaiah Berlin–knows one big thing and doesn’t need to know any other? In very low moments I sometimes think that a passion for omnivorous reading has seduced me into a lifetime of one-night stands, while the less promiscuous have managed to find a single true and more fulfilling love. But it’s too late for me and my kind to change now, n o matter how much we may year for those carpet slippers and one or two well-worn volumes. How, after all, can I resist that flashy new thriller or sloe-eyed biography, let alone the new novel that promises hitherto unimagined pleasures? Sirens all. Of the reading of many books there is no end.

–Michael Dirda
from “The One and the Many”

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

It’s the trope of all tropes to say that a writer is “the writer for our time.” Still, if we were to define “our time” as a historical moment in which the country we live in is dropping bombs on people about whose lives we have the most abstracted and unnuanced ideas, and who have the most distorted notions of ours; or a time in which some of us are desperate simply for a job that would lead to the ability to purchase a few things that would make our kids happy and result in an uptick in self- and family esteem; or even just a time when a portion of the population occasionally feels scared out of its wits for reasons that are hard to name, or overcome with emotion when we see our children asleep, or happy when we risk revealing ourselves to someone and they respond with kindness — if we define “our time” in these ways, then George Saunders is the writer for our time.

–Joel Lovell
from “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

–Nora Ephron
from I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

–Galileo Galilei
found in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Equipment

• Slow-cooker

Ingredients

• 3-5 lb roast (cheaper cuts are fine)
• a few potatoes and/or carrots
• 6 stalks of celery
• 2 med onions
• 16 oz jar of deli-sliced pepperoncini

Directions

• Add roast, potatoes (cut to 1-inch or so chunks) and/or carrots (cut in 1/2 inch rounds), and celery (cut in 1/2 inch pieces) to slow cooker.

• Cut each onion into 6 pieces and add to slow cooker.

• Pour pepperoncinis, juice and all, over and around the roast.

• Cook on low for 8 hours.

Notes

• All the usual slow-cooker roast stuff can go in this, such as:
  • 1 cup beef broth (useful if you really load up the vegetables)
  • A packet of Lipton’s style onion soup mix
  • A packet of Goya Sazon seasoning
  • Garlic, garlic powder
  • A few dashes of cayenne (but the pepperoncini’s add some kick, so beware)
  • etc.

–from Garden State

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

You are invulnerable. Didn’t they deliver
(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn’t it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won’t read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They’re dust
like you; the universe is Proteus.
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.
Know this: in some way you’re already dead

–Jorge Luis Borges
(translated by Tony Barnstone)

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Music of Japan. Parsimoniously
from the water clock the drops unfold
in lazy honey or ethereal gold
that over time reiterates a weave
eternal, fragile, enigmatic, bright.
I fear that every one will be the last.
They are a yesterday come from the past.
But from what shrine, from what mountain’s slight
garden, what vigils by an unknown sea,
and from what modest melancholy, from
what lost and rediscovered afternoon
do they arrive at their far future: me?
Who knows? No matter. When I hear it play
I am. I want to be. I bleed away.

–Jorge Luis Borges
(translated by Tony Barnstone)

© chris for Passion Task Commonplace Book, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Equipment

• Large skillet (cast-iron or stainless steel preferred)

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups thinly sliced, unpeeled Braeburn or similar apples.
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup apple cider or apple juice
• 1 tsp thyme leaves

Directions

1. Heat butter in skillet over medium heat butter, salt, pepper and cinnamon, until butter is starting to foam and ingredients are well-mixed and fragrant.

2. Add apples and shallots and saute until apples are starting to brown and shallots are cooked through.

3. Add apple cider or juice and thyme and cook for 2 minutes until apple is tender but not mushy.

4. Serve with or over sliced pork tenderloin pieces or other pork cut.

Notes

• Most red apples other than Red Delicious work. You’re looking for a firm, tart red apple.
• Red onions and a 1/8 tsp of garlic powder with the rest of the spices makes a decent substitute for shallots.
• If using dried thyme, use just 1/2 tsp.

Note that you will want to leave the pork in the brine for 12-36 hours; the longer the better.

Equipment

• large steel bowl (big enough for the loin and brine)
• whisk
• mortar and pestle
• rimmed baking sheet
• optional: parchment paper
• aluminum foil

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups hard apple cider (see note)
• 5 tbsp kosher salt
• 6 tbsp dark brown sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp anise or fennel seed
• 1 tsp peppercorns
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 24oz pork tenderloin (the plain unflavored kind)
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil (cheap is fine)

Directions

1. In a large bowl, whisk cider, salt and brown sugar together with 3 cups of tepid water until salt and sugar are dissolved.

2. Toss the bay leaves into the mixture.

3. Crush cinnamon sticks, anise or fennel, peppercorns and coriander seeds in a mortar and pestle. You want to release the flavor of th spices, not create a flour-like powder (little boulders here and there are OK). Stir this into the brine.

4. Add the tenderloin to the brine and refrigerate for for 12-36 hours.

5. Pre-heat oven to 400F.

6. In a large skillet over med-high, just before the oil smokes heat, grill the tenderloin for 3 minutes per side, until browned.

7. Place the tenderloin on a rimmed baking sheet (use parchment paper on the sheet if you are fancy-dancy and don’t like scrubbing burned juice off your pans) and bake for 45 minutes or thereabouts until the thickest point reads 140F on a meat thermometer.

8. Remove the tenderloin and let it rest under foil for 10 min.

9. Slice, drool, eat.

Notes

• “Hard cider” here means the alcoholic beverage. But, in a pinch, you can use American-style apple cider or even apple juice. If you do use a non-alcoholic apple juice, then adding 1/4 cup of Calvados will approximate the real thing.

• Coarse sea salt is a good substitute for the kosher salt. If you have neither, then use 4 tbsp of table salt.

• Light brown sugar is, of course, fine.

Equipment

• Skillet
• Microwave safe casserole or loosely covered dish

Ingredients

• 4-6 slices bacon (cheap fatty bacon is good)
• 1/2 head cauliflower (stem and all)
• 1/2 bell pepper (red or yellow is best; green will do)
• 1/2 onion (yellow or sweet)
• 1/4 cup sliced stuffed olives (or pretty much any olive…or none)
• salt & pepper (seasoned, artisan, table, smoked, whatever floats your boat)

Directions

1. Dice up the bacon and start it cooking in a skillet on medium heat. Stir it occasionally as you perform the rest of the steps.

2. While bacon is cooking, chop cauliflower into 1/2 inch or so chunks, including the stem.

3. Microwave steam the cauliflower in a loosely covered dish with three tablespoons or so of water. This should take 5-7 minuted depending on your microwave. Err on the soft side!

4. The bacon should be browning up and there should be some brown on the bottom of the pan. That’s good! Now, dice pepper and onion and add to the bacon.

5. Sauté pepper and onion in that wondrous bacon fat until the pepper softens and the onion is translucent.

6. Pour in the cauliflower–water and all (the water will let you scrape up the yummy bacon brownings on the bottom of the pan)–and add olives if that’s how you do.

7. Cook for another minute or two and, voilà!

Notes

• Substitutions

  • green onion or shallots for yellow onion

• Any seasonings you might use for a similar potato dish can work here: garlic or garlic powder, seasoning blends, pepper flakes, etc.

• If you still have anti-cauliflower haters, give the cauli a good mashing during step 7 and tell them it’s a new heirloom potato. Very rare.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 2/3 cup raisins

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 3 mini-loaf baking pans.
2. In a large bowl, stir together all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, sugar and salt.
3. Mix in molasses and buttermilk. Stir in raisins or currants.
4. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
5. Bake for ~40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a tester inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Notes

• The same recipe will make a single 9×5 loaf; bake for one hour. I find the full loaf is too dense for my liking.
• If you really like molasses, substitute 1/4 cup of molasses for the brown sugar. Or you can lighten the molasses accordingly.

• 1 cup uncooked couscous
• 1 1/4 cups chicken broth
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 8 green onions, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 1 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed
• 2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Bring chicken broth to a boil in a 2-quart or larger sauce pan and stir in the couscous.
2. Cover the pot and remove from heat.
3. Let stand for 5 minutes.
4. In a large bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, vinegar and cumin.
5. Add green onions, red pepper, cilantro, corn and beans, and toss to coat.
6. Fluff the couscous well, breaking up any chunks.
7. Add to the bowl with the vegetables and mix well.
8. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve at once or refrigerate until ready to serve.

Notes

• For a bit of extra spice, I sometimes add:
  • 1 or more minced jalapenos sans seeds and/or
  • A healthy dollop of Rooster Sauce

This is the basic quiche filling to which I add whatever I feel like art the time (spices, bacon, sausage, broccoli, spinach, etc). Cook time will vary, but figure at least 30 minutes at 350F for an 8x8in pan and adjust from there based on pan size and fillings.

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups heavy cream
• 2 cups grated cheese

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Whisk together eggs and cream (and optional spices).
3. Add other filling ingredients and stir to combine.
4. Spray or grease or butter bottom of 8×8 inch baking pan.
5. Sprinkle grated cheese in pan; add egg mixture.
6. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes.

Notes

• You can substitute half-and-half, or even regular milk, for the cream… but cream is tastiest.
• The grated cheese can be any variety you like. I prefer pepper jack and/or sharp cheddar.
• Some may like to sprinkle 1/2 of the cheese on the bottom and the rest on the top.
• Don’t over bake! The quiche will continue to bake for a while after being removed from the oven.

Ingredients

• 1 lb Italian Sausage (I prefer the spicy variety), diced
• 4 cans chicken broth
• 1 packet dry Italian dressing mix
• 2 cups cauliflower florets
• 2 cups fresh spinach (or 1 10 oz package frozen)
• salt (to taste)

Directions

1. Pan-fry italian sausage to dark brown.
2. Bring chicken broth, dressing mix, and cauliflower to a boil in a large pot, then turn to low.
3. Simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add sausage and spinach; increase heat to medium and cook until hot.

Notes

Many substitutions are possible. Here are a few:

• Use your own spice mixture in place of Italian dressing mix (I like a mix of garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, dried thyme (or Italian herb mix), and white pepper. If you like cumin, this is the time to add some.
• Add fresh garlic.
• Add 1/2 head of cabbage, long green beans, etc.

If you have excess oil from frying the sausage, it is up to you whether you include it in the soup or not. If there is any, I keep a few tablespoons in there for flavor.

Nutritional Information

• Carbohydrates: 5g
• Fat: 135g
• Protein: 115g
• Calories: 1825g

Curry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 – 2 1/2 tablespoons curry powder (less if mild, more if spicier)
• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 3/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 (12 ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 2 cups quick oats

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Cream butter and sugars then beat in eggs, milk, and vanilla.
3. In separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt.
4. Add chocolate chips, coconut, and oats; mix well.
5. Drop by teaspoon onto parchment-lined baking sheet.
6. Bake at 375F for 8-10 minutes.

Notes

• These cookies are good small, but they can be made larger, adjust cooking times accordingly.
• Substitution: sweetened coconut if you like really sweet cookies.
• Substitution: buttered sugar in place of unsalted butter and salt.
• Addition: 1 teaspoon ground ginger.
• Addition: 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves.