As I posted at the beginning of the month, I decided to take part in the Creative Experiments for September over at Daisy Yellow. Let’s see how I did, shall we?
♥ Carry a notebook with you for a month, adding notes, scribblings, to-do’s, sketches, doodles, coffee stains and whatever you wish.
I always drag a beat-up old spiral around with me, but I was only a few pages away from the end so I decided to finish up that one and start a whole new kind of notebook: a National Brand hardcover, quad-ruled Lab Book. It was certainly a new experience, but I felt more free to doodle and otherwise not just write one big, unbroken paragraph of rambling prose. (But I still did that too.) I also felt more compelled to fill the entire page, perhaps due to the lack of defined margins.
♥ One day this month, write a thoughtful description of 5 sounds that you encounter.
I love this prompt. I’ve never encountered anything like it. Unfortunately, I kept forgetting to do it, even during the most perfect time for it (the Celtic Classic), so I just took a few minutes here and there during an ordinary Monday.
- My coworker talking on the phone in Persian. It’s so beautiful, and yet I’m so used to hearing him speak in English that it always takes me a second to realize I can’t understand what he’s saying. It reminds me of when I’d listen to another coworker at another job speak Polish on the phone. I swear it sounded like English backwards.
- The printer hums and ticks like a vacuum that just sucked up a pebble. It’s a happy noise – printing something out generally signifies completion of a task.
- The racket of the locker room at the gym: a child squealing, over and over again. There comes a point in every child’s life when they discover they can produce a high-pitched shriek that makes adult ears bleed and dogs take note. I guess the mother has learned the quickest route to quiet is to ignore the noise. Anything else will just encourage more. I’m not sure I can hear that sound without shutting my eyes and taking a deep breath.
- A cell phone ringing (jangling?) from inside a locked locker. Surprisingly clear, not muffled at all. Reminds me of a sound from an old video game, like a laser pistol on an old Atari or Nintendo. I’m positive I’ve heard this specific noise before in some game I used to play as a child, but I can’t place it.
- My cat’s strange, creaky greeting. Sort of a “meh-eh?” – like a question. Often she opens her mouth before speaking as if she has to force out the noise. It doesn’t sound especially friendly, but it’s one of her “I love you/pet me” meows. Over the years I’ve come to find it cute, even endearing.
♥ Create an itunes playlist or mix CD with 15 songs that make you feel just right.
This was by far the most difficult. I almost never listen to music anymore: in the car it’s audiobooks, and it’s rare for me to spend enough time in my study for listening to music to even occur to me.
- “Time to Start” by Blue Man Group
- “Sin” by Pet Shop Boys
- “Send Me an Angel” by Real Life
- “It’s Good to be Alive” by DJ Rap
- “Running in the Family” by Level 42
- “Mess” by Ben Folds Five
- “Magic” by Ben Folds Five
- “Blue” by Eiffel 65
- “Asshole” by Jim’s Big Ego
- “Lifeline” by Copper Sails
- “Ana Ng” by They Might Be Giants
- “Never There” by Cake
- “Anna Begins” by Counting Crows
- “Always” by Erasure
- “Puttin’ on the Ritz” by Taco
♥ Read four (4) books this month, fiction or non-fiction.
The books I read (and reviewed) during the month of September:
- Foundation by Isaac Asimov
- The Immortals by John F. Ferrer
- Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
- Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson
- Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That’s fewer than usual because Crime and Punishment took roughly half the normal human lifespan to get through. Holy crap that’s a long book!
This was lots of fun, but I wish I’d put more concentrated effort into it instead of just signing up and then promptly forgetting all about it. Maybe next month, eh?
by Tove Jansson: The Moomins usually hibernate for half the year, but one day Moomintroll wakes up to discover a snow-covered world he’s never known. Being a longtime Moomin fan, I was predisposed to enjoy this book. The characters and illustrations are simply charming, depicting an innocence without ignorance. It was not my favorite of the Moomin adventures (I’m not sure it could be without Snufkin), but it was still a fun little tale. I particularly liked Moominmamma’s comments upon waking. She’s my hero.
by Fyodor Dostoevsky (unabridged audiobook read by George Guidall): Why is this book so long? Seriously. About halfway through I checked out the plot summary on Wikipedia and I was surprised to discover I was following along fairly well. But that doesn’t explain why it takes so much text to tell this story. Basically, this guy kills an unpleasant pawnbroker and her sister, guy’s mother and sister visit because sister is supposed to marry some shady dude, guy’s best friend falls in love with sister, random drunk dude dies, random drunk dude’s daughter befriends guy, and meanwhile an obnoxiously chatty detective is investigating the deaths of the unpleasant pawnbroker and her sister. (I can’t count the number of times I said, “Shut up, Porfiry!”) Oh yeah, and there’s angst. Lots and lots of angst. Don’t worry about the names – I had a terrible time keeping track of who was who because everybody had at least three names and all of them were so complicated they immediately fell out of my head the first fifty or so times I encountered them. I still can’t remember most of them well enough to say them aloud. The story is told mostly in dialogue, almost enough to be a play, so I’m surprised there haven’t been more recent film adaptations. Anyway, this is a decently interesting story – full of intrigue and suspense, with a sweet ending – except that at times I wondered if the author was paid by the word. For example, he described the letter guy got from shady dude, then guy confronts shady dude about the letter and recounts his reaction to said letter, then later guy recounts his confrontation with shady dude about the letter to others. And this is hardly an isolated incident: several scenes are described in their entirety multiple times. I guess it’s good if you weren’t paying enough attention, but dude! Hire an editor!
by Marjane Satrapi: This was my first graphic novel in quite a while. The art style was very simple, like it had been drawn with black Sharpie, yet amazingly expressive. The framework is of a group of women (the author and her relatives) sharing tales of past relationships. Some of them are funny, some are sad, but all are memorable. It’s also a very quick read; I finished it in a single sitting. I’m not sure so sure it needed to be a graphic novel – most of the drawings are just of women’s faces speaking – but it worked well in this format all the same. I’ll be on the lookout for Satrapi’s more famous work, Persepolis.
by Toni Morrison in high school, one of the other area schools banned it over a single paragraph (if you’ve read it, you know which one), to which we all rolled our eyes. I didn’t particularly enjoy reading Beloved and I would have loved to have not been assigned it, but I didn’t see any purpose for the ban. If you can’t handle adult literature by the time you’re 16, you probably shouldn’t be taking a literature course so advanced that you’re assigned books on the level of Beloved.
of journal for my trip to Amsterdam, purchased from the 