Try to live up to it.

I have a lot of (semi-developed) thoughts about love, all kinds of love and (of course) especially Romantic Love (admittedly, in this kind I'm more of an amateur (slash cynic) than most). Some of these thoughts, I think, are pretty unconventional (possibly trans-conventional) but not necessarily original, and it would be fun to chat about them some time, if we (i.e. you and I) are ever within chatting range. Maybe some of these thoughts will find their way here in a less elliptical way, but not today.

Today, I bring you a letter from John Steinbeck (of Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, etc.) to his teenage son, Thom, who had recently written his parents for advice about a girl. His father's reply is touching and wonderful.



(Source: Steinbeck: A Life in Letters; Thom's letter was originally (Internet-originally) posted on Letters of Note, an eponymous* blog.)



New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa



Oh Fa Steinbeck, let it be so.  Can you imagine your father writing such a letter? I especially love the part about the second kind of love. Also, I'm inferring from the last line that Steinbeck never saw Casablanca. Because, if he had, he would have known (since all of life's important truths are verifiable via cinema) that sometimes life's other forces conflict with Romantic Love, and RL doesn't always win out. Even the amateurs know that (and the slash-cynic-variety are secretly hoping to be proven wrong). What I'm trying to say is that I want** him to be right: "Nothing good gets away." Whether or not it's true, it's a comforting thought.



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*I'm trying to be droll (as usual) by calling the blog "eponymous," but I wonder if there is a real mistake I've made in doing so. I'm not sure about the usage of "eponymous," I guess, but it's one of those words that I read and think, "that's a goodie, save it for later." But the opportunities to use it are so rare, that I want to get it in if/when I can. 

**It's actually more than a "want" and maybe very close to a need. I guess it's something like a psychological need, but those are need-needs nonetheless. [Subtext: I feel very modern-American-30-year-old-female these days. So, there may or may not be a sub-subtext here.] 
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p.s. Can you tell which author I've been reading? When I read him, though I do see the stark differences between us, I recognize my own thought processes and inner voice. I feel like spending time in his ornate, expansive inner-mansions gives me some scaffolding to build my little, internet sandcastles.

Our future is cute

Seriously, it seems like Japan's always among the cute avante-garde. Couple that with their penchant for wacky gadgets (seems like we haven't heard of any crazy Japanese toilets in a while, but still) and voilà: the Necomimi. It's controlled by brain waves (!!!). The future is going to be pretty cray-cray...and cool and (apparently) cute.

Anyway, I don't know about you, but my first thought after watching this video was: "wow, that could be embarrassing." And not because I'd be a grown-ass woman walking around in kitty ears.

via SciAm tweet

p.s. Two parter: (1) I love that she's concentrating on a doughnut. My kinda girl. (2) I still totally want these.

p.p.s. I considered titling this "Cutescenti" or "Cute-legentsia," but neither one really works. Still (obviously) I couldn't let a bad joke go untold. So, here you go.

M.C. Escher's workspace and other arty videos

INSPIRATIONS from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.


Alice, this is mostly for you. Do you like M.C. Escher? I like what I've seen, but I've only seen the famous pieces. I love what they did here in this video. I wish it was my workspace.

If you like this, you should check out The Atlantic's videos. They have a video about famous art (e.g. Van Gogh, Munch, etc.) that's been made interactive by animation software. Super cool. And another on a new exhibition at the Amsterdam Museum. (Amsterdam has EXCELLENT museums! You only hear about Amsterdam from people who want to order weed off of a menu or see naked ladies in a store window, but seriously they have great art, gorgeous parks, and delicious soup--seriously. Have you been? Everyone should go. Ha. Alice, I can't remember if we've talked about this. If you go back to Switzerland next summer, you should talk your parents into stopping over.)


p.s. I should be sleeping, but someone across the courtyard is practicing what sounds like a cello. So I'm catching up on twitter.

This summer, Waldo finds you...

So, I haven't installed that productivity software yet. I've seen another fake Waldo movie trailer before, and this one is way better. Had to post it.

p.s. I hope you get the stupid Downy or deodorant commercial with Amy Sedaris--just seeing her face makes me smile. (Do the commercials change or are they always the same? Is this a stupid question? Internet ads do some crazy-voodoo stuff these days.)

sloth.

it's time to get some of that internet-blocking software. yeah, i think it's really come to this.

Duh.

Did you see this NYTimes article about young women setting linguistic trends? "Vocal fry" is all over the www (and last night it sparked a conversation among my classmates). I hadn't heard of that before. I don't think it sounds particularly childish or stupid (it's different, but I don't know--here's an example--judge for yourself). I enjoy talking like a teenage girl, so naturally I found the article interesting:

“If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid,” said Carmen Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. “The truth is this: Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships.”

The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation.

“It’s generally pretty well known that if you identify a sound change in progress, then young people will be leading old people,” said Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, “and women tend to be maybe half a generation ahead of males on average.”

Less clear is why.

The article goes on to offer a few possible explanations, but it seems to me we shouldn't expect a single unified explanation for all this. There's a lot going on here. One explanation that should have been considered, but wasn't, is put succinctly in that ancient, American proverb: Girls just wanna have fun.

I grew up in Southern California (not in the Valley, but I'm still not sure if my experience is representative--seems to me there's a lot of uniformity across the American suburbs--but you know California has a reputation, anyway) and my friends and I started in on the more sophisticated language games around middle school. We had nicknames, created new slang (revived old slang), used code words, and spoke in fake languages (Pig Latin was there and used on occasion, but too well known--we mostly used Op-talk or Double-talk). There were different groups or official cliques (with names! oh sweet heaven those names) that I moved in and out of through middle school and high school, and I honestly don't know if the language stuff was that popular among all the girls at these schools, but it was central to all of the groups I fell into. I remember that in the later years of high school it was more obviously widespread, but my friends were always among the avant-garde and so most frequently imitated (natch, goes without saying...I kid). Seriously though, we were constantly talking and trying to amuse each other with the things we said or wrote. In class we would write letters to one another and pass them in between or during classes (that is, if we could get a hall-pass to "use the bathroom" or had ceramics that period--Mr. Oskin encouraged free spirits).  I think our two main goals were to make each other laugh and to make each other feel special (I suppose on some level, à la Mean Girls, we also intended to make everyone else feel like an outsider). We might have to write 3 unique letters in a day, and since we were usually discussing confidential matters, our messages required strict security measures (old-school encryption). We had to be creative. Reflecting on it now, it was pretty sophisticated and tons of fun.

A lot of those friends grew out of the whole thing. I never really did (I did go through an anti-cute phase where I was even slightly embarrassed to use the word "cute" and any word that could be interpreted as the least bit cutesy was struck from my vocabulary, but I came around again, obviously). I've written here about my more recent shame/inadequacy issues since bringing my loose grammar/usage habits to grad school (so there's no need to rehash). But I do try to be respectful (and I prioritize clear communication over fun) I can tell it just irks some folks, especially out here in the Midwest (seems like CA folks tend to like it, why is that?). Occasionally something just slips out and then I have to spend five minutes explaining what "throwing shade" means (happened in class last week). And English is not my roommate's first language, so that's it's own beast (how would you explain what "brown-noser" means? Harder than you might think. In the end, he was disgusted with me for using such a phrase.) Luckily, my close friends (i.e. besties, sorry... <3 it) are all still into it. I get some of my best material from them (you know you're hilarious).

Anyway, vocal fry, uptalk, TXTSPK, nicknames, slang, emoticons, etc.--bring it on. It's fun. I don't always have the skills to pull this stuff off in person, but luckily I can talk however I want when I'm writing to you from the other side of the www. Considering the popularity of a website like Hello Giggles, the ladies I know aren't the only adult women who still think it's fun to talk/write like we're teenage girls (or like we're gay men, ok ok, yes stereotypes--wah wah, sorry--but some seriously-witty gay men are writing on the web these days, and you better believe I steal whatever my little heart desires).

the night sky

Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Breathtaking. Timelapse photography is awesome. I like city lights, but I miss the stars and the other mysterious lights in the night sky. (Check out that little curly tail/trail around 50 sec.)

Hipster fedora and a double skim latte

"President Obama has traded in the hard hat and lunch bucket category of the Democratic Party for the hipster fedora and a double skim latte." --Sen. Orrin Hatch

Touché. I love that this is an insult. You tell 'em Senator: Mittens hasn't traded in his Swiss bank accounts or Cadillacs for, well, anything, so the Republican party is clearly more deserving of the trust of the American working class. Ugh politicians. *groan*shudder*

via twitter/gawker

all I ever wanted was to be good to you

New, Improved, LIVE: Thao & Mirah - "Little Cup" from The Bay Bridged on Vimeo.


I like Thao. I like Mirah. Just found out they make music together. Enjoy.

The Whitest Boy Alive

Just listened to this song and thought: here's a theme song for the internet oversharer. Belongs here, no?