holding steady.™

a note on reading.

with sorrow in my heart, i regret to state that today, for now, i have abandoned my quest to plow through “infinite jest” before moving. i’m actually sticking a pin in it, to come back to it at another time in my life. hopefully, when i pick it back up again, i won’t be as woefully dependent on manageable circumstances to equalize my dedication to finishing this…monster. i speak not from the perspective of one who has failed, but one who is coming back to this particular challenge.
that being said, i am going to finish a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by the end of the weekend…if i have to hit someone with a shovel. maybe.

introduction to my infinite summer

this summer, my primary project (aside from packing up my entire life and moving it to gainesville) is to complete infinite jest. i’ve never started this book, in part because of my crippling fear of commitment and in part because i wanted to make sure that i finished what i started. i’ve been wanting to read IJ for about two years, but only recently bought it. it’s been sitting on my shelf, glaring at me, for almost 6 months.

reading this book represents a lot for me. not to put pressure on myself, but completing it will be a dismissal of all my worst fears about myself (i.e. that i’m intimidated by greatness, that i cannot commit to anyone/thing without totally freaking out, that my trepidation regarding my ability to trust my instincts is not to be trusted….and so on.) there’s, i suppose, a good reason why i’ve felt the need to build this up in my brain. creating pressure is sometimes the only way in which i can perform at the things that aren’t a huge deal, but that are important to me. me caring about them usually isn’t enough.

that being said, let’s talk about the book. i’m starting infinite jest on july 4, 2009. i expect will be finished with it BEFORE i leave for gainesville on august 12th. i must confess, i originally had every intention to read this book while, shall we say, intoxicated. but i’ve given up all sorts of, uh, “intoxicatory” substances for a little while. so instead, i’ll just focus on reading the book, and save that particular challenge for another time.

this is my first ever exposure to david foster wallace, and i’m excited. this particular novel has been über-hyped, but i sort of expect it to be worth it. to make sure of this, i’m following some useful tips over at the infinite summer website, including keeping track of things by using the index they link to (here’s a link to the .pdf, in case the page moves), obsessive bookmarking and employing a highlighter, pencil, pen and notebook for each and every time i sit down to read this sucker. bring it on, DFW (RIP). bring it on.

white teeth

forgive the hyper-extant patriocentrism, but this is the greatest quote ever. I found it several years ago, and now I’ve found it again.

‘our children will be born of our actions. our accidents will become their destinies. it is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. when the fat lady is singing. when the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. in that moment our actions will define us. and it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. on cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. on both occasions, the man breathes.’
-samad iqbal, white teeth, zadie smith

and then, another, found more recently…

“oh he loves her, just as the English loved India & Africa & Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly. but maybe it is just the scenery that is wrong. maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending.”
-white teeth, zadie smith

later, a post on why zadie smith is my generation’s best novelist.

simply had to….

OK, so this isn’t quite a formal review, but I just really needed to rave about a few things.

First off, just bough the H-K Soundsticks II. At present, I am listening to “Mindwalking” by Astral Matrix, with the bass all the way up and the Bass Booster EQ setting. It is phenomenal. My walls are shaking just a little bit.

Secondly, I took a little trip today. Went over to South Beach and just kind of rode around on my board (in flip flops, which is an error I don’t plan to make again). My camera is my favorite thing on this earth. Canon Digital Rebel XTi, with an EF 28-135mm lens. Fantastic, and it’s becoming a new favorite pastime to shoot in monochrome, because switching takes like 1.3 seconds.

Thirdly, and this is just my being weird…I have this thing where I need to have something in my hands to get me focused. It used to be a balled-up wad of paper, but I went to Sports Authority a few months ago and got a pack of three Penn Ultra-Blue raquet-balls. I throw them against the wall when I’m stuck on an idea.

Fourthly, I am kind of a bag person. And a shoe/trainer person, but for the sake of this post’s longevity, I’ll just be a bag person. Latest additions include a Triple Five Soul carry-all bag, the sort with a drawstring at the top and a single strap, and a Spy Sentry Bag. The carry-all is a rough black canvas, but the amount of pockets (12 in all, inside AND out) are obscene. I predict that this will be absolutely vital when I go to Europe next year. I have this ridiculous vision of myself walking around with this glazed-yet-cultured look on my face. The Sentry is really a more day-to-day backpack. With a 17-inch MacBook Pro, it’s a bit tricky trying to find a way to carry it around. Classes are starting up again (my senior year) and trekking back and forth to campus with the one-hour commute is already no picnic. I tried this sucker out today, and I was oddly enough rather satisfied. This is another bag with a lot of pockets, including a rather large compartment on the top that is supposed to be for cold beverages (it works perfectly as a camera compartment for the aforementioned monstrosity), and four side pockets, one of which hold an Ethos water bottle PERFECTLY. The inner laptop sleeve is not nearly long enough for my computer, but my Incase Canvas sleeve fits rather well, with no complications. And there is still room for a variety of other items, which today included my notepad, LSAT prep book and sunglass case. It also has really cool military-style patches on it. And the logo is primo.

Fifthly, I just wanted to take a moment to wax about how awesome the Bose TriPort headphones are. I bought these something like a year ago, as a birthday present to myself last year. They are still going strong, and the bass in them is still top-notch. In the course of writing this post, I had to shift from Soundsticks to TriPorts for the benefit of the others in my house, but let me just say, this is NOT a downgrade.

Sixthly (and lastly), I just finished reading Ayn Rand’s Anthem. I have avoided Ayn Rand for most of my life. I have had Atlas Shrugged on my bookshelf forever (an old college book of my mom’s) and I can remember when I first noticed it. I wanted to read it, but my mom told me not to, because the woman who wrote it “was an atheist.” At age 7, already a rather prodigious reader, this was really disconcerting, and so I avoided it. A few years later, I picked up and began to plow through. But I don’t think I recognized how good Rand was until a couple of days ago, when I picked up Anthem.

My favorite line is the first: “It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we are speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker that to do or think alone. We have broken the laws.”

Until next time, when I have less energy…