Tome Terroir

I don't own many books anymore – which is strange, for an English major (yes, I have a degree, but referring to my studies as if they're ongoing seems apropos for reading, writing, thinking, and generally trying to understand the world a little bit better) – most of my school-related material I sold off in one of my periodic fits of minimalism a half-decade ago, keeping only some poetry, a few essay collections, and Shakespeare (one nod to my humanities education).


(One that I kept.)

It's weird to me because I generally look at a bookcase as a badge of sorts – an adjunct to my records, a histogram of what I've been interested in, causes I support, and items that I wish I was smart enough to understand. When we stay at someone's house (usually via Airbnb); I can't help but look through their books, to get a picture of where they've come from academically, or at least what a relative bought them last Christmas when the aisles of Half Price Books are littered with boot snow and scrawled lists.

Our collection has been finely whittled to mostly cookbooks, art books, and monographs, with a sprinkling of essays, literature, and related magazines. And yet – I still love the smell of cracking open a fresh book, pages stiff and binding crackling, the bright, biting, near-chemical smell of ink wafting upwards while I noisily thumb through the pages to scan for pictures, or break in the pages, or just to flip through and absorb the je ne sais quoi that comes from opening up a book for the first
time. I won't lie; I've been known to stick my nose near the binding and breathe a deep, contented breath.


(A recent gift for Amelia. Hat-tip to Powell's and their flat-rate shipping.)

Even gently (or not so) used books, brittle, yellowed, with their own mustiness absorbed out of the air of whatever shop, crate, case, or hovel they inhabited – each imparting its own terroir into the now-splayed pages. Now, I usually mailorder used books, but those still transport me back to the dim aisles of Don's Books in a cold Kokomo warehouse, searching the unorganized shelves for more Asimov as a 16-year old; or stopping in from the cold at Bloomington's Caveat Emptor, checking my messenger bag next to the clunky cassette and CD rack on the counter; or getting lost in Powell's for three days running, sipping coffee while flipping through the weirdest and funkiest zines I could find...

[This post is part of Think Kit by SmallBox. Today's prompt: Scratch and sniff! Scents have the power to take us all kinds of places. What smell takes you somewhere else? Where'd you go?]

january'd

Woody Allen's Alice

2010 Oscar-winning documentary, The Cove

Daniel Kalder's absurd Russian travelogue, Strange Telescopes.

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar, compendium of food+wartime writing.

"Lo Boob Oscillator" off of Stereolab's compilation, Switched On, Vol. 2.

"Seneca" off of Tortoise's LP, Standards.

weekly list, vol. 3

was in chicago all last weekend, so this is a two-for-one!



saw:
--tulpan--
two yurt-based movies in a number of weeks....i may have yurt fever. is that a thing? anyways, this is a kazakhstan-set film about the trials and tribulations of ex-sailor asa, looking for his path, and a wife, on the steppes of kazakhstan. just as desolate (maybe even more-so) than the weeping camel--but with more human elements. really enjoyed this movie, too. something about the deliberate pacing and austerity of central asian/eastern european movies that i really dig on. the people have everything at their fingertips, but in a real, inverse-of-the-internet way.
--30 rock--watched the pilot & first few episodes on the last afternoon in chicago. show is by far the funniest thing on TV, and alec baldwin possibly the greatest laugh-stifler around.



read:
--still working on dos passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
finished the first volume in transit to chicago via (highly-recommended!) megabus. still entranced. while rolling around on chicago's public transit system, feeling the vibrations of the track, the slow shuffle-sway of bodies, the mechanically-timed announcements: i began to sense dos passos' feeling of america as a strange, living & breathing machine, full of irregular cogs in the infinite shape of humanity. to sense the present-palpable at a time so far in the past...

heard:
--tons of Stereolab--
particularly mars audiac quintet, which is as full of kraut-grooves that get-in and get-out as i could've hoped. i also snagged the following thangs, all used, in chicago (reckless is the new bane of my existence):
rolling stones - hot rocks 1964-1971 2xLP
rolling stones - december's children (and everybody's) LP
rolling stones - get yer ya ya's out LP
rolling stones - it's only rock and roll LP
alice coltrane - Huntington Ashram Monastery LP
CD's:
stereolab - mars audiac quintet
stereolab - the groop played space age bachelor pad music
stereolab - switched on stereolab
phantomband - nowhere
irmin schmidt - anthology: soundtracks (1978-1993) 3xCD
pelt - s/t
cast king - saw mill man
v/a - nigeria 70: the definitive story of funky lagos
more words on a lot of these later as i digest them...

consumed:
haven't ran the last 2 weeks, after being sick, then the parents being in town. it may be known as my "meat"-cation.
--in chicago: corned-beef encased "teuben" dog at hot doug's, the YOB at kuma's corner, and some pork belly brisket at fiddlehead cafe. top ratings to all three.
--in indy: steak sandwich at chatham tap, jockamo's pizza prior to superb indianapolis indians game & prior to superb show at the vollrath. introduced the parents to the best cajun food at papa roux. dinner for my grandma's 80th b-day at romano's macaroni grill---which was actually more than dece.
--on the homemade front:
wes & i cooked up 6 lbs. of pork shoulder BBQ in my pressure cooker, along with a mountain of potato salad, and refrigerator pickles, for a get-together on friday at our house. amelia also made some amazing rhubarb cobbler which will now be called "rhubarb delight". this was washed down with growlers of every standard sun king brew, and some sides & desserts brought by other swell folks.
quaffed some ridiculously delicious smoked ribs at aunt deb's on race day, along with leftover potato salad, macaroni salad, beans, two other salads (fruit vinaigrette & layer salad), amelia's cookies, mom's scones, and more. also spread the word of sun king ESB, and my homebrewed ESB to share.
bottled the wit w/ bitter orange peel & white pepper with alex on wednesday. hope this is the best brew yet!


next time, many more words on records!

weekly list, vol. 2

being sick the entire weekend yer off sucks. that being said, here's a list!



saw:
--tell no one--
amelia heard about this french thriller exactly a year ago on NPR, and after she watched it tuesday night (i went to sleep), she couldn't stop talking about it. or go to sleep until around 4am. watched it on thursday...and it was pretty good all the way through. smarter and with better performances than...
--michael clayton--
i guess it was the week of thrillers. i was pleasantly surprised by this movie, as long as i didn't think too hard about the too-easy unjust corporation. plus, i like george clooney. all told, it was less thrilling (though with less loose ends than) tell no one.
--the weeping camel--
by far the best movie we watched last week, even though i was feverish & ache-filled while doing so. a quiet, stark-yet-touching account of mongolians living in the desolate, windswept gobi desert, and their quest to reunite a camel & its calf, rejected from nursing since birth. all the sounds in this movie, from the near-constant wind, to the ritual pouring, stirring, and casting of milk into the breeze, to the groans, bleats, chuffs, and chewing emanating from the host of camels and sheep. a movie i wouldn't mind watching again...and i never watch movies twice!


camels: a bit unsightly, aren't they?

heard:
--cocteau twins - heaven or las vegas--
checked out this and a singles collection after reading about cocteau twins in one of those terrible "hear these 1000 records" compilation books. realized i'd never actively listened to any cocteau twins. i'm more than happy with this mix of shimmering, shoegaze & tremolo-ed out guitars over kraut-y drums that don't sound too 80s-ish (usually takes me a long time to get past that; re: stone roses' first record). of course...this record is from 1993. still...enjoying this quite a bit through headphones. not as much as slowdive, but it isn't quite that atmospheric.

read:
--more of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy--
almost 300 pages in now, and just recently have some of the narratives started to intersect. none have really collided, and some have just barely touched. still pretty wowed by his scope of early 20th century american life...almost enough so to go buy a suit and go get a fantastically odd job by worming my way into high society. is that still possible?

consumed:
--for the first time ever, i added bacon to my homemade mac'n'cheese. this was the best decision i've made in a while.
--friday made pizza (with amelia's new crust...which was pretty much better than mine) with fresh mozz, bacon, and banana peppers. throw in a bottle of red wine.
--awesome jamaican patties with my brother at....patties of jamaica of course. really should eat these more often, though they are highly addictive. pastry + spiced meat = yes.
--el sol de tala on thursday with amelia's parents & sister. still by far the best mexican in town.

now to try & rest/heal up before band practice!

psychedelic things i liked when i was a kid, vol. 1

while at the annual minnetrista art show (amelia had 3 photos...one got an award of merit) in my favorite decrepit-manufacturing-town-turned-struggling-state-college-based-municipality (reasons enough for a multi-hour road trip here and here), i got embroiled into a conversation for trading artwork (amelia's that is..not my chicken-scratches) for artwork of former professors, both of whom work in printmaking.

this isn't one of the pieces, but similar in flavor. the repeating, but off-centered border is equally repetitive and off-centered...the visual equivalent of kraut or drone, in a way. i really dig on the simple motifs of the fish, swimming simply in different shapes, as well as the spherical patterns inside the peacock's feathers. kinda feel like you could get lost in their 'groove'.

anyways! drinking some cafe bustelo one day at work, along with posting my history with vinyl at musicalfamilytree, got me wondering, "did i just end up appreciating this strand of music/art on my own? or was i predisposed to this even as a child?" a couple of examples have made me think that i was born with an off-center brain:

bullfrogs & butterflies was an old gaither family effort for kids. until this past Christmas, i hadn't listened to the record in at least 20 years. i thought i wouldn't recognize any of the music, but like the cover image, it had seeped into my brain, imparting a sense of familiarity. the art, though, is what really stuck---some strange amalagamation of hillbillies and fey psychedelia, all prancing around on Witness-lush green backdrops. i mean, who wouldn't want to journey to a land so saturated in color?

Barbapapa was the title character and series name of a french children's book series / animated show. we only had one that i remember, as pictured above. Barbapapa's can take any shape they choose, and live in a sort of Eden, complete with (mostly) nude children. in the book, barbapapa saves animals and people from industrial waste & pollution...via a series of brightly colored pictures of the barbapapa's taking all kinds of forms, and the sludgy-waste rendering the rest of the world dyed in grays, reds, and purples. considering my parents were pretty (standard, in indiana) conservative----strange that we would have this book and read it often. but, they were pretty much one-issue/hot-button voters, and other than that, fairly apolitical. they let me read about anything i wanted (i remember wandering the adult section in 2nd or 3rd grade and getting told where "books for your age" were by a condescending library employee), and i did! so i should thank them for that.

Books 'n Books: Don DeLillo's Libra

Libra is a take on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, a gratuitous weaving of fact and fiction, of characters imagined and real. As a whole, the work is seamless, creating out of Oswald an intricate tapestry of a man, episodic in its treatment of his life as the penultimate example of coincidence colliding with cause-and-effect, the divine intervention of fate into the nature-vs.-nurture argument.

Reputedly, DeLillo consumed the entire Warren Report as part of the process of the novel's creation, a massive tome that aided his construction of Oswald's literary character, which is as diverse as any real-life man's should be; alternatively pensive, kind, abusive, loquacious, silent, fatherly, asexual, and so on forever. Particularly effective in the novel is DeLillo's portrayal of Oswald's time in Russia, which, in the book, seems to be the true turning point for his character, the paranoia which plagues him from childhood on finally grasping onto true holds upon his return to America.

Once in America, Oswald's perceptions of Russia bend, and after constant surveillance and interference in his life by the FBI and CIA, he seems to forget why he left (the boring routine of work and life, a stability which he has never known), and begins to contemplate a return to Russia, or, at the very least, a return to Marxism by way of Cuba. Despite his efforts (letters written on behalf of his Russian wife and child; attempts to gain entry to Cuba through Mexico), he fails miserably, not even seeming to scratch the vast wall of bureaucracy that stands in both the USSR and USA.

During this extended sequence of alienization from all he knows (losing jobs, breaking contact with his mother, living alone in boarding houses), he becomes enveloped in a web of conspiracy that, unbeknownst to him, has already created his place in history: the one who would take the fall for the Kennedy assassination attempt. His attempts to deny this place are half-hearted at best (in the vein of most of his actions directed towards anything; job-keeping, deciding which system he wants to live in, even his own muted acceptance of clownish-father-figure David Ferrie's lazed sexual assault); and indeed, are softened by his increasing desire to have a name, and be known for it.

After a breakneck, episodic vision of the assassination sequence, DeLillo places you in the cell with Oswald, who has more peace of mind here than anywhere else throughout his life. Even after he is shot by Ruby (again; a club-owner, in serious debt, caught up in a sequence of events over his head) his mind is clear as Russia seen from a U-2, which is his final vision. In the closing scene we see his mother, mourning, her only solace that her son will be known by name, a strangely morbid fascination that hearkens back to the creation of Oswald the man.

Overall, a compelling blend of fiction and reality, far different in the singular, crushing eventuality of its vision than its closest cultural counterpart, Oliver Stone's louder, multi-conspiratorial JFK.