Spit it out. No wait...

So my one of my best friends had a baby in November, and Todd and I have been visiting her and her husband and the kids in Valley Center. Valley Center is out past Escondido, but before the animal park. Acres and acres of land that was mostly avacado groves is now mostly homes, and some trees remain. My friend opted to keep the trees on her property, and she has the best Hass avacados that never have brown spots or black flecks or those gross fibers. For the past couple of days I've been carrying her baby around, and I've been thrown up on several times. I'm not inclined to say "spit up," because babies can't spit, and it's not spit, it's milk, it's BREAST milk, and it's vomit. It's warm; it's sometimes a little coagulated; it's baby vomit. No, there's no heaving or blurghghghghgh noises, but it's not spit. I still like holding the baby, but babies need a little puke bucket around their necks or something.

While I was on my way down to their house I found out I got accepted at Cal State Dominguez Hills, so I was pretty excited about that. Now I have a definite future and not one obscured by admissions haze. Now to just get it right, and make sure I don't waste another semester. I'm revising my Moby-Dick essay, which is fun, but work. However, I should be able to go to the library on a real university campus now, which will help enormously.

I'm going to miss you people. I want to have a party, and I give really good fun parties, but it's after the holidays, and most people are partied out, at least I think, or holed-up with Oscar-worthy movies, or entertaining their conservative parents, or maybe playing Joseph at the local nativity, or maybe living down the street from me and I don't know what. Nah, Brandon is not old enough to play Joseph. Maybe he'll play a really pale Magi.

We'll try maybe for spring break. That way you'll have missed me some, and may be ready to down some cocktails during the mid-semester doldrums. I'll have stories to tell, from my Compton campus, I'm sure.

I'm tempted to start making 2007 lists, but somehow, it just doesn't seem right. This year ends with a whimper.

Pondering the Current State of American Fiction

On my trip to Cancun, I of course took along a couple of novels to catch up on some reading. I brought Snow Falling on Cedars, a bestseller, and The Sea, a novel by one of my favorite writers, John Banville. I started the American novel first, and for the second time (the first being The Time Traveler's Wife) I am underwhelmed and a little miffed. Snow was a best-seller; I remember a time when this book was all over the Barnes and Noble crowd's lips, and no one could get enough of it. I suppose several people were somewhat clueless about the Japanese concentration camps of WWII -- the camps that were in America, and this book served to tell a kind of story about the camps, although they weren't the focus of the story, and really didn't illuminate the experience.

It is not that I didn't like the book. Well, maybe I didn't like it. I can't think of anything I particularly liked about it, unless you count thinking of Ethan Hawke as the character Ishmael counts, because I did remember him playing a character in the film adaptation, and thinking of Ethan Hawke is enjoyable, for reasons I can't really relate. He's not my favorite actor, but I did rather enjoy the Sunrise/Sunset movies, and I liked Gattaca and Great Expectations, although I think it is that I relate to him, more than admire him. But back to the book. The romantic lead was named Ishmael, and he was missing a limb, an arm. A homosexual relationship was flirted with, but not state explicitly, and I would venture that such was not good writing or suggestive writing, as other sexuality was stated with matter of fact openness. All of the women in the novel were mysterious, and difficult to fathom. Fishing was the main source of income, and death occurs on boat. Moby-Dick was brought up in the book outrageously, trying to force irony on to a blatently derivative plot and character layout. Other classical works of literature were referenced, either directly or indirectly, and the last words of the book were in effect a direct rip off of the qoute that has been on Blythe's myspace forever, "The heart of another is dark forest always," or something like that; the end of Snow saying something like,"the heart of the ones we love are as mysterious as dark forests..." I hate reading something and then wanting to repossess all the time spent reading.

So I'm back to David Foster Wallace; I'm' going to read Infinite Jest again, ro reclaim my sanity and see what I can get out of it after not reading it for about ten years.

Then, we'll talk about reclaiming American Fiction.

La mala oveja vuelve de Cacun.

I know that a vacation to Cancun, the snake nest, the strip of resorts and hotels, only different from a one sided Las Vegas because gambling is not legal in QROO, doesn't sound especially cool, or even all that relaxing, yet, I had a good time. I like seeing the ruins, and this time we journeyed to Talum, the blue walled Mayan village/city on the cliff, where the elite of the population lived within walls, quite fresh for oh so long ago. These people were incredible. That much has been documented. And as much as I sort of dislike having to ride in a bus on a tour, I do love to get to see this kind of stuff. It's nice. The Caribbean ocean is so beautiful, and snorkeling is so fun. At one of the Palace Resorts we visited there were animal sanctuaries, and we saw some monkeys and cats, as well as some deer and turtles, and even crocodiles. Monkeys are so silly. A friend in our large extended family group casually mentioned that monkeys can rape you, and for the rest of the trip he couldn't distance himself from constant harassment concerning his ape-rape phobia, as we would creep up behind him and make monkey noises, because nothing is funnier than a man afraid of rape by monkey. The trip was good: no puking, no blackouts, no fighting, and no major injuries. Just an almost death by bad buffet food, but we made it home in time.

This little trip was over far too fast, and it's back to end of semester business right away. I hope everyone is getting their grading in, and that their semesters were okay. I know Blythe was put off by her drop rate, and I hope everyone makes up for it in the Spring. It's still iffy where I'm headed, so I plan to get that figured out next week.

In other news, back to back Tori Amos shows this weekend! I'm very excited and can't wait to see her again. She's my favorite. This will be something like my twentieth time seeing her perform. She is so talented. It should be a blast.

You better think twice, you better do right by me.

As the lights from landing and embarking aeroplanes wink at me from sixteen floors, I imagine that it is always nice to be either beginning or ending some sort of journey, and how physical and metaphysical jaunts are similar. Tyler Durden is about to commit suicide (or the other guy murder; depends on how you look at it), in the beginning of Fight Club, and probably scores of other stories begin with the ending and/or vice versa.

I have wanted to do something wonderful for my beloved instructors before transfer, and I think it is a good idea, this having a celebration of both the beginning and the end, with those that have not only facilitated my education, but also done that extraordinary thing: believed in me;f had faith in that which I was not aware existed. I thank you, and will hopefully get to share with you a roasted chicken, of which I am most fond of making, and hopefully you are fond of eating, or something.

I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, yeh. The girl that driving me mad, is going away, yeh. She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care.

So I've decided to write about Moby Dick.

Daunting. Overwhelming. Infuriating. Fascinating.

Concerning writing the paper there are several challenges I think I am sure I will face. This kind of thinking is along the lines of there are things I know, things I don't know, and things I don't know I don't know.

Among the things I know is, this is a long book, and almost every morsel of it is useful for an argument. I hope I allow myself enough time to write a paper I can really stand by. This is a research paper, and I borrowed five books from the library to help. So far, so good. Although when you read essays at a graduate and post graduate level, terms sometimes sound confusing and pretentious and confounding and intended to confuse. Malicious, I suppose. But if I keep google handy I will probably be okay.

Tangents. I love to go on tangents. Focus. I know the structure of an essay, but with literary criticism it's so easy to want to expound on some aspect of the text that is so juicy, and with Moby Dick, that seems far too easy a trap to fall into. I've got to really use my noodle on this one. Really push the limits of what I'm able to wrap my mind around and tell you about. I've got to go on my own sort of journey in writing about this book.

I hope it ends well. I cannot give up, and just write about slavery. I won't do it! I'll write about desire, and hopefully come up with a thesis that inspires warm fuzzy feelings in the hearts of my readers. The book is so tricky; it dares the reader to come up with a thesis, but once that is accomplished, the evidence is ample.

Movie Break

I think the next three movies that are in my que are John Huston movies. I'm leaning toward him as my favorite American Director. He's slightly ahead of Wes Anderson, who loses simply because he hasn't filmed as many movies as Huston; on a side note it is of note that Anderson uses Angelica Huston in his movies. The Darjeeling Limited was great. I feel almost as good about it as the Royal Tenenbaums. Well, that might be pushing it. But I do want to see it again. I also love Sofia Coppola's work, but she too has yet to put even five films under her belt. I really loved Marie Antionette. But when I browse through Huston's titles, I can't believe I never made the connection.

The African Queen
Chinatown
The Maltese Falcon
The Misfits
The Man Who Would Be King
Moby Dick
The Night of the Igauna

I really like what Houston was able to pull from Bogart, Ava Gardener, and Gregory Peck. I never thought I could get emotional about anything that Clark Gable does, but his performance in The Misfits disturbed me for days. Although many may feel that Bogart's performance in Casablanca was his finest, but I really remember his best for African Queen. I dont think that I'm an expert -- I just love movies, and the image of a cranky Bogie floating down a river, love-hating Katherine Hepburn sticks. I think the emotion in that movie seriously rivals that of Rick in Casablanca. The first time I saw Iguana I couldn't believe the issues that were raised in this film -- until I realised that it was a Willams play. This of course leads me to a conclusion I came to a while ago, that I also love Elia Kazan, who is responsible for:

Streetcar Named Desire
On the Waterfront
East of Eden
Baby Doll
The Last Tycoon

I mean THAT is a list.

I think Hitchcock's list is also overwhelming. I love North By Northwest.

I found out that you can get a package on Netflix where you get like, 40 movies at a time. Hmm. Anything to get out of writing this novel. I was so enthused for National Novel Writing Month, and now I'm afraid I'm out of steam. Maybe watching some John Huston will inspire me to squeeze out some paragraphs.

Spermcetti -- With Meatballs, Please

Actually, I'm not sure if Melville ever gets to whale meatballs, either as a dish or location. It is interesting, though, that the sperm whale is called such becuase of the vast amounts of spermaceti in its head, and they called it spermaceti, that is, sperm of the whale, because it was originally thought that it was whale sperm, or whale spawn, that is, eggs.

My point? Ha. Well, I have to say that Melville's work reads as a thoroughly provacative work discussing and laboring over male sexuality. I couldn't possibly be the first to have this reation, but the work does scream phallocentrism to me in the worst way. I don't know that Melville knows what his argument is. I know the interaction and descriptions of the interaction between Ishamel and Queequeg are so giggle worthy, but I don't think the whole reason for their closeness is to reveal male sexuality as played out between males so much as the capacity for males to have a closeness, but the dread or the threat of homosexuality that it arouses in the reader is Melville's trap -- like, see! I knew you would go there with your judgemental mind! It's hard to me to make sense of what I feel is an impression that Melville constantly sets you up to reveal how your reaction to the novel is precisely what is wrong with society. I don't know if I think that Ishmael and Queequeg's relationship is supposed to expose the sexual nature of men in a ranked order, free from the immediate influence of women, or if it's to show that Queequeg is someone to revere, not to abhor, for his "savage" nature. But the depictions of the whale hunt, and the conversations about the whale, and there seem to be so many phallic references, that the work becomes a sort of portrait of a man struggling with desire. I have only read Bartleby and only skimmed Benito Serino (sorry Blythe), and of course, per our drawn out banter about Bartleby, I think that where Hawthorne was obsessed with the outward manifestations and restrictions on desire, Melville appears to be drowning in desire, shaken by its very existence within himself. Perhaps Melville feared that his penis was the very matirix of his desire, and all subsequent actions were controlled by it. Ahab is maimed, and although it is a leg, we, okay, me, suggested that he lost his OTHER leg as well. The loss of his member has resulted in a quashed lust for life, he only thinks of the whale, his ability to enjoy life at all lost with his penis. The knowledge of this, and the search for meaning either within this notion or outside of this notion, makes Ishmael an outcast, and causes him existential pain.

It's the most sense I can make out of the novel as a whole.