"I like the word believe. In general, when one says "I know" one doesn't know, one believes."
~Marcel Duchamp (1975)

Bags

Portable containers (language). Or that snails embody the idea of "Omnia mea mecum porto". Therefore, like the snail, to have bags that can carry the necessary stuff, usually books/pens/passport/gum/etc. A Dickies bag served this purpose throughout college which was often loaded with way more stuff than was possible to carry comfortably or safely. That spot is currently filled with a very sweet Chrome Citizen bag. It is super and carries all the necessary things easily from work to home to KY to PA to ME to NJ to NY to IL.
If you are looking for a bag would recommend Chrome.
Recently came across this company:
Seagull Bags.
If said Chrome bag ever breaks definitely would look for the next bag at the 'gull. Check out their stuff in action on Flikr. Really dig the artwork.

Like this:

Only Disconnect

Do you know who Gary Shteyngart is? I did not. However in this week's NYRB there's an article by Gary Shteyngart titled "Only Disconnect". It's brilliant. It is a prose poem. It is one of the best examples of writing about personal inte(dist)raction with the constantly transportable screen that guides the living steps of people. For example: " The device (iPhone) came out of the box and my world was transformed. I walked outside my book-ridden apartment. The first thing that happened was that New York fell away around me. It disappeared."
Let us take a quick look at the idea of space: de Certeau defines "...space as a practiced place." Place is understood as "...elements distributed in relationships of coexistence." (p. 117 Practice of Everyday Life) What Shteyngart discovers is that he is no longer practicing (in) space. He describes himself as being in a "techno-fugue state" in which he "...nearly knock[s] down toddlers and the elderly..." de Certeau's definition of place includes the idea that two separate and distinct elements cannot occupy the same spot at the same time. However by removing Shteyngart's attention from his surroundings causes him to attempt to inhabit the same places as other individuals moving his walk from a reading of the city (and carefulness of other individuals) to a blind following of the iPhone's touring map. What is interesting is that as people we prefer the type of directions the map gives us (turn here, travel this far, turn here, travel this far, turn here...) The given map is not concerned with what is to the left or the right but the getting from here to there to get, in Shteyngart's case, a taco.
But there is leaving, loss of signal a rediscovery of space that causes Shteyngart to"wake up from the techno-fugue state and remember who I am."By the end of the essay Shteyngart's friends have arrived to " roast an animal and some veggies". Due to the lack of a mobile network, due to location that the iPhone can no longer delineate, the connecting of the iPhone has been replaced by the personal connections with people. Granted, this is a generally romantic view that non-technologists like to advance against the technologists that screens are responsible for the destruction of inter-personal skills and relationships. However it should not be surprising that at the lapse of connective signal we return to previous types of connection. To return to de Certeau "it is the partition of space that structures it...there is no spatiality that is not organized by the determination of frontiers."(p. 123) Shteyngart discovers that his frontiers are determined by his cell phone reception. If individuals are reliant on the map to organize their interactions with space, and that map is delivered via satellite, one's perspective is immediately determined by the connection to that data source. This then determines the partitioning (defining) of the space that the individual is able to inhabit. One cannot practice something that is not known; though we can repeat motions without understanding. This is merely repetition. Machines can repeat. People should know and be known. Thus to follow maps, of any sort, without allowing for our own wandering and practicing of place is to repeat actions without the understanding of how the structure of chosen steps affects our own reading/discourse with the space of the world around us in determining the practice of everyday life. Failure to practice results in an eventual loss of space because the reason for the space's existence (reading a book, walking without a screen, etc.) is forgotten or at least subsumed to the insistence of daily routine which is not the practice of everyday life. Rather we should end everyday "as we commune in some ancient way, laughing and groaning...in the fading...light." Indeed, Mr. Shteyngart, indeed.

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And then there is also this: "American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it. "

Interesting essay from an interesting to-be-published book

1) Interesting essay on the future of the book by Benjamin Kunkel from a forthcoming book entitled The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books from Soft Skull Press in March 2011.
2) Dr. Alana Kumbier is co-editor of a really excellent book exploring critical theories and pedagogical methods in application to teaching information literacy entitled Critical Library Instruction has a gnarly podcast/interview over on The Newbie Dispatches.
Critical Library Instruction was published in 2009 by Library Juice Press which is a stellar press.

Mondays

Mondays used to be much less meaningful and enjoyable for me. The start of a new work week. Pulling oneself out of the typically joyous lethargy of a Sunday afternoon. All the issues/tasks that have piled up over the weekend. Then I got a new job and in this instance of being a librarian for a small college in upstate NY during the summer causes Monday to be much less frightening. This is quite enjoyable. There's another aspect of Mondays that I've not only come to greatly enjoy but to also anticipate with some degree of relish.
Two of my favorite podcasts drop on Monday mornings. I always, every single time, listen to them in the exact same order. Every Monday-without fail. There have a couple times where I will rearrange my to-do list so that I can have work at hand that allows me to listen and still get stuff done just so that I can enjoy this particular serving of Monday morning.
The first podcast is the NPR news quiz Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. I have laughed out loud in my office and have used bits from the podcasts in the class that I teach. I hope one day to have Carl Cassel's voice on my cell phone voice-mail.
The second podcast is This American Life with Ira Glass. This podcast caries from a short story/essay format to spending the entire hour digging into and thoroughly exploring a complex issue throughout the full spectrum of human emotion and experience. Sometimes the program is simply funny or sad while also being deeply journalistic or simply just quirky. Like when the producers/writers put together a program based entirely off of ideas pitched by their parents for the show that the readers/listeners then voted for their favorites of that list. The other defintively endearing aspect of this podcast is what I think is a distinct lack of snarkiness. Rather, at least this is how I think they present their subject/material, the philosophies of the podcast attempt to communicate the stories in their own context with a desire for freshness/authenticity. So the interviewers will go spend time in the Mexican desert with those individuals attempting to assist the Border Patrol or visiting summer camp to talk about the impact of growing up through a camp or talk to Senators about the books they've written and how the book seems not to be born out of any real experience.(Glass mentions this in the interivew, referenced belwo) This whole enterprise is driven by Ira Glass's narration. His voice, which is quite distinctive and finely constructed, insinuates itself deep into my brain stem where it often, just as DFW's voice does, takes over for my brain voice.
Recently Ira Glass sat down for an interview over at Slate entitled On Air and On Error: This American Life's Ira Glass on Being Wrong. This interview is a lengthy and enjoyable read especially in the exploration of the growth through learning of mistakes and the flexibility of our identities as people seem to be tied much more into our abilities to fail and learn from those instances rather simply striving to be right ach and every single time.* Glass, by his own admission, spent about 9 years being hands-down terrible at the radio interview/performance before he was successful.
The other enjoyable aspect of htis interview is that is shifts about 3/4 of the way through into a dialogue where Glass actually asks the interviewer (Kathryn Shulz) a question and the text shifts very much like something out of Barthelme's short story dialogues where the conversation happens without names and identities are blurred by the switching of the call-and-response process. This is what Glass and the show are really good at. This is what makes going to work on Mondays that much better.


*There's this fantastic essay on dialogue from Stringfellow Barr, of St. John's College which deserves way more than a footnote. Barr gives several suggested tenets for successful dialogue, which he calls thumb-rules, and the second should be mentioned here. That in successful dialogue "the will of self-insistence give way to the will to learn." I think that one of the main, if not the, thing is the will to be right.

Bacon

"Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own. It's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it."
~John Waters
from Role Models