Archive for Metablog
So it’s September
7 September 2008 at 1:38 am · Filed under Metablog, Resolutions, Transitions in Time
Hi, there.
The last time you heard from me I had just made a decision, after months of agonising. The decision, remember, was to finish my doctorate, and to stay in Toronto until I did so.
Well, that was a hard decision to implement, which is why you haven’t heard from me in over a month. In the last five weeks:
1. I did a lot of apartment-hunting, which reminded why it was that I never did rent an apartment in Toronto in all these 6 years (subletted once, but that doesn’t really count);
2. I went to Montreal twice, in order to keep my sanity;
3. In the period of ten days, I managed to apply for a job, get through the whole interviewing process, receive an offer, accept it, and later decline it — all within ten days;
4. I learned a lot about accounting;
5. I moved for the fifth time in two years. The previous record of seven moves in two years is still intact, although I start to lose count of what counts as a move and what doesn’t (staying somewhere for a couple weeks while you look for your own place — does that come into the equation?);
6. I was forced to confront my past decisions and life priorities and all that jazz, and found it all very enlightening. I think I am currently several years, maybe a decade, more mature than two months ago (not older, mind you. If anything, I’m acting younger and younger as months go by. Part of the whole maturing thing).
7. In particular, it’s been less than a week since my last move. But it definitely feels more like a year. Partly because a lot of things have happened. Partly because I have managed to implement so many little changes in behaviour that I do feel like a different person. And then there is the change of pace that comes with a new academic year + the change of routine that comes with living at a different place + the change in temperature that made days like today feel like summer was a thing of the past = feeling that more than just a week has gone by.
So I have a lot to write to you about. Hardly know where to start. Maybe most recent thing first, just to practice the whole timing thing (I’ve realized my sense of timing is in general very poor, and have decided to work on it). So let me tell you how my day today was (or maybe I should say yesterday, given that it is now past midnight. Oh well. Saturday, Sept 6, which still feels like today but no longer is. Very emblematic of my life, actually. Sigh. Maybe I should leave it for what feels like tomorrow but actually is today, that is, Sunday, Sept 7th. Another sigh. I think I need some sleep — it has been a long day, an even longer week, and an even longer parenthesis. Sleep wins.).
Writing exercise
3 July 2008 at 3:29 pm · Filed under Metablog
I haven’t written much lately 1) because I’ve been very busy and 2) not much has been happening. What do I mean by “not much”? I mean that I have spent the past several weeks between work and thesis, work and thesis, which not only leaves very little energy left for blogging. but also that I’m starting to few sorry for my ever so faithful readers, reading post after post about Ester trying to be less self-absorbed and failing miserably (ok, so maybe you haven’t been that faithful a reader — I don’t blame you).
But 1) having gone back to the gym after five weeks of thoroughly sedentary life, I was reminded that “very busy” is often a sign that my priorities need readjustment. Besides, endorphines (positive reinforcement) plus sore muscles (negative reinforcement) make me promise myself never ever let so much time go by without exercising. And physical exercise and writing exercise follow similar principles.
2) having recently watched “Stranger than Fiction” I was reminded that no life is so uneventful that absolutely no story can be written about it — not even my own. So here’s another dose of Ester being unabashedly self-absorbed.
*****
May 24, a lovely summery saturday, saw me put together a reading list consisting of 87 items. An entire sunny Saturday spent in the basement of the OISE library (not that I would have known whether it was sunny or not — for all that I knew 3 o’clock might have been AM or PM, and I wouldn’t have known the difference). What was I doing? I was checking every volume of a certain periodical, to see all that they had published that might be relevant to my thesis — relevance being sometimes a difficult concept to measure, especially from the title alone. The online searches and databasis hadn’t been very satisfactory, so I decided to take matters with my own hands — literally rolling up my sleeves and getting down to work.
After compiling the list, which was a much harder ordeal than I had expected, I thought that the rest would be relatively easy: I just had to read all the articles, checking them off my list one by one. Given that each article was about 5-7 pages long, and I’m quite a fast reader, I thought that a week or two would be more than enough to read what I thought were aproximately 500 pages — with time to spare to write a report about all this reading.
Gross underestimation. First, because you’d think that 1 item = 1 article, but that equation didn’t always prove correct. In some cases, the item read something like ”all of issue 13.3″ which could be forty, or even eighty pages (if a double issue).
Second, because those 5-7 pages weren’t really standard pages, of the type that you can fit two side by side on a letter-size sheet oriented horizontally. In fact, each of these pages occupied a full letter-size sheet (“portrait”, instead of “landscape”), with three columns each page, and very tiny print. Which actually meant that each page was actually three, and a 5-7 page article was really a 15-21 page article squeezed in 5-7 pages. Consequently, the approximately 500 pages really felt more like 1,500…
So I took a deep breath, a red pen, a cup of coffee, shut off my cell phone and my social life, and dived into it, pretending it was just like marking. In the process, I made several discoveries.
1. Even though 1,500 pages can be squeezed into 500, 500 pages are still a lot of pages to photocopy, in terms of time, money (@10 cents a page = 50 bucks!) and, most importantly, wrist action. I got particularly stingy when the article didn’t even turn out to be good, and the only satisfaction it could provide me was the checking off of another item on my list. And as this journal does not circulate, I decided therefore to spend as much time in the library as possible, and only photocopy those items that really turn out to be worth keeping.
2. However, this periodical is only available at the OISE library, which has reduced hours in the summer: it closes at 8pm Mon-Thurs; 5pm Fri-Sat; and it does not open on Sundays. Given that I work until 4pm Mon-Fri, I’ve had to be very strategic about getting enough library hours every week. More than once I was interrupted in the middle of my reading or in the process of photocopying an article: “Ma’am, the library is now closed, you have to leave!” “But I’ve only got three more pages to go!” “Ma’am, please, you have to leave now!” “But… but….”
3. Coffee shops are very bizarre places when observed with attention and regularity. Most people’s experience of coffee shops — and up to two months ago I belonged to this majority of people — either does not go there very often, or go often enough, but do not stay for very long. That is, some may go every day for years, but just get their order and leave, while others may go and stay for a couple of hours, but not do so very often. There is also the attention factor, which gets maximized if one is unnacompanied. This is all to say that the situations that I witnessed these past five weeks spending 2-3 hours a day, six days a week, at different coffee shops would render pretty interesting stories. Which I may get to write about in the near future. Or not.
4. A few days ago, I was combing my hair when I discovered some red marks on my scalp. I got worried for a few seconds: was that blood? After examining my head as carefully as I could (very hard to examine one’s own scalp) I realized that the marks were made by red pen… I have the habit of scratching my head when I read, which often gives my hair the appearance of a lion’s mane. But I’d never done that with a red pen in my hand — at least not that I was ever aware of. Being in a hurry to go out, I tried to change my hairdo so as to hide every trace of scalp doodling. Which would have been an excellent solution to this problem, were it not for the fact that I had actually doodled all over my head…
This is all an extremely round about way to say that this weekend I checked off the last item on my list! Admittedly, it took me five weeks, instead of one or two. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to celebrate it — on the contrary, it makes it all the more worth-celebrating for being over! The only “however” in this celebration is that now I have to write a report about all this reading, and said report is due Friday… Unfortunately, the time and energy I had allotted to this project has already been exhausted in the process of the reading alone. Which means that I now have to completely rethink this project’s mental-emotional-physical-chronological budget.
And all this writing was just to explain why I have no energy left for writing… Poor reader… let me give you and I a break, before I drag us both into utter exhaustion…
Out of shape
31 March 2008 at 1:08 am · Filed under Metablog
“I want to tell you,
My head is filled with things to say,
But when you´re near,
All those words they seem to slip away…”
– George Harrison
I do not remember
Who it was who said
– whether a famous philosopher
or my baby brother –
That blogging is like exercising:
The longer we procrastinate
The harder it is to go back into it.
But when we do manage to go back,
(and I´m using a royal “we” here)
We feel so much happier
That we ask ourselves
How we could have been so stupid
To have let it slide for so long
And we promise ourselves
That starting today
Things will be different:
Regular exercise,
Rain or shine!
That´s it!
Truth is,
I´ve got so much to say
About all these weeks and weeks
That I have no idea
How on earth to begin…
Maybe tomorrow
Maybe tomorrow
New Routine, New Blog
22 September 2007 at 6:04 pm · Filed under Metablog
Folks,
To mark a new stage in my esterical life, I decided today to start a new blog or two. Their titles are much more self-explanatory than the super-cool internexa and interplexa:
- estersblog.wordpress.com is the new internexa. All my posts written in English, old and new, are stored there.
- blogdaester.wordpress.com, in turn, is my new blog in Portuguese. It contains all of interplexa´s old posts, and so much more.
Simple, isn´t it? I thought it was super-simple.
“But Ester, why have you started a new blog, if internexa was already so fantastic?”
Well, here´s the story: although internexa really was quite fantastic, and I had learned a lot using blogspot, I recently started adding more and more photographs to my posts, which made things rather cumbersome. My friend Alexandra, who posts tons of cool photos and videos to her blog every week, a long time ago had recommended me to give wordpress a try. She´d said it was much easier to use, but I was so happy with blogspot that I could not imagine anything easier or better. That is, until this morning.
I will not complain about blogspot because I still feel indebted to it. I had even planned another post heavy on photographs for today (with the suggestive title of “11% Humidity”). However, just the thought of painstakingly uploading each picture one by one exhausted me. So I decided to have a quick look at wordpress. It was love at first click.
So that´s that. I´ll see you there then.
Esterically yours,
Ester
*****
Esterical Blogversary
3 July 2007 at 1:03 pm · Filed under Metablog
It’s been a year today. A full year. It was a day like this when it all started. Only I was in Brazil, not in Canada. And it was winter, not summer. Well, now that I think about it, the day wasn’t really that much like today, as far as days go. But that it was July 3rd, that it was.
Since then, it’s been 40 Esterical posts in English (47 in Portuguese). The internexa side of the blog has been honoured with 1,906 page views, mainly from our captive audience at U of T and McGill University, but also from places as far as Sweden, India and New Zealand. (Interplexa, the Brazilian counterpart, has in the meantime received more than twice the number of views, no idea why…).
To celebrate a year of such esterical posts (and because I’m super busy today to write anything decent), I leave you with three highlights:
1) Mutatis Mutandi, posted 21st July 2006:
http://internexa.blogspot.com/2006/07/mutatis-mutandi.html
2)My Place is a Place which is Mine, posted 5th January 2007: http://internexa.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-place-is-place-which-is-mine.html
3) Bachelor Life, posted 29th May 2007: http://internexa.blogspot.com/2007/05/bachelor-life.htm
(the criterion was chronology more than any thing else: it would have been an impossible selection for me to make otherwise, these texts are all so… Esterical each in their own way…):
So here’s to many happy returns: to me, to you, and to the Muses. Cheers!
Perfect is the oposite of done
6 November 2006 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Metablog, Resolutions
Perfectionism. It is the habit not only of finding flaws in everything that is done, but also not wanting to do anything that is not perfect. And as that is impossible if you’re a perfectionists, you can easily fall into simply not doing anything. Period.
Perfect comes from the latim for “thoroughly done.” But sometimes the obsession with “doing thoroughly” hinders it being done at all.
Esterical resolution for the week: emphasise the “practice” part in “Practice makes perfect”. Focus less on finding the perfectest roundest most aerodynamic ball. Focus more on just getting it off my court. And get the game going.
Starting with this blog.
Mutatis Mutandi
21 July 2006 at 10:20 am · Filed under Autobiography, Greece, Metablog, Music
It all began the day I arrived in Brasilia from Canada, and my brother Chico invited me to go to Naty´s thesis defense the next day. So I went. It was super nice. It was about the Brazilian artist Chico Buarque. After the defense, a group of my brother´s friends went out for a beer and great conversation. Brains working full throttle.
Then I realized that Chico Buarque was one of those great Brazilian musicians I knew through osmosis, but didn´t really know that well. I decided then to make up for the time lost. I scavenged and played everything in Chico´s Chico´s collection (things by Chico Buarque in the things belonging to Chico my brother).
Since everything is really well-known, it wasn´t like “wow, I´ve never heard this before!” But there was that feeling that comes when you suddenly realise something you´d never noticed in something you´ve heard a gazillion times since you were born. Things that make you go “wow, this is so surprising, and at the same time, so typical!”
The first bursts of laughter came when listening to “Façamos”. This was not only because the lyrics are really funny, but also because it is a very well thought out version of “Let´s do it (Let´s Fall in Love)”, by Cole Porter (which is always the warm-up song in my lindy-hop class). Hardly recovered from the first explosion, laughter seized me again when “O Malandro” started playing, such a fantastic version of “Mack the Knife” that felt more like an original Brazilian samba than anything.
But what spurred the thought “Wow, I have to start a blog about this!” was “Mulheres de Atenas” (“Women of Athens”). This song illustrates so well what I´m reading for my comps, that it´s unbelievable! But when I got to write the blog, first I had to sum up part of what I´m reading for my comps (Page du Bois, J.R. Martin, etc), so the blog got longer and longer. And this is how we got here.
I don´t want to reinvent the wheel here with a full analysis of the song, especially since this is a new re-descovery of my own. All I wanted to say is that if Page du Bois or Jane Roland Martin listened to (and understood) this song, they´d go berserk.
Apart from the cadence and the rhymes which are absolutely genius, the accuracy with which it reflects both the Ancient Greek context and current reality is simply out of this world. Chico Buarque is fabulous in the way that he manages to adapt works of art created in different places, ages and reality and re-create them in such a way that the version is more original and seamless than the original, be it “Mack the Knife” or Homer´s Odyssey.
From the very first line (“Look up to the example of those women of Athens”) we see, ironically but accurately, the idealization of ancient customs which scholars like Du Bois attack. The description of the ideal woman “without preferences, without desires, with neither flaws nor qualities” is so terribly on the mark, that many thought the author was meant it earnestly.
Now, one may think that such an error is absurd, caused by either female hypersensitivity and hysteria, or by male ignorance and sexism, to think that the author wanted his song to be interpreted literally. But given the amount of serious and well-intended scholarly work with this kind of rhetoric, as well as how widespread this pattern of domination still is, such a mistake is completely understandable.
Which is not to say that we can just let it go and shrug our shoulders amazed at people´s ignorance. The error is grotesque, true. But it´s an error that only proves how grotesque contemporary civilization still is. The mere comtemplating that “Mulheres de Atenas” may perhaps be an ideal worth having proves that, in this respect at least, we are not that much ahead of the Greeks of over three thousand years ago. This is sad. Also sad is not to recognise this fact, and think that this equity has already been reached, as if mere positive thinking was enough to make unjust inequalities disappear.
What I like in the works I´m presenting here, like Martin, du Bois, Reagan, Monteiro Lobato, and others which are still to come, like Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Nísia Floresta, Cecília Prada, as well as this song by Chico Buarque, is the way that they show how these patterns apply over time and space, mutatis mutandi. I only wish I had Chico´s knack for translating so well not only the content but the whole feeling, from one context to another, one reality to another. Meanwhile, I´ll do what I can in my own esterical way to introduce these wonderful thinkers to other wonderful thinkers I know. To illustrate this, I end with a rough esterical version of the lyrics of the fabulous “Women of Athens”. Enjoy and weep!
Mulheres de Atenas (by Chico Buarque)
(Women of Athens – trans. by Ester Macedo)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens)
Vivem pros seus maridos, orgulho e raça de Atenas
(They live for their husbands, pride and power of Athens)
Quando amadas, se perfumam
(When loved, they apply their perfumes,)
Se banham com leite, se arrumam
(Bathe in milk, dress up)
Suas melenas
(Their hair)
Quando fustigadas não choram
(When chastised, they do not cry)
Se ajoelham, pedem, imploram
(They kneel down and implore)
Mais duras penas
(For further hardships)
Cadenas
(Further chains)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens)
Sofrem por seus maridos, poder e força de Atenas
(They suffer for their husbands, might and force of Athens)
Quando eles embarcam, soldados
(When they board their ships, soldiers)
Elas tecem longos bordados
(They weave long fabrics)
Mil quarentenas
(A thousand quarantines)
E quando eles voltam sedentos
(And when they return, thirsty,)
Querem arrancar violentos
(They want to snatch, violent,)
Carícias plenas
(Full caresses)
Obscenas
(Obscene caresses)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens)
Despem-se pros maridos, bravos guerreiros de Atenas
(They undress for their husbands, brave warriors of Athens,)
Quando eles se entopem de vinho
(When they fill themselves up with wine)
Costumam buscar o carinho
(They usually seek the affections)
De outras falenas
(Of other ladies)
Mas no fim da noite, aos pedaços
(But at the end of the night, in shreds)
Quase sempre voltam pros braços
(They almost always return to the arms)
De suas pequenas
(Of their dear little)
Helenas
(Helens)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens)
Geram pros seus maridos os novos filhos de Atenas
(They beget for their husbands the new sons of Athens,)
Elas não têm gosto ou vontade
(They have neither preferences nor desires,)
Nem defeito nem qualidade
(Neither defects, nor qualities,)
Têm medo apenas
(Only fear)
Não têm sonhos, só têm presságios
(They don’t have dreams, only omens,)
O seu homem, mares, naufrágios
(Their husbands, seas, shipwrecks,)
Lindas sirenas
(Beautiful sirens)
Morenas
(Brunettes)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens,)
Temem pro seus maridos, heróis e amantes de Atenas
(They fear for their husbands, heroes and lovers of Athens,)
As jovens viúvas marcadas
(The young widows, wounded,)
E as gestantes abandonadas
(The pregnant women, abandoned,)
Não fazem cenas
(Make no scene,)
Vestem-se de negro se encolhem
(They dress in black, withdraw)
Se confortam e se recolhem
(Comfort themselves, retire)
Às suas novenas
(To their novenas)
Serenas
(Serene)
Mirem-se no exemplo daquelas mulheres de Atenas
(Look up to the example of those women of Athens,)
Secam por seus maridos, orgulho e raça de Atenas.
(They wither for their husbands, pride and power of Athens.)
References, allusions and recommendations:
- Homer´s Odyssey
- “Mulheres de Atenas”, by Chico Buarque
- “Let´s Do It (Let´s Fall in Love)”, by Cole Porter (also “Façamos (Vamos Amar)”, by Chico Buarque)
- “Mack the Knife”, by Bob Darin (also “Opera do Malandro”, by Chico Buarque)
- http://www.mundocultural.com.br/analise/Mulheres_de_Atenas.PDF
Agora
3 July 2006 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Autobiography, Metablog
Ever since I was a child I have always been amazed by classical cultures (language, literature, philosophy, etc.) Obsessed by Monteiro Lobato´s “The Ranch of the Yellow Woodpecker”, and by Monica and her gang (comics by Maurício de Souza), at the age of nine I could describe with details and in the right order, Hercules´ 12 Trials, the Greek goddesses and gods, their attribute, personalities and Latin counterparts. I use to talk of Aspasia and Pericles, Pheidias and Socrates, as if they were children´s characters like Narizinho and Pedrinho, Monica and Cebolinha, the Beauty and the Beast, Mickey and Minnie.
“How does this connect to that?”
The taste for classical cultures that I developed as a child got so rooted that rather than pursuing the medical career for which I had been preparing for years, I decided instead to major in Classics and Philosophy. My passion for languages, dead and alive, inspired by “Emília´s Grammar”, led me to Montreal, Canada, where the cultural salad inside and outside the classroom felt like a “Tower of Babel” theme park in city scale.
“How do your studies in Canada relate to your life in Brazil, and vice-versa, and versa-vice?”
I am often asked, in Brazil and in Canada, within and without the academic setting, what my studies have to do with my life, or with life in general; whether my education in Brazil prepared me adequately for my life in Canada; whether my theoretical studies in philosophy or
Latin has any bearing on current reality. “But you always seemed so intelligent, how come you´re still in school?”, intelligent and accomplished non-academics ask me. Within academia, the expectation was often quite the opposite: “But you´re such a promising scholar, what do you mean you have a life?”
I must confess that I could never quite see the contradiction, but I used to think that there was something wrong with me, since I had the greatest respect for the people in each of these areas, academic or not, Brazilian or not. Since these were all essential components of my life, and I refused to give up on any them, I gradually started to compartimentalise my life. In this way I wouldn´t be too strident: in the theoretical work, I would avoid making reference to practicalities; in practical settings, I would avoid theoretical blah, blah, blah. In Canada, I would hardly ever betray my Brazilian origins, whereas on vacations in Brazil I´d avoid bragging about life in Canada.
But since one can never be completely neutral, I avoided talking too much. Since one can never be 100% this with no trace of that, I got dimmer and dimmer, in such a way that I was almost invisible, even to myself. Not a good feeling, that of self-invisibility.
Interplexa et Internexa
Perplexed, I asked myself: “Self, who are you?” The only answer that Myself gave me was a list of things I´m excited about, of people that are part of my life: My Self emerged in the intersection and interaction of all these people and things.
This is what this blog is about: a connecting point between things and people, ideas and experiences, country´s and languages, writers and readers, entities prima facie unrelated,
but which all belong to My Esterical Self. This blog is a combination of Augustinian Confessions, Cartesian Meditations, Emília´s Memoirs (such a modest choice of company!), Dear Diary, Platonic dialogue, Socratic agora, internet forum, clip album and other esterical chimeras without order or method, but all interconnected.
So it is then that Agora still means something – right now. Stay tuned!
P.S. The original idea was to have this blog in two parallel columns: one in Portuguese, one in English, so that my circle of readers in Brazil and in Canada could interact. But it didn´t quite work, so I created two separate pages (the system prevails once more, with its knack for separation!): www.internexa.blogspot.com in English and www.interplexa.blogspot.com. But let us not allow the system to impose a segregation here too: please feel more than welcome to check both pages, and to leave a comment in whichever language. Stay connected!
