Unknown Outpaces Known...

Like to-do outpaces done.

A line from the book I just finished, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. First order of business: read it if you have the time (which, if you're anything like the author, you don't). It's about a city girl who started a farm with an infuriatingly passionate vegetable farmer. I won't say anything else--in case you have the pleasure of reading it--except that my god, farming is really hard, and that it taught me some things about the value of hard work and the magic of, literally, eating the fruits (and veggies and meats and cheeses and grains) of your own labors.



And, of course, that post-opening quote, which I had never really thought of before and provided me with a newfound sense of peace. Once I read it, I kind of hit myself in the head. Well of course, you can never really be done. Of course, with each new thing you learn, even more doors are opened to the unknown. The idea that, until the day you die, no matter what you do, you will never truly be finished and can never hope to be, is strangely comforting. Life is a process. You are always moving. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. And the hungrier you get to know it. Simp.

In the spirit of expanding, I picked up another book, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, that I read 20 pages of a few months ago and then stopped. It had been reviewed as being "equal to Lord of the Rings", so I went into it somewhat bitterly and expecting a lot (equal to Lord of the Rings...pffffft, please), and was not impressed. It was slow, it was dreary, it was dark.



Of course, after forcing myself to continue on, I realized that those first 20 pages are meant to be slow and dreary and dark to contrast with what's thrown at you next. So it's really good. Really really good. Not sure yet if it's on the same level as The Greatest Books Ever Ever. I'll keep y'all posted.

So there are two book recommendations.

Just got back from ten days in Montreal and Quebec City, Canada. Lots to say about the trees, the rivers, the clothes, the socialist agenda of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the layout of the cities, everything maple, the French language...etc. Posts in the works! Here's a taste:



And jesus, is it August already? Less than a month 'til I'm back in my beautiful beautiful Santa Cruz. My heart jumps a little every time I think about it. In fact, I might just post a countdown...

xoxo
Maralah

Wish I Had Written This, CocoRosie

I had an English teacher my sophomore year of high school who is perhaps, to this day, the best teacher I have ever had. His name was Mr. Hanmer, and he had an unrivaled passion for words and stories.

He would read aloud to us in class (and act out all the parts), and one of the things I remember with the most clarity is when he would stop after a passage and exclaim, "God, I wish I had written that! Don't you wish you had written that?"

I was on Quora today (if you've never been there, gogogo), and in response to the question "What is the best passage you have ever read?":


“But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram


And I thought to myself, God, I wish I had written that!! Don't you? So insightful and poetic and beautiful. God god I wish I had written that.

Looks like I'm gonna have to go read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

And in other news:

COCOROSIE IS COMING TO SAN FRANCISCO!!!!

Looklooklook.

See in my head these girls can't possibly exist anywhere but in my own personal dreamworld. They are much too cool for this reality. I'm probably going to be that fan trying to touch them (or lick them or marry them).

SO EXCITED.

In honor:



xoxo
Maralah

Secret Heroes

Last night, in a cold-medicine-induced stupor, lying on the couch watching my guilty pleasure show (the Tudors), my boyfriend pointed me in the direction of a more spiritually stimulating film (although my gosh, the Tudors has done things to my spirit).

He sent me a link to the film, and I proceeded to watch all 139 minutes of it without moving. An inch. No food, no water...all of my limbs fell asleep. This movie had me hypnotized.

I speak, of course, of On The Road, the film adaptation of the famous novel of the same name by Jack Kerouac.



The film was an almost painfully raw depiction of what we as humans love and desire most, whether those things be beneficial or detrimental to us. Whether it is having a house and a baby or writing one great poem by age 23, there is a deeper desire within all of us that drives all of our actions and ultimately makes or breaks us. There is no getting away from it, no matter how many drugs we take or how many miles we drive.

A girl searches for love, loyalty, and respectability, hoping to find it with a man that lets her down over and over again;
That man searches for the thrill, for glory, looking to assign value to himself by winning the affection of others;
His friends follow him blindly and ponder in the shadows of his conquests;
One goes on to become a great novelist, another a great poet.


From the observation of desire and insanity and recklessness and lust come the great artists, the great translators of the churning of our insides, the ones that help us to realize what we are and why we are.


These men and women--LuAnne Henderson, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and many others who wove in and out of their lives--lived, it seems, without boundaries. At least at first.


Neal and Jack.
The one who never secured them was Neal Cassady, known in On The Road as the character Dean Moriarty, an infamous icon of the Beat era in the 50's.

He was the inspiration for the main character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; two books by Hunter S. Thompson; songs by the Grateful Dead, Doobie Brothers, King Crimson, and many others; numerous poems; books by his wives; half a dozen movies; and of course, On The Road.

Then, at age 41, he was found dead on train tracks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

I wrote to T: sometimes I think my life should be that interesting, and then I remember I don't want to end up dead on train tracks in Mexico at age 40.

The predicaments of the characters in this film made them more than characters to me, more than historical figures. Within each and every one of them I saw an aspect of myself, as a writer, a woman, and a lover, and I saw aspects of others around me. We are only human; we desire and desire and it leaves us both stagnant and racing through life.

It presented no clear problem and no clear solution, only the nature of our modern existence, stripped bare.

New favorite film, without a doubt. Watch it. Also read Howl by Allen Ginsberg (and everything else).

Oh, and happy Spring :) It's official!

xoxo
Maralah

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!

I don't read enough.

I write plenty; too much by some people's standards. I can't stop writing and I never want to. It's how I let my soul out. But I need to read more.

I am a book lover by every definition of the word. I still read a good amount, but I want to return to the way I was when I was little. Since I could read on my own, I stayed up late in my bed with a neat little reading light poring through lines and lines of wondrous stories, opening up new worlds and giving new meaning to my own. Other kids got in trouble for staying up too late watching tv; I got in trouble for staying up too late reading.

In the mornings, my dad would lift me out of my top bunk bed before school (I've never been a morning person) and set me down in a fluffy emerald armchair in the living room with my blankie and the book I was currently reading (usually the one they had taken away the night before so I would get some sleep in).I would read as long as I could until it was time to go to school.

I never read those silly, fun-but-shallow, overridden-with-onomatopoeia books targeted at young kids with no interest in literature (I'm talking about you, Animorphs). My more popular choices included The Little House on the Prairie(I was in love with the whole series), Nancy Drew, Harry Potter, and Hans Christian Andersen books (I still have my first copy of The Little Mermaid; the original). Anything with fairies or princesses or magic was fair game. The American Girl books were an addiction. I loved Josefina, who was Mexican, like me, and Samantha, who lived in this beautiful Victorian house and had a parlor and ate petit fours and had tea time with her grandmother.

The point of this rant is that I don't read like that anymore, and I want to. I've gone through every J.R.R. Tolkien book; The Silmarillion was the last full novel (I hesitate to call it that) that I read. So here is my newest challenge, though it's really more like an indulgence:

I'm about to crack open this beautiful old book.

Yes, this is The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It belonged to my father, who acquired it in college from someone apparently named "Kayle Mack", or so it reads on the left inside cover.

I've read Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth through and through and seen plays and numerous adaptations of those and Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing. But what I really want is to read his complete works and really try and understand Shakespeare. My first step is reading about Elizabethan England, to understand the world he lived in; then I'm going to choose a play and start reading.

Here begins the maturation of my relationship with Shakespeare. I'm going to try and read a play a month. Wish me luck!

And to close, a mouthwatering picture of a film version of the playwright, from Shakespeare In Love. He is possibly the only movie character I have ever become truly infatuated with, and to be fair I think I fell in love with Gwyneth Paltrow's character as well (one of my favorite movies).

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of my neglect of reading.