July 24, 2011

1. Just got back from Beidaihe. A two-day excursion with street seafood, night markets, swimming in the breaking waves of the Bohai Sea, sleeping in a tent on the beach, and a sunburn (to the confusion of WZ whose darker complexion has never burned).
2. Reading Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1964), strange beach reading maybe.
3. As much as I've done it here in China, traveling by train is still such a cool experience for me, even if you're looking at villages, nondescript cities, and cornfields for most of the trip.
4. Started reading classic comic books on my phone, like Journey into Mystery #83 (the intro of Thor) and Tales of Suspense #39 (the intro of Iron Man, created by Tony Stark whilst in Vietnam). It's geeky, but these were some of the comics I coveted but could never even see as a kid, in much the same way that I've always wanted Duchamp's Rongwrong in my zine collection.

July 18, 2011

George Orwell, Why I Write (Penguin, 1984).

Orwell posits that there are four simultaneous reasons why someone is given to writing: 1) sheer egotism, 2) aesthetic enthusiasm, 3) historical impulse, and 4) political purpose (pp. 4-5).

I had fun trying how my motivations fall into this rubric.

July 5, 2011

Everything is super fantastic! It's like Tintin and his high adventures.

July 4, 2011

1. Rereading Verlaine and Éluard. Capital of Pain indeed.
2. A man with 30 plus button down shirts probly didn't need to buy another 6 this morning at the Zoo Market.
3. Boethius as subway read.
4. Koko Taylor, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee, and Lightnin' Hopkins on heavy rotation at the Horton house.
5. X Minus One.