This is why football is a great game. Although most of the players are hunks of meat chasing each other, there’s also an incredible amount of strategy — before the play, and during the play.

after a real conversation in french, i pose here: the first person is a prison and should be avoided, not only for the sake of the reader but for the author. that said, this is a blog.

Exploring Tokyo Through Its Ramen Shops – NYTimes.com.

the non-instant is my favorite food in the world.

this is phenomenal, trop cool.

mieux en direct

i’ve been reading a lot recently. i finished the english patient at last, then i read water for elephants, and play it as it lays, and i’m currently reading an extremely tame and unexciting quebecois novel (right now, i’m hoping there is a devastating car crash). i want to talk about the meaning of nothingness, the metaphor of maps, and the americanness of circuses. perhaps after i cook dinner, but i think my host family is eating, in which case i’ll have to wait.

i just finished watching entre les murs, which was incredible. i think everything important i have been thinking about can be encapsulated in that movie.

it’s 1:30 am and i can’t piece it all together. i can’t piece anything together. i’m gonna lay in bed with my headphones on and the lights off.

The iPad: the intersection of technology and liberal arts. I believe it. I’ll probably buy one of these in three years. The mouse is going to die. I sure hope the book doesn’t.

When I turned her around, her whole body was covered in bright pigment. Herbs and stones and light and the ash of acacia to make her eternal. The body pressed against sacred colour. Only the eye blue removed, made anonymous, a naked map where nothing is depicted, no signature of lake, no dark cluster of mountain as there is north of Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti, no lime-green fan where the Nile rivers enter the open palm of Alexandria, the edge of Africa.

And all the names of the tribes, the nomads of faith who walked in the monotone of the desert and saw brightness and faith and colour. The way a stone or found metal box or bone can become loved and turn eternal in a prayer. SUch glory of this country she enters now and becomes part of. We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

Depression is not a perspective. It is a disease. Resisting that claim, we may ask: Seeing cruelty, suffering and death — shouldn’t a person be depressed? There are circumstances, like the Holocaust, in which depression might seem justified for every victim or observer. Awareness of the ubiquity of horror is the modern condition, our condition.

But then, depression is not universal, even in terrible times. Though prone to mood disorder, the great Italian writer Primo Levi was not depressed in his months at Auschwitz. I have treated a handful of patients who survived horrors arising from war or political repression. They came to depression years after enduring extreme privation. Typically, such a person will say: ”I don’t understand it. I went through — ” and here he will name one of the shameful events of our time. ”I lived through that, and in all those months, I never felt this.” This refers to the relentless bleakness of depression, the self as hollow shell. To see the worst things a person can see is one experience; to suffer mood disorder is another. It is depression — and not resistance to it or recovery from it — that diminishes the self.

Beset by great evil, a person can be wise, observant and disillusioned and yet not depressed. Resilience confers its own measure of insight. We should have no trouble admiring what we do admire — depth, complexity, aesthetic brilliance — and standing foursquare against depression.

When the earthquake hit on Tuesday, he told his wife, he had been in his room on the first floor of the five-floor, 145-room Hotel Montana. He said he felt a shake and then was thrown against the wall. He ended up buried in rubble for seven hours, with only one arm free. He had been friendly with another guest and his daughter, and they were buried beneath rubble nearby.

Through Tuesday evening the man sang to his daughter until he died, Mr. Phanor told his wife. As for Mr. Phanor, she said, he “screamed, he cried, and when he ran out of breath, he said his final prayers to God.” She added, “He made his peace.”

Mr. Phanor was able to reach a piece of a branch and tried to dig himself out with it, but it broke, his wife said. At 1 a.m. in the morning on Wednesday, members of a United Nations peacekeeping unit workers dug him out.

via Latest Updates on Rescue and Recovery in Haiti – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com.

Maintenant je suis à Paris. Il faut que je parle français tout le temps alors j’écris en français même ici. La ville est incroyablement belle, si vieille, si pleine d’énergie. Tout est nouveau, et l’expérience de parler sans arrêter une langue étrangère est complètement fou. J’aime bien ma famille d’accueil — la “mère” est artiste, et je suis allé à son exposition hier soir, où j’ai vraiment senti le choque culturel. Je me suis mis dans le coin et j’ai regardé tous ces vieux français dont je ne connaissais aucun. Il y a deux filles dans la famille, qui me semblent beaucoup plus cool que moi. Après deux jours, je pense que mon français a amélioré beaucoup.

Now I’m in Paris. I have to speak french all the time so I’m writing in french here as well. The city is unbelievably beautiful, so old, so full of energy. Everything is new and the experience of speaking a foreign language with no breaks is insane. I like my host family – the mother is an artist and I went to her show last night, where I really experienced culture shock. I camped out in the corner and watched these old french people, none of whom I knew. There are two daughters in the family who seems a lot cooler than me. After two days, I feel like my french has improved a ton.