Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Life-Long Learning, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Golly! It has been a year and a day since I last posted here.

Well, I suppose that’s a bit hyperbolic(1): it’s been closer to two weeks. Still, that’s a long darn time to be inactive, especially when compared to the rest of 2019.

What can I say? Travel kicked my ass, the weekend workshop kicked my ass(2), re-entry kicked my ass. I have been seriously crawling into bed as early as I can every evening since I got home. Tonight is the first night I feel remotely awake enough at 20:15 to put hands to keyboard.

At least I did have some time to finish one of my challenge books during these days away from JALC: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

This book also continues my unintentional tour of Man Booker prize books—although Cloud Atlas was only a finalist for the prize, as compared to the two prizewinners (Wolf Hall and Luminaries) I read earlier this year. Still kind of funny, how I keep choosing books for other reasons and still keep tripping over this particular group of prize-winners.

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Taking Responsibility

On By MezzoSherriIn Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Memoir, Practicing in the Heart, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Full disclosure: I’m a little bit crabby tonight. I have beefs with last night’s GOT, I’m having my customary inadequacy/packing crisis in advance of an immersion weekend(1), and the endless rainy season we’re having up here in Boston is pissing me off.

So I expect I’m going to be a bit ranty.

Which, I’ll admit, is somewhat richly hypocritical, insofar as the topic that has me feeling most pissed off and ranty tonight is the topic of emotional responsibility.

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Cool Rider

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Pop Goes the Culture, Self-AcceptanceLeave a comment

It all started innocently enough. They’ve been doing work on the floor above us in our office building, and yesterday’s noise involved stuff bouncing on the floor(1), and bouncing at regular enough intervals, that one of my co-workers posted on our Slack channel:

You’d think our upstairs neighbors would have invited us to the opening of their new bowling alley.

Which then prompted me—as a child of my generation—to ask:

Does anyone here remember Grease 2? “We’re gonna sco-o-ore tonight!”

And just like that, I’d ear-wormed myself.

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Horror Face x Infinity

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist, Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

As I backtrack to reporting out on the second film I watched over the weekend, I’m also taking a quick backtrack to my earlier fun of titling film review posts with emoji strings.

Because my initial response Abducted in Plain Sight cannot be summed up in any other way except with unending expressions of horror and the following declaration:

What the fuck did I just watch?

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Oscar Bait

On By MezzoSherriIn Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of Study1 Comment

I had such virtuous plans for my weekend: I was gonna clean the house, do more decluttering, do some private journalling, and begin building some reading momentum.

Instead, I spent most of yesterday in an exhausted blue funk. Not sure how much of that was just the build-up from a long week of work—both work work and my new side gig. Some piece of the exhaustion was just that, for damn sure. And the blue unmotivated feeling may have been as simple as my system reacting to a stretch of efforting and saying

I don’t care how virtuous and self-caring your Saturday goals are, we want a goddamn day off!

So mostly what I did with my Saturday was cuddled the dog, caught up on some DVR’ed stuff, and watched a couple of movies.

Including BlackKKlansman.

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From the Hat: Car Wars

On By MezzoSherriIn From the Hat, MemoirLeave a comment

Oh yeah, didn’t I say I was gonna pull a prompt from the hatbox once a week or so? And didn’t I say I was gonna do that more than two weeks ago?

Yes, dear reader, I suck at keeping writing promises to myself.(1) But it’s that start of a weekend, so fresh with determination and energy, here I am.

Tell about a frustrating experience you have had with a car.

So, how’s about a funny car accident story?

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Voices from the Past

On By MezzoSherriIn Pop Goes the Culture, Stuff about Stuff, UncategorizedLeave a comment

One the fascinating (to me) pieces of this “alphabetic CD tour” I do every few years is how many of these 1300-or-so albums still hold a place in my heart and my affections. I have different reasons for liking different things, but considering I started collecting CDs back in 1989 or so, it’s kind of surprising to me how infrequently I listen to a long-forgotten/rediscovered album and say to myself.

Eh. No longer my bag.

Given that, it’s kind of notable that in the last 2 weeks, I’ve come across not one, but two different artists/albums I’m thinking of adding to the Goodwill pile.

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Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

On By MezzoSherriIn Books Books Books, Life-Long Learning, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Well this book was less of a tome than my previous two, so I was able to finish it more quickly than my last read. It was also a bit breezier in content and tone. Don’t get me wrong: my snooty ex-academic cred is still maintained insofar as the book was tagged as a “must read of the week” by good old NPR.

This is yet another one of my impulse discount e-book purchases, but this one from long enough ago that I actually have it as a iBook rather than a Kindle file.(1) It’s a cinematic novel about cinema and Hollywood, but its opening—and most thematically important—setting of a fictional Cinque Terre village in Italy allows me to check off the latter criterion for this challenge category.

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Flights of Whimsy

On By MezzoSherriIn Gratitudes and Thank Yous, Life-Long Learning, Memoir, Pop Goes the Culture, Topics of StudyLeave a comment

Sometimes, my old habits towards isolationism—nurtured over many school years of feeling generally misfit and outcast—give me the sense of moving through my life with as much of an observational, anthropological perspective as a fully engaged one.(1)

I am particularly aware of this tendency as regards the different cultures and traditions of different lived communities. During my childhood, we bounced from the west coast to New England, to South America, the U.S. midwest and then New Jersey. Then, after college, I shifted between urban life—the heart of Philly—and our current suburban Massachusetts home.

With all those different places and lived environments, I now and again find myself surprised when I finally see some phenomenon I’ve heard about with my own eyes.

Such as this fortnight’s plastic flamingos.

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