Crumpled Leaves

The new Me

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:18:19 GMT

http://grotesquestoneidols.blogspot.com/

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:41:36 GMT

Though I do not worry much about anything, when I do worry it is about the possibility that I am inventing everything that I am thinking about...creating it, just totally making it all up. I feel like I have started to cross a river without knowing how deep it is, how fast it moves, what is on the other side, and weather it is infested with blood sucking leaches and parasites that burrow under my toenails. You see the path my studies are now taking is based on one conversation I had with a woman in Ecuador who was both distracted by driving in the city and who I traditionally had trouble understanding in Spanish. She said a few things offhand and I built a giant sand castle out of those things in my mind.

It has been a good past few days though. I've maxed out my library allowance and found quite a bit of information to support what I have been thinking. The book I started going through yesterday actually gives me direct historic evidence for this woman's remarks. As I fiddle around with this I think I will be able to easily make the case that the divergent post-colonial and post-revolution histories of the Andean nations have caused modern indigenous people to engage with the past at different levels depending on what side of the boarder they come from. I'm trying to shore that all up. I'm not sure how to move on after that. I feel that these differing connections and disconnections are playing out right now...certainly in social and political spheres, but specifically in the treatment of archaeological bits and pieces. Basically I am asking why Ecuador is so different than Peru and Bolivia when one would normally think it would be quite the same. How do I PROVE this is what the difference is. I think so, but who cares what I think?

I guess there is a point where I just have to not care, write it all down, and take whatever international tearing apart i get from it (that is if anyone notices).

I feel like I've got a mountain range of literature stacked up around me...so much that I don't know where to begin. I've moved so far from my safety zone that I am surprised. Excited, yes, but surprised. I didn't even think this is where I would be.

Electronic Psychadelic

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:21:39 GMT

How have I never heard the Silver Apples before this moment! Is there more music like this that I just don't know about? Could all these years have been wasted?

Edit: OMG: get your banjos out because they covered Ruby

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:58:01 GMT

I love Georgia.

Apparently after A Prairie Home Companion was broadcast from my home town a Georgia woman started stalking Garrison Keillor and he just got a restraining order against her. Apparently she sent him a petrified alligator foot and some dead beetles.

The only news to ever come from Columbus is wonderfully insane.

Glass-tastic

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:09:10 GMT

Almost 5 years to the day that I last saw him in person, yesterday included an adventure to London to hear Philip Glass play Music in 12 Parts.

I've always wondered if I would make it through one of his (or anyone's) longer pieces. Before yesterday I had never just listened to the music: rather I always read, or walked, or fled a country via boat while the music was going. I know I have trouble sitting still and even when I do enjoy something, I get bored after not moving. I don't do well at long conferences or lectures (but I like the movement and participation of a seminar). How would I deal with Einstein on the Beach or the 4 hours of Music in Twelve Parts?

The answer is "amazingly well." Yesterday I honestly lost all concept of time. When each one hour part was over with I felt that I had only been sitting for 10 minutes. It was like being distracted or even lost. I liked that. 4 hours was no time at all (or any time really). It was beautiful.

I got into a long discussion with Carl about my not liking Classical nor Romantic music. He expressed shock and horror and did the standard "maybe you just haven't heard..." which I shot down with my years of piano and then years of violin...which I quit because I was always forced to play crap music. I actually used to think I hated the very sound of the piano only because the only pieces I was given to play or to listen to when I was a wee lass were Classical and Romantic. I thought the medium was crap not the pieces themselves. Later, upon discovering much interesting, beautiful, and innovative piano work I realize the music was the problem after all. Perhaps I would have stayed with musical performance if I could connect to what we were playing in any way. Frankly there isn't a lot of innovation in orchestras in the deep south. I had a conductor who thought himself mega ballsy for having us play one Aaron Copeland piece**.

I had such an odd relationship to music when I was young. I didn't like any of the teenybopper music that my friends listened to...I never owned any New Kids on the Block anything and I never wanted it. That plus my rocky relationship with the music I was playing. Sometimes I thought I just did not like music but in reality I was waiting to hear music that I liked. Do you think our preferences for such things are in us at such an early age even if we have not be exposed to the things in any way? Do you think we are predisposed to certain musical/artistic things and not others? Is it possible that without any outside influence I just like the things that I like?

**I didn't think him ballsy but it was the first time I think I sincerely loved something we were playing: Rodeo is exciting and wonderfully American. I connected fully to it. I always wanted more of that, whatever that was.

Will I start writing in the live journal again?

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:54:34 GMT

I'm not sure. I am not sure why I stopped actually. I just felt strange after Ecuador like I had nothing else to say about anything. Perhaps I will come back in a friends only format. Perhaps it will fade away again and I will delete it all: delete 6+ years of life. I've had this thing a long time.

I am currently trying to decide if I should join Amnesty International. You see, I now work at Cambridge's Amnesty International bookstore and I thought perhaps I should put my money where my mouth is. Besides for 7 pounds I get a tshirt and a "save the human" pin. How can I go wrong? But I wondered, do I really support everything Amnesty supports? I know I support most of it (or heck I wouldn't be in the book store) but is it a club that would have me as a member? I have to admit now that I am stuck on their policy of freedom of speech vs. hate speech. They think hate speech should be outlawed, holocaust deniers may go to jail etc. This bothers me. I think people have the right to make themselves look stupid in public. I don't think anyone has the right to govern what people think or say. People argue that it is a slippery slope down to actual physical abuse from the hate, but I really see it as a slippery slope to restriction of anything and everything. I regularly have fights with German friends about this. Restriction of hate just makes it sexy. Plus governments should not have the right to govern what people think even if their thinking sucks.

So I don't know. To join or not to join? That is really just one issue that I am not down with...

Evo on the Daily Show

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:42:51 GMT

The world has changed a lot since I went to Bolivia for the first time. I think most of my friends/family were not quite sure where Bolivia was. Go Evo!

Over with

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:31:06 GMT

I'm done with Quito. I like Ecuador and by Ecuador I mean the jungle and cloud forest, but I cannot stand this city a moment longer. I am leaving for Georgia on Sunday night as I was able to change my flight.

I'll have more to say later when I have stable internet.

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:31:53 GMT

SOS I am now out of books.
I can either read some crappy fantasy novels that someone left here or you fair people can suggest books that are found on project gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/

I would love suggestions from you fine people, especially foreign books that I am not familiar with or have missed. Remember that I will be reading this on a computer screen so really really long books are probably a no, but then again I can start them and buy them later.

Any suggestions? Come on come on!

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:51:12 GMT

A quick note, I will try to write more later.

If any of you out there post any sort of Harry Potter book spoiler that isn't behind a well marked cut I'll kill you with my bare hands. I'm going to get the book about 10 days after it is released (or else I will kill my brother with my bare hands) and I know most of you fans will have devoured it by then.

Please understand that there is currently not much excitement in my high Andean life and the book is all that I have to look forward to.

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:19:43 GMT

Please vote for my friend Justin's Shark with a Jet Pack tattoo at http://www.1059.com/pages/showsusyourtat_round1.html he is Number 44

He promises to use his prize to get a petrodactyl

inevitable tragedy and quick ending triumph

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:05:25 GMT

So I went to another Mexican movie today. I honestly thought that it wouldn't be a tear jerker when it started but boy was I wrong. It was about a cabaret singer/dancer/prostitute who saves a baby from a trash can and loves it. All the way through there was AMAZING afro-cubana music and wild wild dancing. This was not to be a prostitute makes good story, however, as she ended up in jail and kid ended up shining shoes. Interestingly the shoe shine technology of latin america hasn't advanced since the 1930s as he carried around the same type of wooden box for the job that kids all over this place have. They dont wear ski masks here like they do in Bolivia. They DO want to shine my unshineable suede rocket dogs.

I'm going through books like they were water. I've found a temporary supply but at this rate they should only last me a few days. I might have a hook up but if not, frankly, I don't know what I am going to do with myself. I can't study spanish all the time. To be honest I didn't study it much today. I'm a little burnt out on it but I will be back to it tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I have agreed to go with an american poet to some strange dark cafe in old town for a poetry reading. Various members of my house are coming along with. I have no idea what to expect from that but I am in no position to say no, now am I?

The sky over the volcanoes was beautiful tonight.

Is this the end?

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:03:06 GMT

The freeness of my stolen internet has now been challenged. The usual network I connect to has decided to deny me. It lets me connect then sends me nothing. The other available option lets me connect to only https sites. This is fine for my two emails and google talk but making posts to this site has become a luxury that costs cold hard US dollars. Unless the internet comes back tomorrow or something these updates may be farther between. I can write them ahead of time and pay the 20 cents it will cost me to upload them but it isnt the same.

If any of you can shed light on my particular wifi stealing problem, please email. Please email in general because I can't hear from you any other way.

No less than two plaques in the main square of Quito's historic quarter commemorate the assasination of this particular president. Hacked to death right there infront of the government building with a machete. They carried him in to the cathedral where he died. The memorial there to him displayes some of his screwed up mashed up scull bones. I like the plaques. They are there to keep any other presidents in check. I took this photo after leaving the cathedral. I stepped out of the door and was greeted by a contengent of ceremonial guards waving swords around and clanking their spurs on the ground in time to military music. They dress in the colors of the Ecuadorian flag and in the style of revolutionary soldiers.

What the hell is going on, says I, but then I just drifted into enjoying the scene. Having just visited Sucres grave and the assasination commemoration plaque added to it. One of the military band guys pretended to eat a fly on a rest to make me laugh. Then they all clanked in to the building and away and it was over.

I, for one, got a sunburn.

I suppose I should go back home now and study more spanish. I feel like I am getting theoretically better due to this concentration but I don't really see it playing out in my comprehension. In the last Mexican movie I went to which was about Zapatistas I mostly followed what was going on thanks to the pictures rather than the dialog. Que sera. This is all I can do.

The door to my heart and other hallucinations

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:33:20 GMT

I've always liked doors and Quito's Old Quarter has amazing ones, in fact this is the second one I have posted. Beautiful red with the winged heart of Christ that seems to be all over Ecuador. This is the Monastery of Saint Augustine on a wet Sunday.

This winged heart seems to have become Ecuador's national symbol. In the National Institute of Cultural Patrimony I saw work by a modern artist that incorporated it into everything. Many different ways. One was called, in spanish, Between the Sacred and the Profane. I'm pretty sure I gave a conference paper called that once. I should have taken a photo.

Last night I did the following things that I expected: Watched the Brazil Uruguay match.

Last night I did the following things that I did not expect: eat cake, eat pizza, play foosball, dance salsa, and come very close to passing out.

The final one was the least expected of them all. I have totally passed out twice, both times while getting blood drawn, and it is a feeling I wont forget. Standing in a pizza restaurant with my Ecuadorian, American and Welsh house mates, stone sober, I started feeling like that. Everything became warm, I started to tingle, then I felt light. I managed to step outside and slump against a wall till i pulled it together again but I still don't know what happened. I drank much water when I got home.

Theres that fear again

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:53:37 GMT

Last night walking home I became very scared. It was late, I admit, 11 is late to be walking around Quito alone but I only had a few blocks to go and I know it was to be the last time it would happen. I had no money at all on me, I was just carrying some towels. I was fine until a taxi driver came up to me trying to get me to take the taxi. "No" "No I live near here" "No" But there are many thieves out tonight senorita. "Fine, I have no money for you or them" but the rest of the walk hurt. Each step and each person on the street.

I suppose it is a combo of being told "QUITO IS DANGEROUS" and still remembering the only time anyone ever really attacked me on the street way back in 2004 in Lima. As I walked I realized I could barely convey "I dont have any money, only towels" in Spanish in a way that any thief would believe.

Quito is dominated by volcanoes that sometimes, every once in a while, act up. The city is long and skinny between them and I am staying in the heart. I used to be more scared of things like volcanoes than thieves but things change.

Conquista-door

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:59:31 GMT

The darker part of my is intrigued by the particularly nasty depictions of humanity that came out of the Conquest of the New World. In Merida, for example, the house of Franciso de Montejo the younger has a sculpture over the door of the young conquistador literally stepping on the backs of two Maya dudes. This is from a door to a chapel next to the main Cathedral here in Quito. The fella is clearly Spanish but has morphed into a devil creature with sharp teeth. A bit surprising. Also surprising at times are the paintings of the Quito school where religious figures all look a bit indigenous and Christ does every day normal things like eat guinea pig. People make what they know. That door is certainly what they knew.

Yesterday it rained which was a bit strange. It has made the city rather cold, colder than usual. No sunburns yesterday or today, though they are a usual fact of life. Quito is actually closer to the sun than most places and my gringa skin can tell. Also strange about yesterday is that the city totally closed down for Sunday. Nothing open...no one on the street. Deserted.

Again I have been translating legislation. It takes a very long time and some passages make sense in my mind but I find them hard to convey in English. The one I am working on is 16 pdf pages long. I am on page 10. I am not sure what good they are doing in the long run but I have to do them, no one else has translated these as far as I can tell. As for other work, there really isn't any at the moment. I am pretending like I need to do this first before anything else but in reality I need to magically understand spanish better before anything else. I messed um my verb tenses while helping a blind dude cross the street, I am that sad.

Ser vs Estar

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:44:29 GMT

Today's photo is really yesterdays photos and today's post is really yesterdays post. I had to go out, last minute, with all the other people in this house who are all younger than me. Theres that quarter century for yah.

There seems to be a very vivacious stencil scene here in Quito. This one says "Our democracy is for everyone" with a native dude with a gun to his head. The ethnic makeup of this country is a bit new to me. In Bolivia, Peru, and Guatemala the indigenous people are oppressed but at least they are in the majority. You get the feeling that they will have their day soon enough (and in a sense they have their day now in Bolivia). Here it is a bit different. From 20 to 40% of people say they are indigenous depending on who you ask and how you ask. People say they are not when they are. Also there is a very very large black population. Then there are mestizos and whites. Everyone tends to mix. They treat each other badly, but they mix. The little kids running around are any sort of combo of all the ethnic groups here. The separation that you really feel in Bolivia just isn't here. But then again, it is worst to be indigenous only only a little better to be black. I've been translating part of the most recent constitution and they pretty much have to write directly that the natives are nifty and the government will integrate their offices. I doubt it has happened but at least they wrote it down.

So, by the letter of the law, their democracy is for everyone but, for the people who only got the right to vote in the 70s (if you couldn't read in Spanish you weren't legally allowed to vote. Many native people only understood their own language whatever it may be) it seems democracy usually isn't for them. They are trying though.

The Mexican film from yesterday was a comedy whose humor was mostly verbal, thus I didn't get most of it. I could laugh a few times but the dialog was so fast that I missed nearly everything that was cracking my co-watchers up. I'm going back still, of course, but that kind of movie is very hard for me. At least I did a lot of talking to people last night.

Now off into this wet Quito Domingo

Mexican Cinema and the end of time

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 00:09:36 GMT

So I have decided to start forcing upon you all daily photos of Quito…well daily-ish. My house is able to steal internet from certain locations and now I have the ability to actually update this deal. It is a bit rocky, the connection, but why not.

Peering over quito is the Lady of the Apocolypse. She has wings and holds one end of a chain. The other is wrapped around the neck of a dragon. She wait for the end when the dead will rise, serenely watching over the city. The hill she is on is probably the Inka part of the city which was burnt to the ground by its builders so that it would not fall into Spanish hands. One apocalypse for another.

Today I walked around and bought a newspaper. There was an article about an archaeologist that I really must email in it. Also there was an article about a classic Mexican film festival. I’m trying to watch Spanish things and at $2 a film for students, I am there every day. I am a bit ashamed to say that I had seen only one of the movies they are showing, El Gallo de Oro, which I own…it was written by Garcia-Marques and Fuentes. Power and pain.

The film I saw tonight was La Mujer de la Puerta. It was filled with all the pain that you would expect. The dialog was sparse and pretty simple so I actually understood it. Great moustaches and vampy makeup. Sure enough the only exchange I had trouble with was at the climax of the film. “What…WHAT? Ohhhhh.” Said my brain. There were three women, archetypes of the nosey widow neighbors. They were positively Greek in their movements. The father in the movie screams HARPIES at them before he tries to kill a guy with a hammer and ends up getting killed himself. That is what I like in a film.

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:07:41 GMT

I cant really write a long entry now. I feel like today I have to think and think a very long time. Also internet time is money. I am in Quito now and now I have an address:

Donna YATES
La Niña 539 y Juan León Mera
Quito, Ecuador

Hmm I feel like there should be another number in that. Like a postal code or something, though giving the cross street is quite precise.

The PhD work is going sort of blah. I dont know what I am doing. I cant even make and apostrophe on this computer. I can make an ñ though and a ¿ and a ¡. My spanish seems to be el sucko. I think this general downness is the altitude (which hurts a little right now) combined with evidence that I really am on my own with this. That this isnt going to be easy at all, especially when I hablo el sucko.

Thus now the big push is for me to rock spanish like Ive never rocked it before. I am doing at least one hour a day with a text book. One translation a day of a short story or poem. Watch one spanish language movie a day and maybe try and read the newspaper. I think two months of that should sort me out. Outside of that I am going to write write write and think think think and read read read at the museum library. If i can get in. That is for tomorrow to deal with.

Phase II

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:54:26 GMT

I feel better in several ways. First and foremost I do not have asthma or TB, I have tracheitis, which translates to me not producing enough goo for my throat to function normally. A humid climate is the best place for me to possibly go for this and, I even feel better in England’s dampness already. The rainforest will be perfect. The doctor complimented me on my lung capacity. Apparently I blow. Emotionally I feel better. South America is open before me and I realize that now. Transitions are strange and often it is hard to see the immediate future because of the immediate past. Something interesting will happen down there and if not, nothing interesting will happen there. I’m going for good reasons. I told my mother I was probably moving there yesterday and she thought that sounded cool.

I am quite glad actually to have this moment back in the UK. I like people here. In these two days I have had lovely breakfasts and dinners and lovely company. Carl and I went to New Hall to look at X-ray photographs of flowers. I played a zombie board game while drinking pimms. I had an omelet with chard which was unexpected and delightful. Numerous people around college exclaimed “WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE” meaning they not only noticed I was gone but had bothered to remember my schedule and plans. To actually exist on people’s personal time line is quite touching. I saw one set of the photographs that were taken the last time I was in Cambridge and they filled me with delight for some reason. I really like them and I haven’t even seen the best ones apparently. Niceness.

So here I am on the bus to the airport. I’ll spend a few hours in Georgia eating Mexican food and re-packing then it is off to Huston and then Quito. My project has booked a hostel room for me and will pick me up on Monday. I really like them. I went to the Salvation Army and stocked up on books to read. Somehow I managed to keep with a South America theme while only paying around 85p per book. Currently I have Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” out and I’ll be damned if I don’t like it already. It is very South American and very much like Garcia Marquez. I’ve read all but two of his books, one of which I will read next, and due to his advanced age I kind of feel I won’t get anymore of him. Allende’s similarity seems to be able to give me my fix. Whats more, she is THAT Allende’s niece which is weird and cool. Pinochet is one of three people’s deaths I have toasted. I toasted Jerry Fallwell’s death most recently. I toasted that particular passing a couple times in two different countries. I’d toast his death now again if I had some sort of liquid to raise.

Que sera. I’ll settle back into this book. I’ll think about wide brim hats, men, lost tribes, and general change for the better. I’ll look forward to Ecuador, Georgia, and then England again. I want to cycle to Sutton Hoo when I get back and re-assemble my kites.

Long Afloat

Wed, 16 May 2007 08:47:50 GMT

For the very shortest of times I am back in the UK. The island I am on really doesn't have internet. formandfile and mshepburn are here visiting. I will post something much longer about the islands but for now:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/radiotik/sets/72157600216578127/

Where I work and the boat that takes me there from the upper part of the island of Keros. The small island is called Dhaskalio and we are finding settlement there. The open squares on the left of this photo are where we find the figurines.

Keros from Kufonissi where I stay. Windmill looking picturesque in the Sunday morning sun.

This is a large cycladic figurine head. It would sell on the market for tens of thousands. We keep it in a bucket made out of an old tire.

Oh man

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:42:19 GMT

Phil Spector got a hair cut.

That sucks.

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:17:09 GMT

My favoritest ex-apartment mate Jeff (pseudoboy) is walking three miles for the National Alliance on Mental Health. You are a total jerk face if you don't pledge at least 5 bucks for his walk. I doubt a single one of you have lived this far into your life without encountering mental illness close to home. It is a damn good cause (and a damn good Jeff).

http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=namiwalks&Template=/customsource/namiwalks/walkerpage.cfm&walkerID=21260

click click.

I'm trying to make you envious...I am trying to make it till I am there.

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:06:33 GMT

Keros mystery cracked

From: http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.print_unique?e=C&f=13188&m=A32&aa=2&eidos=S

JOHN PSAROPOULOS

A panoramic view of the excavation at Kavos on the Cycladic island of Keros

ARCHAEOLOGISTS say they have discovered a 4,500-year-old ceremonial centre, the oldest ritual site in Greece.

Excavations resumed for a few weeks this summer at Dhaskalio Kavos - Kavos for short - on the tiny island of Keros, after a lull of nearly 20 years. The problem with the site had been that it was disturbed by looters, who made a lucrative trade in the 1960s of the now famous minimalist Cycladic figurines. As a result, archaeologists could never be sure whether fragments of the Cycladic statuettes had been smashed in antiquity or more recently by smugglers.

That puzzle has now been solved by this year's excavation on an undisturbed patch of the site dating to 2,500BC.

"All the material found was already broken in fragments before it became buried in ancient times. Moreover, the rarity of joining pieces (as well as the different degree of weathering of the fragments) makes clear that they were broken elsewhere and that they were brought, already in fragmentary form," says an announcement from the team of Greek and British archaeologists who head the dig.

One of this year's finds: A rejoined Cycladic figure reveals the pieces to be in varying states of wear, suggesting that the statue was smashed some time before ritual burial at Keros

The puzzle of the broken fragments has come to be known as the "Keros enigma".

The materials come from as far away as Naxos, Amorgos, Syros and probably mainland Greece, they say, making Dhaskalio Kavos "the first major ritual centre of Aegean prehistory".

Archaeologists, led by Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, say they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of finds. "The quantities of such material (fine pottery, marble objects) found at this site rivals the total of the finds excavated from all the known Cycladic cemeteries," the announcement says. They have ruled out the possibility that the site was a cemetery, because teeth would never turn up among the sherds.

They suggest that the rituals may have spanned enormous distances across the Aegean, and taken many days to complete. "The rituals involving breakage may have been initiated elsewhere, with the ritual deposition at Kavos on Keros forming the last phase in a more complex process."

Next summer's excavation is expected to reveal whether there was a sanctuary at Kavos and attempt to find a contemporary settlement on the nearby islet of Dhaskalio. Joining Colin Renfrew on the current dig are Neil Brodie (also from the University of Cambridge), Olga Philaniotou (Greek Archaeological Service) and George Gavalas.

------

Wooo, Neil got a shout out at the bottom.
I've already mentally checked out. Why is it not saturday?
Also, I was in the same room as Prince Philip yesterday. He cracked jokes that were sadly not off colour and racist but thats ok. Next time.

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:03:16 GMT

Though I should be packing I am, instead, thinking about political branding and the general design of the various would be president's campaign logos.