My love affair with Junot Diaz has largely depended on fate and faith.

I’ve mentioned him a couple of times before. A Pulitzer prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz fell into my existence at the tiny bookstore in the Ferry Building.  After an early October dinner with the visiting parents, we took a stroll down the frigid piers, usually filled with tanning sea lions during the day.  Now, it was just one harsh breeze after another.  So I stole away into the bookstore.  Hoping to find a gem.

Obviously, I was attracted to the book because of it’s simplistic cover.  More so for the fact that it was an autographed version (best investment ever). So I bought it.  It was $30.  A lot more than I usually pay for a book.

I took it home and devoured it.  Something was so familiar.  The nerdiness of Junior?  No. The references to Santo Domingo, which had been one of my favorite vacations to date.  My alleged learning of Dominican history.  A similarity to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Not because they’re both latinos.  Because of how the book was constructed.  The passing on of narrative voice and perspective.

It was good. [not good. gooood.]

So I proceeded to tell all my friends.  People nodded and smiled respectfully, but Junot was still my very own.

.

Months go by.  Then more months. I sporadically add him to my “favorite book” category for new social networks.

.

Then, John sends me an invite to GoodReads.  I’d gotten a similar invitation before but was anti-more-crap-social-networking-sites at that moment.  Now, I’m much more receptive.  Reformed if you will.  Assimilated. So I sign up.

I start by stalking Mary Roach.  Afterall, I loved the book Stiff, was reading Bonk, and now am reading Spook.  Cadavers, sex and the afterlife.  Interesting-strange topics to be sure.  Interesting-good books.

When I got bored of that (and reading that omg, everone’s favorite book is Eat, Pray, Love and people were putting Dr. Seuss on there), I meandered over to author events.  Ah… there is fate again.  That sneaky bastard.  Junot Diaz.  Herbst Theater.  401 Van Ness.  September 18.  8:00pm.

.

I haven’t been sleeping very well, you know.  I keep waking up from nightmares of Ty hating me and hurricanes.  The details aren’t clear but the emotional trauma certainly is.  By the time 5:00pm rolls around, I’m exhausted.  It’s like I’m pregnant, except I’m not.  And having to wait three more hours just to see an author?  One who’s potentially full of himself, a bit elitist and completely self-righteous.  Sure, that’s exactly what I want.  I’m about to pass out on the lawn in Union Square, and Rico here wants me to wait three more hours to hear him talk.

Fine. …. Pendejo.

Fast forward to 7:50.  I’m running late (seriously, why the hell would I be running late… I had 3 hours to travel half a mile).  The bandage on my big toe has been scrapped off because I angled my foot to walk forward but hadn’t lifted it high enough to avoid the concrete.  It’s already swollen and infected from a brief meeting with a wall during the weekend.  The guy sweeping the floor at Peet’s Coffee hands me a bandage.  I’m pretty much running now.

The man in the suit asks me for a ticket.  A what?  The GoodReads event page hadn’t mentioned a ticket.  A $20 ticket, in fact.  Fuck it.  I’m already here.

<Insert riveting brain orgasms>

Fucking hell.  It was so worth it.  Art is my sex.  Artists my priests.  Interpretation my religious rites.

… And fate. He’s just the fucker who injects me when I’m losing faith.

.

.

.

Some of my favorite quotes:

• When people see a crack, the first thing they want to do is fix the crack but the crack isn’t the central problem.
• What’s scary is not Trujillo but the eager people who carry on his moronic fables and want that authoritarian rule.
• Artists trying to remind humans of their humanity has always been a function of art.  It’s nothing new.
• The only person who hasn’t the privilege of entering into the text is the writer.  That’s just one of the sacrifices we have to make.
• Most of the books out there are crap.  You know… no one has a monopoly on crap.
• If I wanted to have a light shine on me when I talk, I would not lock myself in a closet and write.  I wouldn’t.

In the interim, I found this spectacular site by Andrea Joseph, who works wonders with just a simple pen (often a random one laying around).

Enjoy!

.

.

.

Well… here they are!  I just put the order in.

I wanted something very simple and yet eye-catching.  These are the cards I designed with Moo.

All the fronts will be a variation shown above.  I didn’t want a cheesy image grabbed from Flickr, and since I’m not a company (and will probably never use my own name, even if I do start a company), I didn’t want to design a logo either.  So… email.  Functional.  Simple.  Unassuming.  The back is very clean and concise as well.  Just my name, cell, email and this website.  No Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Hi5, Bebo, etc.  I figured, once they go online, it’ll be easy to find all that other stuff.  I mean it’s on the front page of janyxu.com.

It’s utilitarian with a fun font and from what I’ve seen, pretty rare.  (If anyone loves the first Ocean’s Eleven as much as I did, you’ll probably remember Daniel Ocean’s calling card.  Damn, it was sexy.  I wish I could find a picture of it.)

My only fear is that the paper weight of the cards (I don’t think Moo uses very heavy paper) will make the cards look too bare. But that’s a risk I’m definitely willing to take.

What do you think?

My July… or is it August? No it can’t be… issue of Elle greeted me in its usual cramped posture when I opened my mail box this evening. As I delighted with each page, orgasming over the marriage of style/art and marketing/product placement, the tiniest of voices inside my mind started to weep.

Despite all the developments of Web 2.0/3.0 or Twitter, Twhirl, Tumblr… whatever, the internet can’t (and will likely never) mimic the tactile pleasure of flipping through magazines with the smell of recycled paper and the slight glare from the glossy pages.

I clutched the rolled up pages in my hands, while reading the interview on Christian Siriano, the latest winner of Project Runway (in case you’ve been in a hole or are a straight male, it’s Heidi Klum and Bravo’s baby- fashion design meets reality TV). While the reporter sycophantically touted Christian’s wildly successful designs and neatly organized apartment turned giant closet, I poured through the Elle photoshoot. Each image of a gauze trimmed hat or hundreds of layers of ruffles reminds me of why I can never manage to save money, as I spend so much on clothes and shoes.

But the world of print is in jeopardy. Already blogs and online editions threaten the livelihood of traditional newspapers and journalism. Amazon’s Kindle, a wireless reading device, may mark the death of books… well, maybe in a decade or two. Who needs magazines, when you can get instant access to all the runway shows on style.com or all your gossip from Perez?

Still, I’m going to miss today, when I can still hold what I’m reading and lift the corner as I anticipate the next page.  Here’s hoping that through my lifetime, advertisers will keep catering to the old-fashioned buggers like me and keep some money in print advertising.

Models wearing Siriano, who according to Tim Gunn, has amazing tailoring and seams and is likely the Marc Jacobs of his generation. (I wonder if that’s my generation.)

.

I love the lines and angles created by this piece; yet, the layers and gauze soften the style and makes it feminine. It would be quite nice to have a long, angular face for the day. At least I could wear that outfit without looking like a mushroom. P

I don’t know if this should be mandatory for everyone as Gawker states, but definitely work the watch.  Skip to about half way to see the actual action, but the music makes the set up worthwhile.

Some more information:

The new short film by Blu: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.
Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)

http://www.blublu.org/

music by Andrea Martignoni
produced by Mercurio Film
assistant: Sibe

You SHOULD visit the website.  It’s A-EFFING-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

Okay night!

Also, if you look to the upper left behind my head, there’s a caricature of me.  You can see it here, but it looks really amazing in the picture above.

Create your own here.

“All his life William Faulkner had avoided speeches, and insisted that he not be taken as a man of letters. ‘I’m just a farmer who likes to tell stories.’ he once said. Because of his known aversion to making formal pronouncements, there was much interest, when he traveled to Stockholm to receive the prize on December 10, 1950, in what he would say in the speech that custom obliged him to deliver. Faulkner evidently wanted to set right the misinterpretation of his own work as pessimistic. But beyond that, he recognized that, as the first American novelist to receive the prize since the end of World War II, he had a special obligation to take the changed situation of the writer, and of man, into account.”
-Richard Ellman

William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech

Stockholm, Sweden
December 10, 1950

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed–love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

“Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

(do do do dop)
(do do doop do doop da dum)
(do do doop dum)
(do do doop do doop da dum)
(repeat)

we were as one babe
for a moment in time
and it seemed everlasting
that you would always be mine
now you want to be free
so I’m letting you fly
cause i know in my heart babe
our love will never die,no!

you’ll always be a part of me
i’m a part of you indefinitely
boy don’t you know you can’t escape me
ooh darling cause you’ll always be my baby
and we’ll linger on
time can’t erase a feeling this strong
no way you’re never gonna shake me
ooh darling cause you’ll always be my baby
(do do doop)
(do do doop do doop da dum)
(do do doop dum)
(do do doop do doop da dum)
i ain’t gonna cry no
and i won’t beg you to stay
if you’re determined to leave boy
i will not stand in your way
but inevitably you’ll be back again
cause ya know in your heart babe
our love will never end no
you’ll always be a part of me
i’m part of you indefinitely
boy don’t you know you can’t escape me
ooh darling cause you’ll always be my baby
and we’ll linger on
time can’t erase a feeling this strong
no way you’re never gonna shake me
ooh darlin cause you’ll always be my baby

i know that you’ll be back boy
when your days and your nights get a little bit colder ooohhh
i know that,you’ll be right back, baby
oh, baby believe me it’s only a matter of time
of time…

.

It basically says it all.  He wants to be alone and get his ish together.  I’m not exactly sure I want him back because I am so extremely hurt and pissed right now.  It’s affecting the way I react to everything and everyone.  Especially since he knew exactly how much I had to put up with in July and August from the other two, and he STILL pulled this bullshit on me.

I’d so love to do this… especially when he just gives him nonchalant, frozen expression every time I complain about V-Day and Christmas and the last two months.

How the fuck do you just tell someone you’re not in love with them anymore?  In the course of two months?  Really?  I should have dropped your ass when my instinct screamed and begged for it.  You know what?  Not going to talk about it.  You know exactly what shit you’re in, and if you’re not willing to own up and try to correct it, it’s on you.

.

Moving on…

I’m not sure if I’m going yet.  I don’t think I’m emotionally ready to not make an ass out of myself, either by crying or by just being a complete bitch, a.k.a. the Jany-wall.  But you should def check out my friend in the Vagina Monologues next week.

.

Irony:  It took Cristina, Emilie, Seher, Charlotte and I 4 YEARS to bring down my wall, i.e. be more confident, snap less often, be more affable and less sarcastic.  A move across the coast, a few heartaches, and I feel like that’s all washed away.  It’s so hard for me to trust people, and I don’t think Oscar realized that when he first met me.  I guess he knew me when I was at my best trying to be social and friendly, but I haven’t always been like that.  In fact, quite the opposite.  And for him to tell me that he wanted to build a future with me?  And marry and have kids with me?  And then tell me he’s not even in love?  As a friend, that’s just FUCKED up.  Why would you do that to a person?  Really… why?

.

Sorry.  I’m trying not to get too entrenched in the anger and hurt.

What’s been a life saver, as with my Ty breakup, is just hanging out with friends.  I went to a great party for Tom last Friday at 111 Minna and then the EndUp (part b/c that’s where you “end up” and part b/c some people like it “up the end”). 

Here are pictures from 111 Minna:

The guy was painting right next to the DJ booth (there were two, one in each room).  I saw a woman doing body painting too but forgot to take a picture.

It was just really chill.  Everyone was nice.  I looked cute.  Wawi was adorable.  I still have to scan the pictures we took in the photo booth.  Anyway, I got home at 4:30am, which I hadn’t done in so long and it felt soooo good.

.

Saturday: Woke up at 8am b/c Oscar was coming over… despite my lack of sleep.  He gets here at 12.  Why?  B/c he’s hung over.  Right.

I surprised him with a trip to Wondercon, which he had forgotten about until the night before.  (We had to stop by his place to pick up pollo for Tom’s bday present.)  As a woman, I count… last time he surprised me with a fun day trip: I think it was May or June or last year?  Last time he was on time: … I honestly don’t remember.

.

Sunday: stayed home and watched TV.

All in all a close to perfect weekend.

Oh, yeah and Into the Pixels exhibit with Samala DJing…

All the rooms will have PS3s in the near future?  Hell yeah!

One of the pieces.  I think most if not all of the pieces were printed by this amazing place that has a poodle for a logo.  The pieces looked like watercolor, pastels, prints, etc. even though they were all printed out.  Not sure how they did it, but maybe they did each color individually to give the pieces that texture.

.

I’m hoping this week’s going to be packed too.

.

Not much else going on.  I got some really cute clothes for work… trying to look more professional and all.

My eggling has still not germinated.

It’s pretty much a dry version of this… *poop*

.

More to write about my messed up emotions.   It’s been easier going through tumblr though because I don’t have to deal with the feelings, just release and go.

Muah!  Thanks for listening, Internets.

.

Last Saturday night, Oscar and I went to go see No Country for Old Men, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen- who in case you didn’t know also worked on Paris, Je T’aime; O Brother, Where Art Though; The Big Lebowski; etc.  I loved the movie, especially the surprise twist for the latter third of the movie, but Oscar absolutely hated it.  I think he was expecting Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) to triumph over evil, kill Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) and return to his wife with the satchel full of money.

But the ending was justified.  The entire movie was based on the world being amoral.  Afterall, Llewelyn took drug money that could easily have been turned into the police and be done with it.  I thought he was pretty much an asshole, when he barked at the poor guy in the truck in dire need of water.  We only sympathized with him because he decided to bring water to the dying Mexican in the dead of night (a stupid decision) and go on the run instead of turning the money in after he was shot at and almost mauled by a dog (another stupid decision).

The Coens also teach us early on that men triumphed when they followed their principles.  Chigurh always does this without consideration for his empathy of his victims or the fairness of life.  For most of the movie, Llewelyn acts in the much the same way.  He’s constantly vigilant and maintains control of his setting.

His downfall comes when in El Paso, he’s anticipating Carla Jean’s (his wife) arrival and decides to relax with a cute pool girl with a beer.  The movie doesn’t directly tell you this, but I definitely got the sense that “a beer just leads to another beer” was the sentiment that could strike him.  Llewelyn was tired and wanted a psychological rest.  That led to his death.  And because he refused Chigurh’s deal to spare his wife, Carla Jean also gets shot at the end of the movie.  Chigurh, who feels for her because she wasn’t involved in the taking of the money, offers her an out with a coin toss.  She recognizes what’s about to happen and reacts like any other person would, but refuses to rely on chance.  Chigurh, living by principle, kills her.

I think the story leaves to imagination whether she finally guessed and was wrong or lived by her ideals to the end.  It’s most likely the latter, but I’ll need to watch the movie again to be sure.

My favorite part was the ending, when Chigurh gets into a horrific accident.  Two young boys approached him to help, but even they, innocent and at their age, could be swayed by greed because one of them gives up his shirt and allows Chigurh to escape despite the loud sirens approaching.  It shows us the importance of self control and living to our self defined rules but also the humanity and the need for humans to bend our own principles for the good of society.  It also justifies Chigurh’s ability to kill everyone who sees him because under his assumption, all men can be bribed, and for the rare exception, he’ll lessen the chance of death by 50% (coin toss).

This movie is a beautiful examination of the decision making and sense of self without being pretentious, i.e. Crash or 2046.  I can’t wait to buy it on DVD.