I Am A Provision of Living Personification

So I was doing a vanity search and discovered that somebody out there was taking my blog posts and reprinting them on his own (spam) blog--but he appeared to be doing that old trick of "translating the text into another language and then translating it back into English" first. Or, possibly, the college student trick of "running most of the words through a thesaurus so it isn't really plagiarizing."

The TMBG quote "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of" (from this post) thus becomes the very delicious Every jumbled provision of living personification has a philosophical factor that wonders what the factor that isn’t philosophical isn’t philosophical of.

Almost makes the spam worthwhile.

Facebook V. Twitter

I actually like the new Facebook layout. It means I can spend less time on Facebook.

Arguably, Facebook has stolen both Twitter's visual style and method of dissemination. Meh. Let them sue each other. The new Fbook layout means I can just scroll down the page, take a mental note of which of my high school friends has started a new job or had another baby, and get out of there.

I follow Twitter. I check in to Facebook. I post regularly to Twitter; every once in a while, I throw a tame, inoffensive, status update bone at Facebook.

Now that they're essentially the same and I can update both my Twitter and my Fbook simultaneously, why don't I merge the two streams?

Here's why, succinctly encapsulated in the New York Times:

Six of my nieces will head off to college over the next several years. Some have been Facebooking since middle school. Even as they leave home, then, they will hang onto that “home” button. That’s hard for me to imagine. As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self? The cultural icons of my girlhood were Mary Richards of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Ann Marie of “That Girl,” both redoubtably trying to make it on their own. Following their lead, I swaggered off to college (where I knew no one) without looking back; then to New York City (where I knew no one) and San Francisco (ditto), refining my adult self with each jump. Certainly, I kept in touch with a few true old friends, but no one else — thank goodness! — witnessed the many and spectacular metaphoric pratfalls I took on the way to figuring out what and whom I wanted to be. Even now, time bends when I open Facebook: it’s as if I’m simultaneously a journalist/wife/mother in Berkeley and the goofy girl I left behind in Minneapolis. Could I have become the former if I had remained perpetually tethered to the latter?

To me, Facebook is all about the past; high school friends, college friends, graduate school friends. Except... not exactly friends, because for the most part I've kept in touch with my actual friends; Facebook is more like a classroom noisily filled with everyone I used to sort of know.

Twitter is about the present.

What's the difference? On Twitter, I'm pseudonymous, which allows me to be a bit more honest and--which I didn't fully realize until I read the NYT article--disconnects me from the "I sat behind you in geometry so now I want to know everything you're doing" melee. Which, more importantly, lets me control the story.

Which, surprisingly, seems to be a key aspect of the "growing up" that the NYT article is all about.

At Karma Kitchen last week, I was talking with a new friend about whether or not people should go pseudonymous online. He said that he would never go pseudonymous; that it was important for him to build a body of work (even if said "work" was just tweets and blog posts) under his own name. I argued that pseudonymity allowed for the exploration of different identities, which was necessary for growth. (Believing that everything is connected under your own "body of work" leads to presentation rather than exploration.) I started blogging when I was exploring an identity shift, away from the work I had been studying for the past fifteen-odd years (through high school, college, and grad school) and towards something new, with a shape I couldn't yet understand or predict. Having the ability to do that pseudonymously was essential.

Anyway. This is one of those blog posts that it's hard to put a button onto because there's no clear end thought; am I glad Facebook lets me see, every once in a while, what happened to So-and-so? Yes. Am I also glad that I have a place online where I can share myself only with the people in my present, instead of everyone in my past? Absolutely.

And that's why I spend the absolute minimal time possible on Facebook. ^__^

Anecdote, Reflection, Anecdote, Reflection.

I spent most of yesterday in Tryst (which, as I noted on Twitter, is like the boyfriend you settle for) reading everything there was to read on Transom, which may be my new favorite website.

I know it's "just a phase," but the rabbit trail thus far is so interesting: I posted on Facebook that I had a secret crush on Ira Glass, and the universe responded by providing him in book-signing form; then I met him and he was my friend for five minutes, then I thought (like everyone else who listens to public radio) "I wonder if I have a story that's interesting enough for This American Life?" which led me to the "How to get onto This American Life" page which led me to Transom, the website all about radio production and aural storytelling.

Which is fascinating.

I'll just cut to the chase and give you the most fascinating part, which Ira himself wrote and which I will quote verbatim:

The length of a news spot — if you listen to like the newscast at the beginning of All Things Considered or Marketplace — is 45 or 50 seconds. Usually, there's a couple of sentences from the reporter, then they do a quote from somebody, and kind of two or three more sentences from the reporter, and you're at 50, 45 seconds.

It turns out that we public radio listeners are trained to expect something to change every 45 to 50 seconds. And as a producer you have to keep that pace in mind. For example, in a reporter's story, every 45 or 50 seconds, you'll go to a piece of tape.

So if you have a four-minute story, you figure you're going to have four quotes or maybe five. And even in a format like ours, where it just sounds like people talking and music washing all over the place, we have to adhere to that pace.

I bring this up because I produced this writer named David Sedaris, and from the very first time I saw him read, I knew his work would work for the radio — not only because it was completely original, and not only because it was really, really funny, and not only because he had a great reading style that was totally his — but he told anecdotes that ended every 45 or 50 seconds.

It gets better, further down the page:

The fiction that we have on the show, we edit it exactly the same way that we edit the nonfiction, which is that it proceeds in a rhythm of: anecdote, reflection, anecdote, reflection.

That's such a useful piece of information that I can't believe they're providing it on the internet for free.

It made me wonder if this "anecdote/reflection" pattern only applied to aural storytelling or if it appeared in written storytelling, too; and if it was something people did naturally or if it had to be learned.

The only way to find out is to test it. (This is where we all start to realize that this is going to be a long blog post.) Below I'm going to reprint the text of the "Ira Glass Is My Friend" post, highlighting the anecdotes in red and the reflections in blue.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Ira."

I didn't respond automatically as I should have, temporarily bowled over by two contradictory thoughts: first, the sheer duh-ness of his statement (of course you're Ira Glass, that's why we're here); secondly, the absolute genuineness with which he spoke. He was introducing himself. He wanted me to know who he was. In those three words he connected with me on a personal, almost intimate level, and I could understand how he got people to tell him their stories and secrets.

"Hi," I said, a few seconds late to the exchange. "I'm Blue."

I had waited over ninety minutes to get to the front of the line. At first, in the back, when we were too far away to see, people were joking "it's taking so long because everyone's pitching him ideas for This American Life;" as we got closer, we realized it was because Ira was talking to everyone in the line; asking them questions about who they were, what they did, where they lived, what brought them out that evening, etc.

I'd bought his book even though I don't really think it is useful or necessary for me to get famous people's signatures on things; the real reason I bought his book was because I hadn't known until the moment I walked into the Borders that Ira Glass had written a book (they had advertised it as an opportunity to get This American Life DVDs autographed, and the books were a surprise), and by chance or fate the woman behind the counter told me this particular book was the very last copy in the store. That, apparently, is what it takes to get me to impulse-buy something. (I have a vision of the woman pulling out another copy after I leave the counter, and telling the next person who walks in that this, too, is the very last copy.)

So after Ira talking about This American Life and the Q&A I got in line, with this book, and waited ninety minutes (and read the first 130 pages) and as soon as I got close enough started watching Mr. Glass interact with everyone in line. It was fascinating.

After Ira Glass introduced himself to me, he asked me a few questions about my job and then said, over his shoulder to the Borders assistant, "All these people in Washington have such interesting jobs!" He was keeping track, too, because then he talked to me about some of the other jobs he had heard about in the past ninety minutes, and then he signed my book "Your Friend, Ira Glass." Then I said "Thank you very much," and he said "No, thank you very much," as if it had been the most generous thing I could have done, to come out this evening and buy his book and then wait patiently for him to autograph it.

It was an interaction both intimate and bizarre, in the way that I felt that Ira Glass was one hundred percent serious about what he was doing, both in terms of his radio show and in terms of every interaction with every person in this line. I left wishing I could be more like that, though I can't imagine how much energy it would take, to invest oneself fully in every conversation and to remember and track them like threads in a story.

But Ira Glass is, after all, a storyteller. And, for five minutes yesterday evening, my friend.

Okay. So it works, at least for that blog post.

My next thought was that I would test it against someone else's blog post, perhaps a more famous (and thus "better") blogger than I am. Typing "blog" into Google brings up Seth Godin as the first hit, which must make him the most famous blogger of all, and here's his most recent post, color-coded for your benefit:

Authenticity

If it acts like a duck (all the time), it's a duck. Doesn't matter if the duck thinks it's a dog, it's still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.

Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not "being who you are".

That's because 'being' is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.

As the Internet and a connected culture places a higher premium on authenticity (because if you're inconsistent, you're going to get caught) it's easy to confuse authentic behavior with an existential crisis. Are you really good enough, kind enough, generous enough and brave enough to be authentically a hero or leader?

Mother Theresa was filled with self doubt. But she was an authentic saint, because she always acted like one.

You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That's good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.

It's all reflection, as far as I can tell. But the second thought that comes to mind is that this isn't a story, so it doesn't count. (The third thought that comes to mind is this doesn't make a lick of sense, but who am I to criticize the most famous blogger of them all?)

Anyway.

So now I have to think of a clever way to wrap this up (the story should end on a reflection, after all).

Um... TRANSOM IS AWESOME.

My Facebook 25 (Yes, I finally wrote one.)

1. I love living in DC, more than any other place I've lived so far. Every morning I walk to work and look at the architecture and the sky and think about how lucky I am to be living here.

2. Yes, I walk to work every morning. 1.7 miles. 3900 steps. Rain or shine.

3. And back again, too.

4. I'm also that annoying person who packs her lunch every day.

5. I'm very happy being a vegetarian but I don't believe that my choice is any more "moral" than being a non-vegetarian. There are too many factors involved and there are as many abused, suffering migrant workers as there are factory farm animals.

6. The Sunday farmers' market is my church. The first time I went there, I was overwhelmed with the sense of being in a holy place. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there's something very awesome (in the original sense of the word) by being surrounded by locally-grown vegetables.

7. The last time I was at the farmers' market I was looking at a basket of parsnips and I had the sudden thought that life was too short for me to learn to cook every single vegetable in the world. That was sad.

8. New topic: I have a secret crush on Ira Glass. I listen to an episode of This American Life nearly every day. I was devastated when I found out he was married.

9. I just don't think the British version of The Office is funny. I've tried to watch it several times.

10. I still play Super Famicom games.

11. I really like comics, probably more than I should. At one time I was part of a For Better Or For Worse online forum. We spent most of our time talking about how awful Anthony was. Right now the two comic strips I follow most closely are Questionable Content and 9 Chickweed Lane.

13. I want to eat at The Grill from Ipanema mostly because it has great lighting.

14. Celebrities who have recently appeared in my dreams: Salman Rushdie, Hugh Laurie, Amitabh Bachchan, Steve Lawrence. (Unfortunately NOT Ira Glass.)

15. The two most important things in my life are my job and my Ashtanga practice.

16. The above is probably the most honest statement on this list. I mean, everything on the list is true, but... 15's the bare-naked one.

17. Sometimes I worry with Ashtanga that my diligence outweighs my natural ability. Then I consider that nobody got anywhere without practicing.

18. I am SO GRATEFUL that my parents taught me how to practice. It is a skill that has paid off a billion-fold.

19. I'm so jealous that there was no YouTube around when I was a kid, because I taught myself how to play all kinds of video game theme music on the piano. At one point I could play the entire 15-minute "Final Fantasy VI End Sequence."

20. I carry a copy of The English Patient around with me when I travel. I've read and reread that book nearly 20 times and I always find something new in it.

21. In fact, I have a good copy, which I keep at home, and a travel copy, which travels.

22. I make to-do lists for everything. I have a to-do list for today. This is on the list.

23. When I was a starving graduate student, a few people gave me unexpected gifts which really helped me out. I sent thanks at the time, but now want to repay them and don't know how to do it without seeming tit-for-tat. Probably that means I need to pay it forward.

24. I spent way too much time writing this list. It actually went through three separate drafts. And, as a result, I'm late to the game. Meh.

25. I've really loved reading everything everyone else has written, and actually have been going on to Facebook in the hopes of reading more of these. (This from a person who, otherwise, barely looks at Facebook anymore.) So if you haven't done one, SUFFER THROUGH IT!

Too Many Stories!

I have way too many blog posts to write and not enough time to tell them!

Let's see...

• I tried to make laddoos using a recipe from the internet, and they turned out like laddon'ts.
• I had a party! It was awesome! There are pictures!
• President Bush's email address is nuts and OMG Hillary SoS and Obama is so cool and I loved the article about Michelle Obama's booty and should I be one of those people who rents out her apartment for inauguration weekend????
• I also have all these other pictures I've been taking, like the one of the Epic Fail sign, and I need to post them so you all can see them!
• I bought a pair of gloves which is good because I didn't have gloves before, and they're the kind that go part of the way up my arm so they keep the whole thing warm, and they've got a diamond pattern knitted into the back and they're really pretty.
• I've gotten to the point in Ashtanga where my yoga teacher is assisting me into getting into more complicated postures, and now I'm all "should I be going to class every day so she can assist me more?"
• Also I read this Ashtanga book which was all about focusing my mind and stuff, and I'm like "I can do that, but then I would have to stop doing my daily practice while I play last night's Daily Show/Colbert Report on Hulu, and I don't know if it's worth the trade off, even if following the drishtis promises me inner peace and enlightenment."
• I've made three more loaves of bread! They're still totally weird shapes because I've been baking them in my Dutch oven, but tomorrow I'm going to buy a loaf pan and that should solve the problem.
• I saw Christopher Plummer speak tonight, and it was sad because he looked nothing like Captain Von Trapp but at the same time I wish that when I'm 78 years old I could be just as articulate and witty and intelligent as he is, never mind the face wattles.
• Today's Questionable Content is just like the inside of my head is, most of the time. ^__^

I guess maybe I don't have to write most of these posts anymore. ^__^ Though I do want to share the ones that have the pictures.

Twitter Widget Without @???

Quick question:

Is there a widget which will allow me to post my tweets on teh blog without showing the reply tweets (the ones that begin with @soandso...)????

Twitter's official widget won't let me do that.

What else is out there?

Bluelightful.com

I can has domain name!!!!!!

www.bluelightful.com will take you right here; no need to rack your brain for Cole Porter lyrics.

This was a gift from a friend who is more than awesome.

THANK YOU.

When I get the for-real job, I promise I will find a way to give back, or to "pay it forward," as it were.

It's bluelightful, it's bluelicious, it's bluelectable, it's bluelerious...

Welcome to Bluelovely, or what would have been called "Bluelovely" had this person not already snagged the name.

(I think Blogger should make a rule: if you start a blog and post once and then never post again, your blog gets taken away from you.)

If you don't know what the title references, do click here; if you don't know why I picked the title, click here.

This blog is an offshoot of my original blog, PrettyBlueSalwar. I began blogging as an attempt to chronicle/analyze my experiences while teaching and directing theatre in Hyderabad; since I returned to the US, however, the "salwar" moniker seemed less and less appropriate.

So... new travels, new title, new blog. I'll link back to PrettyBlueSalwar as relevant, of course, and you're more than welcome to explore it yourself. (Hint: try searching for posts tagged "travel," "Hyderabad," "Bangalore," "Mysore," "Delhi," or "Amritsar.")

But from now on, I'll be posting here, at bluelightful bluelicious bluelovely bluelectable bluelerious bluebookmark or RSS it already!