As I was trying to describe meta-fiction and Italo Calvino to my peers last week, we somehow fixated on my reference to the Stinky Cheese Man. Okay. It’s a children’s book. The Stinky Cheese Man dates back to my years anticipating those Scholastic Book Fairs, where the elementary school library became a pop up of new books and stationary. God I miss those days. When I saw the image of the cheese block with his little half-open smile, two olives for eyes and a slice of bacon of a mouth I was two steps away from making a grotesque sculpture for my dinner parties this weekend, and kind of yearned for its rotting smell. I almost felt somewhat aroused by the mold growing in the roots of dried flowers clouding dirty vases around my house. Okay, so why is this relevant? I’ve revealed too much. Well, Calvino writes (and this is a reference I took from Angus Croll):
“I began doing what came most naturally to me– that is, following the memory of the things I had loved best since [girlhood]. Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic.”
Italo Calvino, a letter to a friend, re-gendered by me
So begins my process of memory excavation. As a second grader, my class went on a field trip to a book binding factory, and we were able to create hard covered books of our drawings and work throughout the year. A group of friends (a posse that I of course led) and I created a poetry book with drawings, and entitled it “If I were an animal…” as we ababcc rhymed our way through the perspective of various house pets (which, to my pride) our librarian read out loud to the class as we all sat eagerly on the carpet like kindergarteners. “If I were an animal…” she would say as I nearly mouthed the words from the back in anticipation. Although I am somewhat embarrassed by the immense pleasure the thought brings me at this moment of writing, perhaps the memory is not so different than Lila and Lenu’s The Blue Fairy as being a prototype for Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels themselves; at the very least, little did I know that “If I were an animal…” was a precursor to my contemporary entanglements with poststructurated neo-postulated posthumanisms or, in other words, an early desire to be Derrida’s cat.
LiDAR and the upcoming keynote at MIT at the WORLDING event of time lapsed 3D scans and the history of point cloud visualizations in the UK (In the Eyes of the Animal) is somehow relevant here, but instead, in the spirit of the impeding adulteration of generative AI in my thinking mind, I will further mention the peculiarity of literary portrayals of intelligence such as Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, or rather, was it the Three Blind Mice, or Oum Jeongsoon’s stunning, stunning sculpture at the Gwangju Biennale last summer? All of which is launching me into another archive of aesthetic fixation that is better let unelaborated or indulged even a second longer here.
In other news, the Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau approved my contestation of my parking ticket for reason of: graffiti blocked my view of the rules.
In all seriousness, if it at this point is even at all allowed, last Friday my GenAI research group hosted our inaugural event at the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC. Simultaneously, the Annenberg school was hosting a conference about Turkey’s Public Diplomacy with several diplomats in attendance, not only untimely but truly fraught in the midst of Azerbaijan’s current and anticipated acts of ethnic violence in the Karabakh region. Upon approaching the building, protestors were holding up signs reading “Shame on Turkey” for their role in suppressing Armenian people, for creating refugees and pushing them out their homes. Being escorted by security into the back entrance into the lower floor rather than being present to the geopolitical moment certainly does not set my foot within what feels like the right side of history, but does motivate serious inquiry into the ethnics (a typo, but one I will keep) of generative AI given the circumstances, and helps internalize that the creative sector does not exist in the vacuum Hollywood often pretends to be real.
Real or not, for me, the university space still enlightens. I spoke with an undergraduate peer last night over tea at USC village. At Dulce, don’t get the Hong Kong latte (a disappointment) but the London Fog instead, I was advised. Fair enough, the night was chilly but the brick courtyard inviting, so we sat outside. Dialogue is the meeting of minds and experience that knows no time, just ideas free associating, punctured by laughter, poking, prodding, at times pronouncing, and seeing a future through the act of an allegiance forming. The conversation was so intimately chaotic it takes a physical urge not to divulge its contents, and as what I want to say counteracts the simultaneous act of my fingers typing, this blog being able only ever to be just a blog, drives the rest of my scattered but well storied thoughts into alternative elsewheres. . .
I think in ellipses, I was recently told. Admittedly, I am in no rush to organize them into sentences. I did, unrelatedly, learn three proverbs from visiting home over the Chuseok holiday this past weekend, and am utterly charmed by how beautifully my parents are aging. The proverbs (less in the tonality of doctrine and more in everyday expressions) captures somewhat of a literal simplicity in kinship, of preparing and eating food together (손자를 귀애하면 코 묻은 밥을 먹는다 : If you love your grandkids too much, you’ll eat the snot they’ve got over their rice bowl). The joy brought by chestnuts and persimmon were, dare I say – unprecedented – and though blue is my favorite color, orange and brown might not ever let me go of this season.
It’s Tuesday, and the moon is waning into its shadows; I can’t say really it’s holiday season any more, so I’ll stop here. No more parenthetical meanderings akin the letters to my second grade pen pals or the latest Dear Dumb Diary at the book fair. It’s been fun existing in this space though. Hoping to come back soon.
Cover image prompt: Entering a labyrinth of memories from girlhood during autumn harvest festival in folk painting style with chestnuts
新泳 is newswimming 