the same paths

This area is beautiful this time of year. I am running along the river every morning and it really brings back those five-year-old memories of when I used to bike every morning along that same river to come to this very place.

I have had no battery charger for the past few weeks but last night I managed to get one that works so hopefully I shall soon be able to document the beauty of this season and perhaps post some of those pictures. But while we're waiting for new pictures I don't mind posting nice ones from previous years.

to brown

Once again I am tardy in my colour change with the seasons. Perhaps, though, I can blame it on the fact that Autumn itself crept up on me and from the other fact that I am not sure which day was the equinox (if that is what determines the change) this year. However I may have been mistaken or misled, it is now Autumn and this is now brown.

I used to dislike brown. I found it to be an objectionable, useless colour along with orange and various horrid shades of decent colours (mustard yellow, olive green etc). I have since then discovered that there is beauty in more than just the obviously beautiful, that contrast adds variety and interest.

I remember a story from when I was young about a silly duck (or goose probably) who thought that some ingredients in cake, being objectionable in themselves, should be removed to improve the taste of the cake. But without baking soda and whatever other ingredients she disliked, the cake was a disaster. I am not saying that brown has a use only as a rising agent, but that often we don't appreciate the workhorses in our appreciation of the more pleasingly showy externals.

So in honour of brown, I shall keep this template until winter breaks through with its icy blue.

closing thoughts

I have finally finished Bleak House but I will quote it one more time before moving on:

[she had] a predestined aptitude for doing something objectionable.

He had so long been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word he said, that his words really had come to sound as if there were something in them.

One thing I do enjoy about Dickens is his excellent descriptions and his way of encapsulating the essence of a character within a short sentence or two. There were a few places where the going was heavy but for the most part I think I shall miss ploughing through Dickens as I turn to lighter material in the next little while. I still have to read Dombey and Son and Little Dorrit (I'm possibly forgetting one or two other novels of his) and I'm sure there are many of his novels that I wouldn't mind reading multiple times but there is still something special about the first run through a novel that is usually missing the second time through (even if the plot has been forgot in the mean time). So as much as I am happy that I am reaching my goal of reading all of Dickens, I am also sad that the end is approaching.

It has begun

With the RA-ing duties having commenced a couple weeks ago, I have had the chance to plan and prepare two community dinners. So far they have been successes and I am happy in this aspect of my stay here. I find that as much as I would dislike having to plan supper every day, I rather enjoy planning a large one once a week. I also find that I enjoy following recipes but then, once comfortable with them, of playing with the flavours a bit. I made up a dessert this week consisting of oatcakes covered in peaches with caramel sauce on top. I must say I love the caramel sauce and am quite pleased that there is now a jam-jar full of leftovers to dispose of in some way or another.

Another new development is that I have been running most mornings. This is quite singular for me because I hate running. I love biking, skating, walking, playing sports in which one must run, crawling, rolling down hills, dancing, singing... wait. Anyway the point is that I do enjoy active activities for the most part but I have always preserved that little place in my hate for running (or jogging if you like). Why this new development you ask? Why indeed! I can't quite explain but since I've started I have decided to give it a running chance and try to get over what I can only figure is a mental block that tells me I hate it. The consequences might be interesting. Stay tuned.

Jane of many talents

:)

She works both as a finger puppet and as a fridge magnet. Does it get any better than this?

island view

All of my trip out west was good but this part of it was both relaxing and good.

bleak reading

I, in general, love Dickens' books. I havn't read them all yet but am slowly working through the ones still unread whenever I have an extended amount of free time to fill. Bleak House has been near the end of this list; I've had it for quite some time but its title seemed less promising of a delightful read than others (such as Dombey and Son). Its position on the list moved, however, when I found that I now have access to a mini series on the book. I love mini-series in general but I also generally wish to read the book before venturing into movie-land. I therefore resolved to read Bleak House next. Leaving shortly after forming this resolve on a trip involving various flights and other opportunities to read while waiting for something, it was a simple decision to bring this book with me. I have now read halfway through the book and must say that I am really enjoying it. It seems a little more mature than some other Dickens I have known. So far (one must make this reservation when reading Dickens) it is not really bleak at all. There have been several episodes within the story that have been less than happy but this is what gives it the feeling of being true to life. I am happy that it was bumped to the top of the list and am looking forward to finishing it and watching the miniseries.

ch-ch-ch-changes

As a fast-approaching wedding and vacation eat up the rest of my summer I realize that I have only a couple days in which to prepare for those two events and for the changes that are coming this fall. I am moving out of this room which I have inhabited for the past five years and into another space. It is not really a difficult move by any standards: the location is but a ten-minute drive from here, I don't really need to move furniture and, best of all, I can leave various and sundry behind on the shelves since it is my brother who will be moving into my newly-vacated room. I'm just complaining a bit because it feels as though the time has been stolen away from me. I know that I have a hand in all these plans and changes but I guess I feel as though I should be given more time to adjust. Life really is wonderful but it is always easy to feel sorry for one's self.

Does it get any better?

I think I'll be reeling from this Matt Costa kick for quite some time but that's perfectly fine with me.

possible consolation

Suspicion concerning life:
if chocolate chips are eaten and enjoyed at a decent rate (such as perhaps a handful per day) over a length of time, the enjoyment may possibly reach or exceed that which may be derived from a one-time deal of a batch of chocolate chip cookies (especially when shared around indiscriminately as is my wont).

One must, after all, search out and weigh the merits of the various options.

will I ever learn?

Fact of life:
if one opens the chocolate chip package and begins to eat the contents prior to making chocolate chip cookies, there is a chance that by the time one wishes to make said cookies that there will not be enough chips left for such an undertaking.

literary questions

I have often wished to write reviews on here of books I have read or, barring that, even a quick comment on broad impressions in response to books I have been thinking about. What generally stops me in this is a feeling that I do not want to judge a book before I have completed it and perhaps chewed over its contents for a while. So while I am reading a book I try to reserve judgement and by the time that such judgement ideally would be ripe I am deep into the next book with all thoughts of the previous one as dim memories of syne.

I do wish to work around this tendency and not just post some interesting quotes but to engage with the material and themes and express my true opinion (something that I often have a hard time getting out). To start with baby steps I shall in this post answer a couple questions I found elsewhere concerning books. Perhaps the resulting discussion will prompt and prod me into a resolve to continue discussions of the like on a deeper level.

What kind of book are you most comfortable reading?
Novels. In particular the huge Victorian tomes that frighten so many people away. I would say that for recreation and ease of reading there are always lighter novels comparable to candy that are a joy to escape into occasionally but would not sustain a steady diet. I love the complex and beautiful writing and insights into human nature that generally abound in a good novel.

What kind of book do you love to hate?
I generally despise the cheap historical fiction books that frame modern anxieties with a show of historic accuracy. I understand that all historic fiction draws attitudes from modern thought. This is understandable because we are all a product of our own time but there should be some connection between the event shown in the book and the central thrust of the book. If the anxiety is social unrest, then to place the plot in a time of riots and such makes sense but merely to use a certain time-period to display the depths of one's research into that time is rather shallow.
In a slightly different vein, this is not about a book in particular but I look down on the modern trend to appear deep by being obscure.

What was the last book that you surprised yourself by liking?
I think it would have to be Elizabeth B B's Aurora Leigh. I thought a novel written in verse would combine the worst aspects of both genres yet it seemed to do the opposite. Some parts did tend to drag on but for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it.

What was the last book that you surprised yourself by disliking?
I can't think of the last book that I thought I would like that I haven't liked. I'll have to think of this a little more. Actually I was surprised that I did not enjoy Gaskell's Cranford as I had anticipated. I still ended with enjoying it but it took me more than my usual effort to stay with it and complete it. Once finished, however, I look back with fondness on the book and hope that those who are thinking of reading it will also stick with it and find the small treasures hidden within its pages.

What book would you take with you if you knew you would be marooned in the near future?
Well the Bible is a necessity but as I suspect they are referring to entertainment reading I think I would pick something along the lines of all of Austen's work in one volume. I don't think that's cheating since they are often bound together and it is not an overly unwieldy tome. Perhaps if the three volumes of Tolkein's Ring cycle were together that might suffice also but I don't remember having seen them in one volume before.

What forces you to read outside your comfort zone?
Being in an English degree leaves one at the mercy of required courses and assigned reading. Just having graduated I am now looking forward to a life of ever-narrowing scope and opinions. I can't wait!
In seriousness, however, I often look to friends who may have different likes/dislikes than myself to recommend their favourite books. I do enjoy finding merit in books that I would not have considered myself.

And so ends the short quiz. I enjoyed thinking about the answers and I hope that you enjoyed reading them and that they made you think about what your answers would be. I'm feeling stimulated towards further and deeper discussions over literature so hopefully that will transpire in time.

Perception

From an interesting article in the New York Times on mirrors

In a report titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition,” which appears online in The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch described experiments in which people were asked to identify pictures of themselves amid a lineup of distracter faces. Participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face. Such internalized photoshoppery is not simply the result of an all-purpose preference for prettiness: when asked to identify images of strangers in subsequent rounds of testing, participants were best at spotting the unenhanced faces.

How can we be so self-delusional when the truth stares back at us? “Although we do indeed see ourselves in the mirror every day, we don’t look exactly the same every time,” explained Dr. Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. There is the scruffy-morning you, the assembled-for-work you, the dressed-for-an-elegant-dinner you. “Which image is you?” he said. “Our research shows that people, on average, resolve that ambiguity in their favor, forming a representation of their image that is more attractive than they actually are.”

When we look in the mirror, our relative beauty is not the only thing we misjudge. In a series of studies, Dr. Bertamini and his colleagues have interviewed scores of people about what they think the mirror shows them. They have asked questions like, Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

People overwhelmingly give the same answers. To the first question they say, well, the outline of my face on the mirror would be pretty much the size of my face. As for the second question, that’s obvious: if I move away from the mirror, the size of my image will shrink with each step.

Both answers, it turns out, are wrong. Outline your face on a mirror, and you will find it to be exactly half the size of your real face. Step back as much as you please, and the size of that outlined oval will not change: it will remain half the size of your face (or half the size of whatever part of your body you are looking at), even as the background scene reflected in the mirror steadily changes. Importantly, this half-size rule does not apply to the image of someone else moving about the room. If you sit still by the mirror, and a friend approaches or moves away, the size of the person’s image in the mirror will grow or shrink as our innate sense says it should.

What is it about our reflected self that it plays by such counterintuitive rules? The important point is that no matter how close or far we are from the looking glass, the mirror is always halfway between our physical selves and our projected selves in the virtual world inside the mirror, and so the captured image in the mirror is half our true size.

Rebecca Lawson, who collaborates with Dr. Bertamini at the University of Liverpool, suggests imagining that you had an identical twin, that you were both six feet tall and that you were standing in a room with a movable partition between you. How tall would a window in the partition have to be to allow you to see all six feet of your twin?

The window needs to allow light from the top of your twin’s head and from the bottom of your twin’s feet to reach you, Dr. Lawson said. These two light sources start six feet apart and converge at your eye. If the partition is close to your twin, the upper and lower light points have just begun to converge, so the opening has to be nearly six feet tall to allow you a full-body view. If the partition is close to you, the light has nearly finished converging, so the window can be quite small. If the partition were halfway between you and your twin, the aperture would have to be — three feet tall. Optically, a mirror is similar, Dr. Lawson said, “except that instead of lighting coming from your twin directly through a window, you see yourself in the mirror with light from your head and your feet being reflected off the mirror into your eye.”

This is one partition whose position we cannot change.

I think I'm going to have to check out this last experiment even though it makes some sense on paper it makes no sense to my senses. I wonder if it because the mirror itself gets further away and our perception of thie image is smaller once we move but that the image stays the same. Crazy.

Extract

from Charlotte Bronte's Villette:

There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored.

frustration

I think that it is generally true that while riding on a high we should expect to hit a low shortly thereafter. I just got back from our church's quatrannual international conference. The week was soaked in communal prayer and was truly blessed. I was drained but was given so much more than I gave (as is usual in God's math. Gotta love it.). On my return home I had a couple things to arrange for the accomidation of a fellow who had travelled with me from the conference. It seemed fairly straightforward and I was happy to show some hospitality.
*****
Little did she know... ah, I can't wait to get to heaven and see the true scope of the dramatic irony in which our lives take place.
*****
I will not write out the details since it will come out at this time as a complaint but suffice it to say that I have never had so much trouble trying to get in touch with people and organize something that seemed so simple. On top of it all, just as I had thought everything was arranged and out of my hands, another complication has arisen. But I am praying about it and going to have a good night's sleep and I'm sure it will all look different in the morning. I'm sure I'll laugh in the morning.
I am so thankful that God has given us humour.

O Simon

In an addition or continuation of the last post I would like to say that as a side-effect of my new habits I am beginning to hear Simon Amstell's voice as the constant narrator in my head. Now normally, when I read or write things or think them in my head I have no consciousness of a particular voice or accent or tone unless it puts me in mind strongly of something in a particular genre. For example, if I heard "perspicacity" I would think of it in an upper-class English accent and if I heard "you can't handle the truth" a few good men would pop into my head providing they were small enough. However now amost everything has become a joke with me. The tortured tones of irony and suppressed laughter while reading something of a serious nature has permeated the most sombre of materials and I will not even attempt to start with how much more hilarious his voice renders things that are funny to begin with. I just can't get him out of my head but that's okay.

laughable

I've become hooked on watching numerous clips from various and sundry British quiz-type shows. I say 'quiz-type' because the primary purpose of these shows seems not to be to ask and answer interesting question (as the category 'quiz show' would suggest) but to take the opportunity to display their utter mastery of dry and, well, British humour while answering these clever questions cleverly. Basically these people are my heroes.

photo flop

I have one thing to complain about my camera: it takes terrible pictures at night. This is usually not a problem since most of the pictures I take are the type to be taken during the day but times do arise when I would wish the night vision were better. Take last night for instance. I decided to take the night off from volunteering at Bluesfest and actually watch a show. I arrived before the sun set and staked out a place by the stage. Corb Lund was playing and I got a decent picture of his set. Then I waited around between the shows and got some funky shots of my food, feet and face. Then Feist came on. Now if this were a world that revolved around words and if alliteration were the goal, I would have got some funky Feist photos too. Sadly for literaphiles such as myself, this is not the case. The world runs on much more prosaic rules and if my camera does not do well at night, it will not take good pictures of objects at night no matter what the potential in the alliterative sphere. So despite the fact that I was front row at the Feist show, I have little pictoral evidence. Corb Lund (first on stage) My food
My feet
My funny face

Feist but in no way funky. Perhaps it was going for 'fuzzy'. If you can't figure out what's happening, she's casting her shadow on a white screen. I was over to the right so it shows some of what's behind the screen.

pink again

I seem to have missed the commencement of summer. Perhaps it is due to the fact that it hasn't let off raining all month. I really shouldn't complain since we seem to get the whole bag of weather each day so we are not really missing the sun but this strange weather has just disoriented me. I think another factor is the fact that I have spent the majority of my time indoors this month. Thinking back to other Junes I have known, it is the complete opposite. No wonder I have problems remembering which season it is. So I am late in changing my blog colours. But better late than never.

filler

It's been several weeks since I last posted so I thought a quick pic would fill the gap until I feel like writing more.