RANDA JARRAR

This is Barton Springs Pool. It was blessed by Tibetan monks for being a peaceful and beautiful place. I felt renewed when I swam in it yesterday. Life is good.

Where burritos are so plentiful, people drop them in the grass.

…in Ann Arbor, the only thing you find dropped in the street is winterwear. I really really want to move back here, but how to live here and teach at U of M? My cabbie from the airport said it best: “have two homes!!!” Now if only I can find a million dollars in the grass so I can make that happen.

From BBC news: “Palestinians ‘may declare state’.” Let’s go. Unilateral declaration. It’s about fucking time.

So, I’m doing an independent study here with some badass women, and we’ve been reading lots of anthologies by Arabs (most of which appear to be by or about or for women). We spend probably half an hour each session bitching about our families’/community’s/culture’s preoccupation with size and weight and body image…and I wondered out loud, “Why isn’t there an anthology that compiles bitchfests from Arab women – and men, I know y’all deal with this bullshit too- about the body?”

From the BBC:

“Yes, I am the oldest person in the world,” she says, her family crowding around her.
“I eat, I drink, and I take showers. I hope to keep going for another 10 years.”

Mrs Amash has 10 children, 120 grandchildren, 250 great-grandchildren, and 30 great-great-grandchildren, according to relatives.

The discovery that she may be the oldest person in the world came by chance when she applied for a new Israeli identity card.

Yay!!!! “A federal appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sales of sex toys, essentially leaving Alabama as the only state with such a ban.” I remember the days we Austin girls had to pretend we were buying toys for educational reasons. We’d stop at Forbidden Fruit after a drunken night at Emo’s and pick out something for, um, school. Yeah. And now all those dildos and cock rings and finger pulses etc. etc. have been liberated from deception! Hallelujah!

Link via Maud

You know, I’m really ambivalent about Valentine’s Day. Mostly, I think it’s a stupid commercial holiday. My boyfriend and I don’t need a holiday to say “I love you.” So it surprises me that when he came home today bearing a stuffed yorkie and a heart-shaped box of chocolates, I melted. Perhaps I’m not the cynic I once thought I was. Now if you’ll excuse me, the stuffed little chocolates and the handsome man beckon.

The Willian Saroyan Edition:

Do you think being a writer is a sensible thing?
Yes, I do.
How come?
I have studied the matter.
What matter?
The matter of what is sensible to be.
What is?
Being a writer is, if you are a writer.
What else is sensible to be?
WHatever you are.
A thief?
No, nobody is a thief. Everybody is something O.K.
Philosophy?
No, arithmetic.
…
The most solid advice, though, for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

– From the preface to The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

I just found out that the Coen bros “are to adapt author Michael Chabon’s bestseller The Yiddish Policeman’s Union for the big screen.” Yay! I can’t wait.

Link via Russell: best boyfriend ever.

My friend Christine is coming to visit me from Berkeley this weekend. I can’t wait to see her– we met at Hedgebrook and really hit it off, and I miss our silly talks and our impersonations. Next week,I’m heading to Austin, and I’m practically bursting with excitement to see my old friends, old stompin’ grounds, old tacquerias, the warmth, and on and on. The weather here is absolutely horrendous, and I have a feeling a break will do me good.