Dedicated to Joyce W. Lee, with all fondness – and more regret, for what our digestives systems suffered

When I was in college, there was a wondrous place called La Verde’s, which is still there now, in the student center. But I remember the days before the advent of the branch of Anna’s Taqueria, way back when what is now the Taqueria was an outpost of Tosci’s, when you could get sinisterly-gigantic cups of “Vietnamese Coffee” to which you could add, say, an extra seven packets of sugar, on top of the ungodly amount of condensed milk already hibernating therein, and achieve a beverage that would not only keep you awake to do your writing – it would also fuck up your digestive system like no other.

O the memories.

I remember the wall of candy, I even remember when there used to be a branch of Newbury Comics in the student center. And I remember going to the student-run cafe – I forget what it was called – to have a muffin while I stayed up all night to work on a paper for the freshman poetry seminar with Teresa Cader that was so wickedly awesome that it led to my taking intro film the next semester, then a class on auteurs the semester after that, and then a class on literary theory… And so here I am. And here’s to that.

But the wonderful thing about La Verde’s was that it had (I know not whether it still has) these things called pillow cookies. They were brownies wrapped in chocolate chip cookies.

Picture that, for a moment, if you will.

…

JWL and I gorged ourselves upon them. It’s amazing, in retrospect, that neither of us developed an ulcer. Or worse.

So at some point this semester I reminisced to one of my classes about said pillow cookies. Then I decided I ought to try to make them, so that my students could have a taste – brief but fulfilling – of my undergraduate career. Being the conscientious dispenser of knowledge that I am, I thought to treat them, at the end of a long and happy semester, to such wonder.

Behold! The results below:

I have yet to name this glorious beast that my wonderful parents gave me for an early Christmas present. I named my new car “Watson” and my new computer “Mycroft.” “Irene,” perhaps? Or “Moriarty,” given its potential to turn out dangerously-delicious delights?

So I made up a batch of chocolate-chip cookies according to whatever recipe I found to be reasonable. There was one awesome recipe I found, once upon a time, the results of which you can view here. But I couldn’t find it again so I just did the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips. (It was a serviceable recipe, but not so good as the one I’ve lost.)

And here’s the semi-homemade part: I used a box mix for the brownies. Sorry, much as I adore my students I couldn’t be arsed to make brownies from scratch. But I did add about an extra half cup of flour to the mix, so it would be stiff enough to work with.

Here’s the situation after both batters had been sitting in the fridge overnight:

I made another batch last night, and the cookie dough was actually easier to work with if it had only been in the fridge for, say, an hour.

So you take a bit of the cookie dough and flatten it into a sort of cuplike receptacle in the palm of your hand.

Then you add the brownie batter, shaping the whole into a sort of sealed ball:

Here they await baking…

…and here they have been baked.

O deliciousness!

Not quite what I’d been going for, consistency-wise, but that’s the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.*

Rest assured they were delicious. If you like that sort of thing. Deliciousness, I mean.

Yes, yes indeed, humble, but right up there with the madeline.

*A gold star to you if you catch that reference.

Don’t ask where I found this. It’s a version of this post – but my best guess is that it’s been at least twice run through a translator with a smartass thesaurus.

I ‘m invited to a dinner in May because I was the receiver of a rattlingly terrific family for my concluding twelvemonth here as a Ph.D. campaigner. They bespoke a bio, for the pamphlet at the dinner. Here ’s mine. Assay not to oscitance, ok?

Lianne Habinek was born in California but passed her formative geezerhood in MN ( where, e.g., she was educated as a professional pantomimer ). In 2002, Lianne graduated from the Mit with Bachelor ’s grades in the Sciences of Neuroscience and Literature. While at MIT, she worked as a research helper in a laboratory that investigated the neuronic footing of ltm; she was too a research helper for the MIT Shakespeare Undertaking, a multimedia collaborative educational site. In 2003 Lianne haved anM.Phil in Renaissance Literature from Rex ’s College, Cambridge. As a grad student at Columbia, Lianne won families to the Folger Shakspere Library, the Institute for Historical Research at the University of London, and the Huntington Library. She is besides a lending editor for the literary mag Clear Letters Monthly , where she pens monthly reappraisal essays. She seeks in her work to enlace her interests in science and the humanities; to it stop her thesis canvas the share of seventeenth-century literature to the birth of modern neuroscience. With the generous aid of a Whiting Foundation Family, she is finishing her thesis this twelvemonth and will graduate in May Beginning this autumn, Lianne will be an Help Prof of English Literature ( tenure-track ) at Bard College. She besides haved, but was alas unable to accept, a Mellon Postdoc Family at Tufts University.

So now you cognize everything relevant about ME I will state, I ‘m attempting to get the Clear Missives mentions into every possible bio/introduction/email-to-future-colleagues as I can. Distribute the word, you cognise?

Oh, and I learned a new word.

I found this article from The Guardian intriguing, in that it purports to list the most important books of this decade, such as it was.

Actually the article is disturbing in that reminds us precisely what sorts of things were written in this particular decade, for better or for worse. E.g., “for better” = Persepolis. “For worse” = The Da Vinci Code. Also, consider that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published in 2000.

(Then made into a film in 2005, incorporating the acting talents of – gasp – both Robert Pattinson and David Tennant.)

WTF, indeed.

This may date me, but I was surprised to find The Corrections on the list. I thought, Whoa, that’s such a 90’s book. But it was frickin’ published this decade. In the naughties.

By the by, “the naughties”? friggin’ irritates me. Let’s at least call it “the nought-ies.” That makes far more sense.

Also amazing:

Not that I’ve been obsessed with The Traveling Wilburys lately, or anything like that.

P.S. This is what YouTube recommends to me, based on my “preferences” and “viewing history.” Wait, really? No, that is definitely not an obsession, either.

The Internets: IT KNOWS.

Don’t check the academic lit. jobs wiki.

I am speaking as someone who has been there and done that.

There are so many, many things irreversibly wrong with the wiki.

You will only become more ridiculously anxious if you look at it. And, once you have a look, you will find: you cannot look away, for love nor money, come high or low water.

So I know I sound like one of Them. I sort of am, but on the other hand – I sort of am not.

Kids: Just don’t do it.

Think of it this way, i.e., my personal mantra: IT IS BETTER NOT TO KNOW.

Today I turned thirty.

To all who were so very kind to me:

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.

The house next to mine is occupied by a law firm, or some sort of conglomeration of lawyers. Ostensibly. They were rude to us when we were moving stuff into the basement, so I hold no special place in my heart for them.

Particularly as they have this light – this security light – at the back entrance of their house. I could understand if they were coming and going at all hours of the night but they aren’t, and besides, come on, this is a little town which on the whole is quite polite to anyone and everyone. I cannot think what they could possibly be on about, with that light.

Even so, I’ve become intrigued by its schedule. It doesn’t appear to be triggered by a motion sensor – numerous experiments, involving myself and others, seem to have proved this point – but neither does it appear to be on a strict timer. If it is on some sort of timer, by my cocktail-napkin calculations it must be on some random schedule of on and off, without much concern about energy or actual trespassers (will), or so forth.

I would not complain about this, but for the fact that my bedroom window does look out upon the same alleyway as the back of said law firm’s house, and so I am plagued nightly by the turnings on and off of said “security” light.

I one day hope, Oedipa-Mass-like, to uncover the covert secret meaning of the law firm, to comprehend why they are so important that they need to have a randomly-timed security light over their back entryway.

But now onto something infinitely more pleasurable: FOOD.

These are from a little while ago, when I was having another go at cooking a chicken (free-range, sans-drugs, raised as happy as can be sort of bloke). I was using, and modifying, a Martha Stewart (blessed be thy name) recipe, which called for the chicken to be placed upon a bed of coarsely-chopped onions – after, of course, said chicken had been stuffed with a fork-pricked (cease your sniggering) lemon, and trussed up, and anointed with various herbs and olive oil and butter.

I did not have a lemon, so I used a couple of limes. Likewise, I did not have Martha’s appointed herbs, so I used what I had to hand: some thyme, some rosemary, and some basil (by the bye, did you realize that basil is ridiculously easy to grow? All it wants is water and a bit of sunlight; but if you neglect the watering, water it shortly, and it will bloom like nobody’s business; behold the wonder of the humble basil plant). I also opted to use only olive oil, and no butter, as I’m attempting to be good about cholesterol and the like.

Here are the limes that went into the cavity of said bird:

Chopped garlic (I do not recommend looking at the “actual” size of this photo, as it got unhappily grainy):

Another Martha Stewart tip, and entirely necessary for those who, like I, have weirdly odor-permeable fingers:

The beast in its pre-cooked glory:

Alas that I neglected to take a photo of the finished product!

Rest assured it was delicious.

P.S. Dearest feline, please stop licking the imitation palm tree. You are seriously freaking me out.

I haven’t essayed this sort of thing in a while, but I’ve been particularly industrious of late, so I thought I might have a little fun.

Here, then, are a baker’s dozen of random tracks – in the order they came about:

1. Part 086 of 240; Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl.
Well, that’s a strong start. This track has been so horridly digitized that it skips and hops worse than a rabbit in heat. I confess I never intended to read this book – hence I have it as an audiobook – it having been so ridiculously hyped. I have not yet managed even to listen to it. You should also have a sense, by this, of the fact that I haven’t managed to divide my iPod’s library into music versus audiobooks. That, Dear Reader, demonstrates neglect of the teachings of my alma mater.

2. Chain of Fools; The Commitments, The Commitments.
I think I owe this track, and its album, to S. Can you believe I still have not seen the film, despite having heard the excellent soundtrack many times over? So very good, this song!

3. Sinfonia No. 14 in B Major, BWV 800; Goldberg Variations, Inventions, Glenn Gould (Bach).
Now this – this – falls off what is likely my favorite of Gould’s Goldberg recordings. I find it impossible to decide between his 1955 debut and his 1981 endpiece, so I choose a middle ground: this recording, done in the late 1950s, live, which presents the artist at his most human. It is a wondrous set of recordings, replete with myriad little tics and errors, but it comes, I believe, the closest to what he intended, in his life, as a definitive interpretation of the Variations. Did you know, in his 1957 tour, he was the first North American pianist to perform in the then-Soviet Union since World War II? These Sinfonias/3-Part-Inventions are a secret treat on an unassailable album.

4. 051; The Goblet of Fire, Stephen Fry.
This I have also due to S., who procured, shall we say, the complete British recordings of the Harry Potter books (vastly superior to the American recordings, due entirely to the fact that His Greatness Stephen Fry is reading them). In this section, Moody approaches Neville (who is nervous) amongst Harry, Ron, and Hermione, after the demonstration of the cruciatus curse.

5. 16-60; The Half-Blood Prince, Stephen Fry.
Witness once again my ineptitude at dividing my music from my words! Perhaps this is fate at work. Here, Harry relates the death of an Important Character to Tonks.

6. Is This It?; Is This It?, The Strokes.
I took to The Strokes my senior year of college, at roughly the same time I took to Rufus Wainwright. O but this album conjures all sorts of early-twenties angst and confusion and excitement for me. I was writing my thesis on Arthurian literature (particularly the story of the Holy Grail) at the time, and was a psychological wreck for a colorful variety of reasons. Not a bad song, not a bad album. One which seems happy enough until you listen to the lyrics.

7. The Golden Compass; BBC’s The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman.
I really have no idea what is going on here – it’s about incisions and guillotines. Well, we do know what that is about, but I don’t know precisely at what point in the book this falls. This is a fine reading of the books.

8. Charley Patton Songs; How We Operate, Gomez.
I know I have heard this album many, many times, but I can’t recall for the life of me what this song is, or what it is about. Ok, so, I do know who Charley Patton is. But have I even heard this song before? I can’t tell.

9. Bob Dylan’s Blues; The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan.
Written “somewhere down in the United States.” I tried to claim Nashville Skyline, once and repeatedly, as my favorite Dylan album, but S. would not have it, on the grounds that I am not a fan of country music, or somesuch. So, all right, I can compromise. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is my favorite album, then. Not least because of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” There was this really fantastic website that used to – I don’t know if I can accurately describe this – draw pictures of singers/songwriters with the words of their songs, as a given song played in the background. I can’t find the Dylan one, but it was “Don’t Think Twice.”

10. Astarstund; Eivor Palsdottir, Eivor Palsdottir.
This is OK. I must have got it on an eMusic binge several years ago. I discovered a lot of Strange Obscure Things via eMusic a few years ago, but I haven’t been back since. The audiobooks (see above, re. Calamity Physics, which I seem for some reason to want to spell “Clamity”) were crappily (is that really an adverb?) digitized. But this is a pretty track. She doesn’t sound that much like Bjork. My friend from (and who know is back in) Iceland once played me a track of an Icelandic women’s choir singing about menstruation. It sounded to my untutored ears like they were singing “OUCH” over and over again, which is an accurate depiction. She made me listen to said track when several of us were on the subway back to Manhattan after being in DUMBO for an exceeding strange performance of Hamlet, wherein the company recreated (with a backdrop of the original filmed live version) Richard Burton’s performance (which was recorded and played “live,” as it were, albeit edited slightly, as they had something like 17 cameras about the stage, to several cinemas at the time; much like the modern practice of telecasting live performances at The Met in theaters near you), albeit with the backdrop of the film, albeit the film was heavily digitally-messed-with, to an extent that was most eerie, so that at some points you would see only a hand – and at others, they claimed not to have any video or audio of the original film, so, for example, they overlaid Bill Murray’s Polonius onto a blank screen. While this performance stuck with me for its strangeness, I sadly cannot recall the entire evening, as I became very ill indeed with some sort of flu immediately afterwards – which caused me to miss an Of Montreal concert, but that is another story entirely.

11. 2407; The Order of The Phoenix, Stephen Fry.
“Harry had the horrible sensation that his insides were melting. Extra lessons with Snape – what on earth had he done to deserve this?” Ahem.

11a. REDACTED Another Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter (Half-Blood Prince again)

11b-f. REDACTED. More Stephen Fry. As well as a bit from Stephen King’s Night Shift as read by, of all people, Danny Glover.

12. Strangers; Dummy, Portishead.
More of my college life rising to the surface! I liked the first two albums. And the live album. Third, not at all, but perhaps it has to grow on me. This particular song is good for zoning out, with its weight and heft.

13. Don’t You Evah; Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon.
Someone gave me this album. I don’t think I’ve listened to it many times. It isn’t that I don’t like Spoon. It’s simply that I’m indifferent.

And now to go turn on the turntable. Glenn Gould playing Bach. This one. I have it on vinyl. Happy, the purging of my eardrums.

I was meant to be grading, this morning, but I went on a quest through my bookshelves to find something else entirely. I did find that, but I also found several old notebooks of mine, one of which I wrote when I was in a peculiar situation in life – as being thoroughly, utterly, whole-heartedly consumed with an Idea that was like a fever, so it is hard to read that particular set of scribblings now – and another of which, well, have a look at it yourself:

Mind you, this was back in the summer of 2005, when my outlook on life was at once very open and expectant, and very grim.

This made me think – though I’ve been thinking of it lately in any case – about what it was like to be a graduate student at my Particular Institution.

I will say this: I had any number of disheartening things related to me about my work, viz.,

“This makes no sense.”
“You don’t seem to have an argument here.”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“This is good, but you couldn’t ever publish it.”
“What the hell were you thinking when you wrote this?”
“Why didn’t you read essays in the language of the original poem?”
“Let’s just keep this idea of writing a trade book between the two of us, shall we?”
“You shouldn’t be allowed ever, ever, ever, near a word processor again.”*

And so forth.

But the worst thing anyone ever said to me, the most difficult, that around which I’m still trying hard to wrap my addled brains, was this:

“Lianne, you’re turning into the kind of person who never finishes anything.”

I’d reply now, as an instructor: Don’t you realize that writing is never finished? There can always be something more, something else done? Writing is a process? etc. etc.

But those words, when they came, were unfortunate. And they have been creeping into my conscience ever since.

True, I finished my dissertation, insofar as anyone can ever finish a dissertation.

But I worry now: what if I am that sort of person, the sort that doesn’t finish things?

I don’t mean publishing articles and essays – no, that’s expected of me, that I expect of myself, that is a discrete task which I can sit down and readily accomplish, howsoever little I will be pleased with the eventual result.

I mean, on a deeper level, what it means to really be through with a thing. To put it to rest. Is seeing it in print enough, for example. Wouldn’t I read it, months or years later, or even moments after I’d gotten the hard copy, and think to myself, Well, that’s another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into? What would I do? What could I do?

All of this is by the way of saying – be careful what you say to people who depend upon you for validation of their work. They listen, they comprehend.

Be you not quite so brutal.

*This was actually said to me (as were the others), but this was said during my dissertation defense. I have no defense for it. I cut and pasted large chunks of things, in desperation, and this naturally led to some unfortunate repetitions of certain paragraphs within mere pages of one another.