Numismatics

A few days ago, I received a wheat penny in my change. I love wheat pennies (if that wasn't already obvious), but I haven't been up on the value of coins since I was in the fourth grade, so I decided to look it up. Apparently, they are not worth much, though one site has my 1953 wheat penny listed as worth a whole 20 cents. Some sell for much more. I'm tempted to go back and give the cashier 19 regular pennies, but I don't think they'll notice the difference. To them, it was just a penny.

To me, it is the history of thousands of people who had held it in their hands at one point in time over the last fifty-three years. Hundreds of fountain wishes. Hundreds of lucky days. Maybe even some penny candy for one of my own parents, six years old and swinging their tiny legs on a stool at the drug store counter. Or even part of the collective change jangling in their pocket, ten years later, as they walked along a country/city road on the way home from school. Someone's pocket, anyway.

Some context for my little penny: When she was first introduced to the world...
...Harry S. Truman was president.
...Salk came up with the polio vaccine.
...the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published.
...Princess Elizabeth Windsor became Queen Elizabeth II.
...Lucy gave birth on television.
...Sergei Prokofiev, composer of "Peter and the Wolf" died.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Dream House

I just learned that MUJI is apparently about more than holiday gifts: they also do houses. (And notice the author's reference to the fanaticism of MUJI shoppers.) You can see pictures of the houses here.

Remember the game where you used to pick four of everything (this was well before the "four things" meme), and then through some magical counting device, you'd discover who you'd marry, how many kids you would have, what color your car was, and where you'd live? I'd add this MUJI house to the list. My dream house would still have to be something older, with a lot more history: an old farmhouse, or a pre-war apartment. As beautiful as these are, there's something cold about them, though perhaps if you plonked one down on a city block they would fit right in. Still, I would be tempted to invest just so I could fill every surface with little aluminum MUJI cases and charcoal-colored poofs with steel trays on top.

For now, I'm going to marry Rick Astley, and live in a mansion in Florida with our 23 kids and a purple VW bug. According to the last time I played, anyway.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Proof that lists are cool

The NME is paying tribute to the art of the rank as well with its 2006 Cool List. A big gypsy huzzah to the inclusion of Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello. CSS's Lovefoxxx (the love child of Karen O, Yoko Ono, and Björk) deserves a place as well if only for becoming my new best friend for about a minute in the Webster Hall ladies' room after owning the stage. And I have yet to get over my crush on Paul Simonon from when I first discovered The Clash.

But am I really supposed to know who Beth Ditto is?

I feel uncool for even asking...

(via Largehearted Boy, from where I seem to pilfer all my links these days)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

On bending time and making lists

This weekend on the phone to Dad, I got to complaining about how everything is speeding up in the world. Dad offered his usual level-headed sage advice that it's just what happens as you get older, when there are fewer new things to experience. "When you're young, everything is new and exciting, and the time to appreciate those new things is there."

I decided with breathless excitement that these "new and exciting" experiences from our childhood held some sort of neurological key to our perception of time: As we get older, our lives are filled more and more with the mundane. Our brains pay less attention to things they have become used to processing - walking down stairs, pouring a glass of water, pressing the elevator call button. Maybe time is marked only when something new is introduced to our brains. Seagulls diving into a pool on an island off the coast of Croatia. The first taste of a good mole sauce. The day they happen to be filming the new Robert De Niro film on your street. The number of new experiences our brain gets to process on a daily basis is what determines whether time, and life by extension, seems fast or slow.

It should be easy to slow down time, then: just experience something new every day. Travel the world. Have children. Visit a different restaurant every night of the week. Pick up the accordion (something I've been threatening to do for months now). But these things all cost money, or alter your life in such an irrevocable way that you can't possibly do it just on a whim. Other ways are not wished for. When a pipe bursts, or someone you love is in the hospital, or even when you spend the day in an unfamiliar laundromat, the day seems endless, but not in a good way.

And then this morning I realized that the most simple and inexpensive way of seeking out new experiences was something I'd been doing all along: reading books.

If I were to think about it, I can count my time in Didions, Murakamis, and Bromfields. My commute to work is half an hour long, but how often have I spent hours driving instead along the Pacific Coast Highway, or spent days waiting for the answer to a letter sent from Moscow to St. Petersburg by horse? How much time have I bought by living these parallel lives? Every introduction to a new character with a death wish or green gloves or the resolve to wear only grey-black-and-white buys me days. Every rendering of proud houses or small gossipy towns buys me hours. Stolen kisses under the stairs buy me minutes of time that I wouldn't otherwise have. I feel as if I'm living more than twice the life I would live without books, and that's as a good a reason as any to read.

That said, 2006 has bled its little heart out to offer books to the cause, and people are now scrambling to pick their favorites. I won't lie: I love these lists. I keep an Excel spreadsheet of the books I've read over the past three years; how could I not like lists? From what I've seen, 2005 was arguably a much better year for books in general, but I've barely sampled the goods this time around.

Still, if you're curious, I come bearing links. The NY Times Book Review has picked its 100 Notable Books, the Canadians too. The Guardian has all sorts of 2006 book choices, and the Publisher's Weekly list went up a few weeks ago. Even Amazon weighs in, probably hoping you'll click "add to cart" on as many as possible, but actually coming up with the most diverse list of the bunch. Fimoculous is collecting more.

And there you have it: more than 100 Life Extenders, Parallel Lives, and Ways of Buying Time on This Green Earth. Enjoy.

(For more bookish pleasure, go visit Maud. She spent the holiday redecorating, and the place looks great.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Sunday Zen

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.