GradPadScansion

Davo's Moving !

2009-03-02T19:45:00.005-05:00

Folks, Blogger has been nice--

But I need to know more about this blogging thing, and wordpress seems to be the place for me. Please update your links, all! I'll be sending other bloggers my new address, which is--

http://gradpadscansion.wordpress.com

See you there!!! The blog is up--minus the additional links, which I'll be adding tonight.

photo: 12th Street Bridge, Indianapolis, late 40s. Photo at Indiana Hist. Soc.

Felix Feneon--A Series of Unfortunate Events

2009-02-28T17:55:00.002-05:00

In trolling through Half Price Books today (where I overheard someone looking for where the Paramilitary Romance section was--quoi??) I found a long-lost novel recently resuscitated by NYRB, who have a fantastic series of high-quality unjustifiably obscure novels. Feneon, who carefully avoided the limelight, compiled this experimental book, called Novels in Three Lines, from anonymous bits of reportage from newspapers of France in 1906, The result sounds like a series of unrealized Edward Gorey captions ranging from the tragic to the bemusing, most in the out-of-date passive voice:

"Napoleon Gallieni, a stonecutter, broke his neck falling down the stairs. He may have been pushed. In any case, he was taken to the morgue.

The sinister prowler seen by the mechanic Gicquel near Herblay train station has been identified: Jules Menard, snail collector.

There was a gas explosion at the home of Larrieux, in Bordeaux. He was injured. His mother-in-law's hair caught on fire. The ceiling caved in.

In the vicinity of Noisy-sur-Ecole, M. Louis Delillieau, 70, dropped dead of sunstroke. Quickly his dog Fido ate his head.

Catherine Rosello of Toulon, mother of four, got out of the way of a freight train. She was then run over by a passenger train.

A ruling by the mayor of Angers concerning parades forbids union banners, songs not of a liturgical order, and canes.

And finally:

Eugene Perichot, of Pailles, near Saint-Maixent, entertained at his home Mme Lemartrier. Eugene Dupuis came to fetch her. They killed him. Love.

Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon. NYRB Books, ISBN 978-1-59017-230-8

Boycotting McDonald's...

2009-02-23T16:50:00.000-05:00

...for the following reason. I can do my writing elsewhere.

Two Questions, or, Heaven Can Be Yours, Inc.

2009-02-19T19:56:00.003-05:00

Today I had scheduled a field trip for my composition class, based somewhat on my McDonalds espionage experiment. I gave my students various roles that they were to assume before we went to the Student Union food court to do our field research.

Once we got there, a table had been set up by some religious group, touting that "Two questions" will let you know whether or not you will go to Heaven. Their table was covered with various swag items--CDs, stickers, the usual promotional crap. I set my students loose, letting them know that I'll be checking to see how they're doing. I pass by the table again and this rather aryan-looking kid with a clipboard finds it his business to ask whether I believe I'll be going to Heaven. I look down at his wipeable-laminated poison green questionnaire and see that the possible answers are:
[]Yes
[][No
[]Maybe
[]I Think So
[]I'm not sure

I try to see what the second question is, but he notices that I'm looking and cradles the clipboard closer, much to the potential detriment of his shirt, considering the marker residue. I never am asked the second question. Before I turn around, I see that one of my more attention-challenged students has been snagged. Five minutes later, she is still there, with the guy on the flipside of the laminated questionnaire (as there are more than two questions, naturally), and he is sweeping his hand over the table of swag. I go up and remind my student that she is here to do research, not to talk. "But I am doing research," she says. I reminded her that one of the strict prohibitions of the project was not to talk to the people in the Union. Notes and observations only. I had to state explicitly that she was there on my time and that she needed to get to what the project required. There were distinctly non-Christian looks from those that ran the table.
Honestly, I find it insulting that three undergraduates behind a folding table claim to have such grand powers to confirm whether or not one will be going to [their] heaven, and combining it with some prefab way of gleaning personal information and email addresses for marketing/proselytizing. I wanted to go back and tell them that explicitly. I was especially irritated that they were targeting my non-eating students in the food court. I patrolled the area with my own clipboard, looking to move the students onward to the seating areas so they could actually get material for decent essays for Tuesday.
And only those that go to Heaven get a sticker.

Tuesday's Fun Media Moment

2009-02-17T01:42:00.002-05:00

Oops.

AWP Fallout

2009-02-15T00:12:00.002-05:00

Whew. I'm tired. I'd post pix of the convention, but my camera appears to be broken. The bookfair, with its great crowds and constant activity, was often like a football scrum in a library, but in the fray certain recognizable faces were seen: Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty (who signed two of my books), Hilda Raz (whose new book I'll be reviewing soon), Craig Arnold (with a quick L. A. hug before running down the sidewalk), Marianne Boruch, G. C. Waldrep, and others. I picked up quite a few books (and one stalker). Among the great finds was a Turkish novel, some wonderfully printed articles from Ugly Duckling Presse (who print wonderful wonderful things), and a lot of new and exciting literary journals. I'm glad I'm out of the car. Biggest thanks and enormous gratitude to Rebekah and Tadd, who were wonderful hosts, right down to the fantastic navigation packets!

I'll type more fun and frivolity after I've had a bit of sleep...

More Henry James

2009-02-08T12:28:00.004-05:00

In light of what we've been through for the last eight years, I bring forth yet more Henry James:

From his 1892 story, "Collaboration":

"In art there are no countries--no idiotic nationalities, no frontiers, nor douanes, nor still more idiotic fortresses and bayonets. It has the unspeakable beauty of being the region in which those abominations cease, the medium in which such vulgarities simply can't live. What therefore are we to say of the brutes who wish to drag them all in--to crush to death with them all the flowers of such a garden, to shut out all the light of such a sky?"

Speaking of art, I'm off with most of the other writers I know to AWP, thus a rather sporadic blogging schedule, due to radically increased lecture and celebrity intake.I'll try to post pix of folks and scenes I run in to.

Pic, taken by Davo, is not of a James book, but rather of Heimito von Doderer's novel The Demons.

My Summer of Many Words

2009-02-08T11:42:00.004-05:00

Henry James stood for me, back when I was an under-graduate, as the height of nothing doing. We were assigned The Portrait of a Lady and I think I got to the 45th page before putting the book down and devoting my time to other things. Looking back on that as a current college instructor, I can imagine the challenges of discussing the merits of such a novel with students like me. It's a big leap to change from discussing the "what's happening" of plot, to the deeper elements of "what are they thinking" or "why are they thinking this." As one of those students, I refused to open that book and nodded in agreement eagerly whenever the professor made a point, hoping to show by this nodding that I not only was paying attention, but that I had actually read the novel in question.

Seven years later, having been in a Corporate job for some time, I actually found myself thinking quite a bit in that grey cubicle, much like Isabel did staring at the fireplace. I turned to difficult and enormous novels to keep my mind from reducing to unappealing elements, like iceberg lettuce left in its plastic bag too long.

Everyone should have a Henry James summer. His sentences are never-ending, sure, but after a while, I found myself going along like a big ship cuts along through water. It took a while to get to speed. Once there, I was never unaware of the constant friction of so many words, but, like the water, all of it was necessary to support the hull.

His character names are occasionally hilarious (who today would have the chutzpah to name a main character, as in "The Wheel of Time," Fanny Knocker?). He's also the master of the artificial problem, such as finding a sealed envelope in "Sir Dominick Ferrand" where they want to know what the papers are, but in order to do so, they'd have to break the seal. So the characters sit and think on it.

It's perhaps from this summer that I got my longer-than-usual sentence length. I lay the blame on James.

Another Reason Why I Like Annie Lennox

2009-02-02T19:06:00.003-05:00

Here 'tis.

Beat Gloor: from "How Are You?"

2009-01-31T14:58:00.005-05:00

excerpts:

5. Do you live in the past, the present, or the future?
14. Do children have the right to expect their parents to have a functioning relationship? Until what age?
23. What unites you with others: similarities or differences?
28. Where and when do you have your best ideas?
32: How do you judge others? By their looks or by the way they move? By what they say, what they have achieved, or by their courage?
34: What are you most afraid of? Are you guided by your fear?
40: If you could clone yourself, how would you divide up your life?
55: How do you feel when you are not telling the truth?
58. Would you be happy if certain people were killed? How many do you have in mind?
62: Can two people remain together for the rest of their lives?
65: Would you like to be able to look into the future? Would you do so?
66: Does solitude make one strong or weak?
67: Are you strong? For what?

Translated byGeoffrey Winthrop-Young

Beat Gloor lives in Baden.

2009-01-31T14:58:00.001-05:00

Acte Prealable, or, A Mighty Cold Day, Warmed by Music

2009-01-16T14:02:00.008-05:00

It got down to -15 or so last night here, but I was warmed by anticipation--my postman left a note on my door informing me that a package was waiting for me at the post office. I bundled up this morning and walked there, breathing the metal-tasting air.

It was a bundle of CDs from Poland, a lovely New Year's present from Jan Jarnicki, the owner of the wonderful classical music label Acte Prealable. He sent me an email a month or so ago wishing me Holiday greetings and it was very nice of him to send this package along. My aquaintance with the label began back in 2005 with a shipment of review discs and the Elzbieta Sternlicht's wonderful performance of the intriguing piano works of Jozef Koffler and the also criminally under-appreciated piano pieces of Felix Mendelssohn's sister, Fanny.

Of the discs in this new packet, the only one I've had much of a chance to listen to is by not-yet-thirty-year-old Tomasz Kamieniak, who performs a selection of his own piano pieces, one of which was completed only this past year. The pieces are generally quiet and meditative, with elements of Philip Glass and Mompou. His Book of Illusions calls Schumann immediately to mind, in that three of the movements bear the title of "Sphinx," the customarily unplayed sections of Schumann's Carnaval that, spelled out in notes, contain Schumann's name and that of the hometown of his fiancee at the time.

Another of the discs features work by another young composer, Marcin Kopczynski, born in 1973. Many of these are piano pieces, performed by the composer, but we have guitar works, as well as pieces for piano and voice. This music, based on a brief casual listen, has more of an intellectual remove, closer to Mompou than Kamieniak is, but this could only be true of the first two piano pieces on the disc.

I was really glad to see the latest disc of Romuald Twardowski's works to be released by Acte Prealable. Reviewing discs has introduced me to quite a few active composers and Twardowski is among my favorites. His piano concertos have loads of vitality and movement, and his first piano concerto--as well as his concerto for violin--are included here. I've been listening to this disc as I'm typing this and this one is going to be fun to hear more of.

Theodor Leschetizky is a composer I don't know at all, but he was quite famous in his day, especially as a teacher, caving instructed--so the liner notes say--over 1200 pianists, including the handsome and wild-haired Ignacy Paderewski (composer and then Prime Minister of Poland), Artur Schnabel, and famous one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein (before he lost the arm in WWI). In an unusual move, there is a bonus track performed by Leschetizky himself, though he died in 1915--it is a restored recording of the composer reciting his artistic credo, transferred from an Edison cylinder recorded 102 years ago--almost to the day--on January 17, 1907. Speaking of cylinders, there is a wonderful website out there dedicated to the restoration and dissemination of ancient recordings well worth checking out--the Cylinder Preservation and Digitalization Project website--linked here.

Stay warm, everyone!

Has This Sort of Thing...

2009-01-06T22:46:00.004-05:00

...ever happened to you?

The students are all coming back to college this week, you know. And I'm sure I'm not the only grad student who's had a student stagger in with the word "ASS-POKE" Sharpie-markered on his forehead.

--"Never be Alone" by Justice.

Arches of Gold, continued

2009-01-05T21:48:00.003-05:00

At lunch (McChicken, Diet Coke). I'm working on semester plans--lessons, sequence of readings, which activities to do.
A woman, stringy-haired, 40-ish and not holding it well, pushes a stroller in through the side door, orders her food, finds her seat in a booth halfway across the restaurant. The employee who does the fries, with the shiny Billy Dee Williams/Rick James Jheri-curl, is out wiping tables. He, as he did over the summer, feels compelled to chat up the customers, but talks so quickly, and with such abrupt pauses, that people can't respond to all he says and often don't say much at all.

"Oh hitherewhat abeautifulbabyHiThere!Prettybabyyour Babyis gettinbig!" He says to the greasy-haired woman.

"He's an asshole." the woman says.
"Oh nonono, don'tsay that. He's beautifulbeautiful. Don't say that."
The woman swallows some burger. "Oh yes he is," she says, serious, yet singsong, "A lit-tle ass-hole."
The fry-guy has the rag twisted around both of his hands. "He's such a pretty baby. Don't say that."
"He's definitely a Junior."
"s'That so..."
"An ugly little asshole." The woman is nibbling on a fry, looking sideways at the three-month old in the stroller. The fry-guy, not sure what else to say, moves to other tables to wipe down. The woman, in rather grave baby-tones and with a mouth half filled with fries, leans to the stroller, "Yes, I'm talking about you. Yes I am. And your daddy too." Her voice raises in pitch with each last word: "I'm talking about you."

She turns back to her burger and the baby makes a slight noise. She chews. Rolls her eyes once. The baby makes another chirp. "You gonna cry? You gonna cry?" she says, again with that slight lilt that hints at baby-talk, but all dead serious, "You're workin' on it. All depends on how loud, that's what you're thinkin' of. You're working on it, I know." She doesn't move toward the child, continues to chew at her burger, both elbows against the edge of the table.
A more irritated noise comes from the baby. "Wonderful," she says, still chewing, "just wonderful."

After a bit, she finishes with her food, leans over to pick up the baby. Come ere, little asshole, she says, almost melodically enough to cover the malice. As she dandles the baby at the table, she sings him a sort of song:
Lo-ser. Lo-ser. You're a Lo-ser.
My mommy says 'you're a lo-ser.'
My mommy says. My mommy says,
Mommy says 'let's go see papa.'
Lo-ser. Lo-ser. Lo-ser...

She leaves before I do, by some five minutes. As I'm walking home, I see her about a block or so off, wanting to cross 10th. She does, halfway, then continues on her way for about a half-block, pushing the stroller right down the double yellow line in the middle of afternoon traffic, past two police cars. I see their brake lights and she loops back to the sidewalk, pushing doggedly to the bus stop.

Happy New Year, Folks!

2009-01-01T01:03:00.006-05:00

For all, I wish, in spite of odds, a happy 2009. For Holly, I wish her throat gets better right quick. For Kristen, I wish her ease in dissertation-writing, for my sister I hope for correct usage of toys and various huggy-buggy books in her household, for E&E I wish happiness even though your Thompson guy didn't win, for Mom I wish a great big raise. for Jeff I wish a move soon from the snowy tundra of Seattle to fairer climes for job and pocketbook. To my fellow MFAs, I wish you ease in publication. For my recently-evicted neighbors, I wish you a family reunion sooner than you expected after your Christmas-weekend move. For Michelle and Craig I wish all happiness.

Happy New Year, all, we all have something to learn--and for the CEOs of America's auto industry, I wish you all well behind me in line for a new job.

Christmas Traditions and Violence

2008-12-25T17:47:00.002-05:00

Ah, the holidays. I saw David Sedaris read this in person a while back and thought I'd share the heartwarming Christmas story. Here's part 1 of three--Happy Holidays, everyone!

Here's part two:

And Part Three:

And to all a good night!

How to Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew You--The Post-Love song

2008-12-17T00:47:00.011-05:00

I'm home after posting grades and surviving a drive through freezing drizzle that coated the leading half of my car with half an inch of ice. In surfing the internet, I re-found the most wonderful, the best, rendition of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen recorded, by Jeff Buckley (with no-doubt intentionally ironic use of the tritone in the instrumental interludes), on the only major label album released in the man's lifetime, before he drowned in the Mississippi River on my birthday over ten years ago.

The only person who's come even close to this is k d lang, in a live performance, sung for the Alberta centennial four years ago. The song in question comes in at about a third of the way through at 4:30 (with some slight synch delay):

It's one of the most transcendent sad songs written. And, having seen k d lang in Seattle in 1987, she's one of my major singing influences, for what little that's worth...

Anti-Annie? Answers Anon...

2008-12-09T15:34:00.002-05:00

My sister expressed concern that I'd taken a contra-Annie platform. I want to assure her that that is not the case. In light of this, and apropos of revising a poem set in Venice's San Marco square, I include the following...

Asshat Auto Exec Syndrome

2008-12-08T09:47:00.003-05:00

I don't want auto workers to lose their jobs, but I certainly want the execs that have been in charge of America's auto industry to lose theirs. If they were parents, one could almost get them for wilfull negligence.

Seeing their companies' commercials on TV this week, you'd think we were still in another time, like, say, 8 to 10 years ago. Cadillac Escalades. Hummers (with the ludicrous mention of improved mileage). Dodge has just come out with a new campaign that announces that their Pickup trucks have established a new, previously unattained level of luxury. Ahem--for pickups. There has been rather milquetoast-intensity pressure on them to increase their MPG rating and efficiency, but they have come back time and again saying that that would be too expensive, that that would hurt the industry, that that would only be attainable if the slope were less steep.

Well, it's certainly steeper now. But asshat syndrome is spreading. Get a load of this--Reuters has reported that there is now a megachurch pastor who has decided to get God involved. By bringing SUVs onto the stage (I refuse to call it anything else) and conduct a pray-in. you can read about it here. There is a picture here.

At least you can't say that the American auto industry doesn't have a prayer.

My New Favorite Song

2008-12-07T16:19:00.003-05:00

Over Annie Lennox by far, this is the song I'm gonna be singin:

Caetano Veloso is the stuff.

Back to Business

2008-11-30T10:40:00.002-05:00

Wow, a week can go by quickly. Did I get the stuff done I wanted to before school started up again? Nope. I at least got three new pieces drafted and about ten revisions done, finished up reading two books, and did some laundry, which will have to do.

I also finished reading the first part of Dostoevsky's Idiot, which is a 150-page presentation of a hell of a chaotic and bad day for Prince Myshkin, someone already in frail health which will get frailer. It's given me various ideas for the last two weeks of writing activities for my students. [insert evil laughter here]

In the Light of Current Events--and in Response to Certain Unnamed Parties...

2008-11-27T00:58:00.004-05:00

...and considering the unnamed parties in question, sadly, they'd have no worries about how to vote regarding the following video. It's for them I post it:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Saying that voting should only be for those who own property, saying that civil rights are decided by majority vote, saying that second-class citizenship should be decided by a ballot is mighty dangerous stuff to be arguing for right now. Within a generation, you'll be the one arguing for what the current legislation reads. If you can't get along, go along. And that goes for you, Mr. Pillar of Nebraska Lutheran Society, not that you check out the Interweb, aside from making sure that no uncleanness enters the household. Time Marches on, and if its a more tolerant time, then God bless it. He blesses the meek, you might remember.

And the Days Grind...

2008-11-26T11:28:00.003-05:00

...toward January, when Bush, who is seemingly absent from current workings in Washington (or am I just not paying close enough attention?), finally gets to go back to his ranch in Texas again, this time permanently. It's been a long 8 years of missed opportunities and deadly lapses. Time Magazine's Joe Klein has put it rather well:

This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles — overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence.

The latter has held sway these past few months as the economy has crumbled. It is too early to rate the performance of Bush's economic team, but we have more than enough evidence to say, definitively, that at a moment when there was a vast national need for reassurance, the President himself was a cipher. Yes, he's a lame duck with an Antarctic approval rating — but can you imagine Bill Clinton going so gently into the night? There are substantive gestures available to a President that do not involve the use of force or photo ops. For example, Bush could have boosted the public spirit — and the auto industry — by announcing that he was scrapping the entire federal automotive fleet, including the presidential limousine, and replacing it with hybrids made in Detroit. He could have jump-started — and he still could — the Obama plan by releasing funds for a green-jobs program to insulate public buildings. He could start funding the transit projects already approved by Congress.

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

Vista STILL Sucks...

2008-11-24T11:52:00.002-05:00

...regardless as to what the folks say on that dumb Project Navaho ad campaign. Here's French and Saunders:

Microsoft, you are still on notice. Don't think for a second that I'll forget.

Racist Stupidity and Gun Collecting

2008-11-22T01:12:00.003-05:00

Just met some people (who will remain nameless) unexpectedly, and it started off as a quite pleasant surprise. How it ended was less so. Racist jokes aren't funny. They really aren't funny when they involve death and when they involve the president-elect. Nope, not even a little bit funny. Not even a little bit appropriate. And this one was really wanting to tell it, as he brought it up several times in conversation. Others at the table evidently had heard it told to them before and kept changing the topic, but he was able to foist it on us anyway. I once thought I'd move to Nebraska, but let's just say that I'm not likely to want to move any closer to this particular person any time soon. But then again, I'm sure the feeling is mutual. I'd perhaps blog more about it, but not now. I'm too pissed, and typing blog posts while one is pissed never goes well.

Christian? My ass...

Why?

2008-11-08T22:55:00.002-05:00

...because this song is great, and the video makes me feel sophisticated just from watching it. It's Koop's Island Blues.

Much going on...

2008-10-31T14:16:00.004-04:00

Whew--the next few weeks are going to be packed--readings, revisions, reviews, emails to Poland (perhaps I might be able to finagle an interview of a composer?), working on finalizing the next issue of Sycamore, etc. Spoke with Lan Samantha Chang Wednesday evening, who is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I mentioned that I spent my formative years in West Branch, only ten miles away. She asked whether I spent much time at the Herbert Hoover Presidential library there. I suppose I did, but mostly in roller-skating around it. In fourth grade, I wasn't particularly interested in the contents of the library.

My latest batch of new recordings should be especially interesting--two recent releases from col legno, one based on a work of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus called The Angel of History. Also high on the interest-o-meter is the 1977 music to the reconstruction of Oskar Schlemmer's groundbreaking Bauhaus work The Triadische Ballett.

This weekend, Theresa and I will be driving up to Chicago to conduct an interview with Adam Zagajewski, who has a great new book of poems out. Zagajewski was not only gracious in aloowing us to conduct this "make-up" interview (the first interview, conducted by Keverlee and Mindy, wasn't preserved due to recorder malfunction), but is especially gracious in that we are interviewing him in his very own living room. I almost feel I should bring a small casserole for the buffet.

At any rate, this means I might not have many posts here until the semester comes to a close , but I'll do my best to continue posting regularly.

Attacking McCain: The Age vs Ageism

2008-10-27T11:47:00.003-04:00

Ok--I've been pissed about this for a while now, and I've finally hit the breaking point on this bit. Believe it or not, I'm standing up for MCCain on this one. A very wide range of people, from those on the street to David Letterman quip routinely about Metamucil with regard to the Republican candidate for President. I recall a joke told having todo with McCain being present for the initial chiseling of the Ten Commandments. Each of those people making such jokes, no doubt, are surrounded by people as old or older than McCain who are sharp as tacks, who get out and do things, who have photographic memories, etc. Working on a college campus, I know I'm surrounded by such people.

The issue is that the jokesters and naysayers are confusing Age with outmoded ideas. Again, being on a college campus, I am surrounded by forward-thinking individuals approximately McCain's age. There are other ways to discuss the (de)merits of one's qualifications to the highest office than discussions about "senior moments" and intestinal regularity, and those ways are discussions of the issues and whether the candidate's position on them reflects a way of thinking that is no longer the best way. To continue disparaging McCain using age-based jokes rather than the Age we are living in is just as ostracizing of a group of people that ignorant statements on race or religion are with regard to Obama.

Speaking of race-based discussions, McCain missed a big opportunity on Meet the Press to speak emphatically on the racist overtones of what's going on in the elections and outside of Republican rallies. When asked about Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama being seen as based on race, he says a very quiet "no" and then goes on to state his disappointment with Colin Powell before getting hung up on who endorsed him. The question comes up at 6:15 in the following video:

This would've been a great opportunity to go on record and speak toward the racial issues regarding the campaign. The sad reality here, though, is that if people have issues regarding race, they are more likely to vote McCain's way, giving him little motivation--outside of a civic-minded one--to make any further comment.

The Importance of the Z axis

2008-10-24T23:11:00.003-04:00

I'm no math major. I took various algebra classes in my undergraduate year and found myself thinking--sometimes aloud--that, if x=3.5, how does x feel about equalling that after all that work, especially when y=4.9?

At any rate, in addition to basic polynomials, there were the f(x) functions, as well as graphing, with the parabolas, the hyperbolas, the straight lines going off everlastingly in various directions. In pursuing poetic arts in later life, I'm finding that various aspects of successful art all trail back to mathematics, the one truly universal language other than laughter, perhaps.

Art, it seems to me, is the pursuit for some sort of beauty, over some sort of pretty thing. As Marianne Boruch mentioned in one of my classes, the difference between something being pretty and something being beautiful is tension. And it is this tension that one seeks in art. It is this tension that one seeks in any of the arts.

Holly showed me a picture this evening of park benches in fog. The pic was static at first glance, it had balance, sure, and if we were graphing, we had a bench on either side of the y axis, right on the x axis. Nothing new about that. Perfect symmetry. A sort of plus sign in landscape. An example of real life as artifice. The problem was that the pic was interesting. Why? Well, for one, was the oddly-shaped tree on the right side of the frame--something to throw off the balance of the identical benches. In addition, and most importantly, there was the fact that, just past the benches was a drop, some sort of unknown depth, beyond which the oddly-shaped trees were rooted, from which the trees thrust their branches toward the camera: the often-overlooked z axis, that of depth. Its so often, even with the talk of rising action and denouement, we get preoccupied with the x and y axes, but the big deal is with the most foreshortened one from our perspective, the z.

I had various flashy ideas for ending this bit, but, it's late, and most of those who read this blog know this already. My biggest question is how this sort of thing can be taught to artists of any stripe. Or whether it's even teachable.

Good Explanations from Powell--

2008-10-19T12:09:00.001-04:00

Nazi Swing??

2008-10-18T14:10:00.002-04:00

The things I find that I've got in my CD collection. While working on a review of vintage musical settings of the work of Klabund, I rummaged around in my discs to find other German Cabaret recordings, and found a fascinating collection from Proper Records. During WWII, the Germans had their own propaganda campaigns. From 1937 to pretty much the end of the European part of the war, various German jazz bands, once they were purged of their Jewish contingents, were employed to record messages for broadcast to damage the morale of Britain. The resulting songs, long buried, are an amazing listen. Almost all of them are popular songs of the day, recorded with English lyrics, and in the middle, a speak-sing section of Pro-Nazi lyrics. In the middle of "You're Driving Me Crazy," a song made popular again about 10 years ago by Squirrel Nut Zippers, the very wooden Charlie and His Orchestra break into an impression of Winston Churchill:
"Yes, the Germans are driving me crazy. I thought I had brains,/ but they've shattered my planes...The Jews are the friends who are near me, to cheer me believe me they do./But Jews are they kind who now hurt me, desert me, and laugh at me too."

Some of this stuff has to be heard to be believed. One can picture music halls in Germany bopping to this sort of thing, as the hate-lyrics go right on swinging. Other grotesque renditions include "Stormy Weather," (again with a sad Winston Churchill impression), "Bye, Bye Blackbird," and, bizarrely, "Makin' Whoopee." Sound bites are no doubt available somewhere on the internet. The 4-disc set is a freaky visit to a place where catchy music is used to promote the darkest of motives.

Sean Hannity certainly has the answers--

2008-10-13T01:33:00.002-04:00

This from September. It certainly takes a lot to convince some people that the market ain't a bed of roses. A month later, in spite of Hannity's figures, I do believe that the situation can be described as "dire," certainly.

Wasn't there a day, way back when, when in order to be seen as an authority, a credible authority, one needed to be consistently accurate? O'Reilly, Hannity, and Nancy Grace for some reason keep getting byes in this regard. Aren't there other newscasters and (gasp) actual reporters waiting in the wings?

What's even worse--I just got news that Archway cookies has folded. The dark days just keep getting darker.

The Importance of Choosing One's Analogy Carefully

2008-10-12T12:19:00.005-04:00

Biden mentioned that it was patriotic to pay taxes. To an extent, that's right, in that one is paying one's dues for enjoying the benefits of living in this country. Palin, in a rather idiotic move, said that it wasn't. Though this certainly seemed a nod toward those who could afford to sock money away in tax shelters, this isn't the main point of my post. In a recent Bill Maher episode (the tenth of October), Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, in his defense of Palin's comment, brings up, of all things, the Boston Tea Party as support. The discussion in question starts at 4:00 in the clip below:

The big problem with using analogies is that, if one doesn't look at the details, one can shoot a bigger-than-yer-ass-sized hole in one's argument. As even Wikipedia will tell you, the main drive toward the Boston Tea Party was, yes, taxes, and lowering them. What Moore seems to forget is that the reason is found in that phrase we all likely learned in grade school: Taxation without representation. In this day and age, the ones waging their wars on taxation are the ones that get preferential representation. Corporations that relocate their headquarters off in Bermuda, for example (Quick question--where do you suppose Halliburton is located for tax purposes? It ain't Kansas, it's Dubai.) Moore says that Americans dumped the tea because Americans hate paying taxes. Moore, dude, for the general American, back then as it is today, it ain't the tax thing that got their dander up, it was that lack of representation bit.

Moore then has the gall to add, later in the clip, "Well, if paying taxes is so patriotic, then why don't they pay more taxes?" Sure, they can send it in by the bucketload, but what, sincerely would be the benefit for that? Who, might I ask, would benefit? Not fellow liberals, I don't believe, and certainly not the country.

Past Republican Presidents would not be Happy...

2008-10-10T22:22:00.003-04:00

...with what their party has become, methinks. Since the Republican convention, I've been growing increasingly concerned regarding the party's catering to a certain segment of the population. The rhetoric has been escalating as the campaigns have progressed, and now we have Palin talking about Obama palling around with domestic terrorists. Cindy McCain has started using Obama's middle name again. Here, we have a result of such moves:

The group waiting to get into the town-hall meeting certainly didn't all feel this way, but I haven't heard any of their number contest the allegations presented. I also find it laughable that octogenarians long-since retired are telling people to "get a job." The epithet "socialist" is confusing, considering that the Bush administration, in light of the recent nosedive of the markets worldwide, is working toward Government administration of the banking sector. Last I heard, Bush wasn't a Democrat. What I don't find so laughable are allegations that Obama supporters are "commie faggots." There are bad apples in every barrel, certainly, but looking at the homogeneity of the folks waiting to get inside, the shit they're spouting, and the concerns they have regarding Barack Hussein Obama, it seems more a fear of otherness than a disagreement on foreign policy.

Well, THAT Worked Just Great

2008-10-08T17:20:00.002-04:00

$700 Billion? Sure! Oversight? Nah--you did so well with the money earlier, we trust ya. AIG? You poor dears, let's throw some money at you so you can have a lovely half-mil retreat for your Highly-Compensated employees two weeks later. Oh, and today, it comes out you need another $37 billion? Why not? Oh, and that's not even included in the $700 billion bailout mentioned earlier.

Folks, if you aren't furious about this, you ought to be.

Chilean Antipoetic Political Commentary

2008-10-04T23:15:00.002-04:00

This from Nicanor Parra's new book, due in December 2008:

REMARKS BY THE MINISTER IN CHARGE

We do not respond
To ill-disposed comments:
Even a nursing child knows
That the tapeworm of extreme poverty
Was caused by previous administrations

We recognize that the unemployment figure
Is somewhat higher than one would like
But we have the responsibility to remind you
That the Government is not an employment agency

There are no lack of beds in the hospitals
It just happens that there are too many sick people...
There's an excessive number of sick in this country
The truth of the matter is
That owing to the high level of excellence
Of our hospital services
The sick are not dying quickly enough

They go on living even if in precarious conditions
Causing numerous difficulties

Parra, in his nineties, is one of the more influential poets of Chile, and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti cited him as influential in the writing of their own poems. His latest book, from which this is drawn, is After-Dinner Declarations, in parallel translations by Dave Oliphant. Keep an eye out for it--it's so new even Amazon doesn't have it available for pre-order.
ISBN: 978-0-924047-63-3

Burnt Brandy and Birthdays Deferred

2008-10-03T22:37:00.004-04:00

I'm stuffed. Practically needed a gurney to get me to the car. My great friend Joe has been trying to get me to commit to going someplace for my birthday (for over five months), and by then it was Royce's birthday, so Joe took the lead and, last week before the symphony, made arrangements for us all to have dinner at the Oceannaire in downtown Indy, designed after the decor of 1930s ocean liners such as the Champlain and the Normandie.
Oysters on the half shell. Bouillabaisse. Crab legs. Plymouth gin martinis. Toasted rolls and white wine on ice. Creme Brulee and, yes, Baked Alaska, complete with at-table blue-flame toasting of the meringue. It all no doubt cost a fortune. The conversation was lovely and the company even better. Joe's a great guy and a wonderful influence, though I admit it is his fault to some extent that I now have 75 CDs to review. Were it not for his unwittingly almost locking me on the fire escape of our apartment building on July 4 1996, I'd not have spent all that money on Classical CDs, concert performances, and not have made rather embarrassing attempts to interview visiting pianists for some imaginary periodical. Fiscal jeopardy aside, it's my firm belief that there needs to be more Joes in this world. Cherish them when you find them.

Photo:First Class Smoking Room of S.S. Normandie. Pic from Garemaritime.com

Queries and Mass Transit

2008-09-27T16:01:00.002-04:00

In the bookstore, a parent calls repeatedly for her child, moving slowly through the maze of shelves. "Grace," she says: "Grace. Grace." The same deadpan way a backwards-walking flight attendant holding a bag says "Trash-- Trash-- Trash" in the dry, cold, foot- and peanut-scented air of the jet. A query, a deadpan demand, a weary need.

--Photo: Davo. Gasometer, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Where was Sarah?

2008-09-26T22:57:00.002-04:00

I got home late, the Symphony running until after 10, but I was able to catch the last of the exchange between the candidates and the after-debate analyzo-patter on two of the main networks. For each (CBS and NBC), the commentators looked to other members of the parties to say their piece about how the debate went. Williams started by talking to Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden. For the Republican viewpoint, we cut to--Giuliani?? Where was Palin? Thinking perhaps she was chatting with another network for her bit, I changed channels. Couric interviews Joe Biden, and then cuts to some Republican surrogate. Where was Palin? The impression that Palin is being used as wild-card material and someone otherwise to be screened from the public continues to linger.

Oh, and, in case you didn't know it before. McCain was a POW. I'm glad he came out and made that bit clear in his closing comments. It helps many American citizens see his possible qualifications for the Presidency much more clearly.

Something Else Might be About to Crater, too...

2008-09-26T12:37:00.001-04:00

At least he hasn't postponed the debate. We shall see how things go.

Palin and Kung Pao Chicken--Chinese Buffet Espionage

2008-09-20T19:55:00.006-04:00

Today: An upper-60s couple in adjoining booth on a lovely afternoon a week after Hurricane Ike:
He, unlike his wife and I, has a view of the parking lot, says something about the sky clouding up.

She: Has Hurricane Ike come through yet? I heard we were supposed to get rain.

He: Yes, it was sometime earlier. There was another one, but it's not supposed to hit. [I assume he meant Hanna, which was gone before Ike hit Texas]

...I come back with more shrimp dumplings and Shao Mai; their talk draws me away from the muted televisions hanging from the ceiling.

She: You know, I have a lot of respect for how Sarah Palin dresses. You know that 80s look is my style, and seeing her on TV makes me think..well...that it's not gone. It's not like the fashions girls wear today... What those girls wear today is...

The tone implies a facial expression of certain disdain I can't see from my position hunched over my plate. Her husband says something related to Palin, but moves away from fashion, a subject that doesn't sound like his forte.

He: I just don't get why they hate her so much.

She: It's because of her faith.

He: They're all so full of hate. All these liberals--where does the hate come from?

She: It's because they don't have the Lord. Without the Lord, all those Liberals have is hate. Have you had the ice cream yet?

He: No.

She: It's firm, it's good. The Coke is good today too. They've got the mix just right. I'll take my Celebrex when we get home. I'll be sure to take it with water instead of Coke.

At least even Palin fans know not to combine their 'scrip drugs with Coke. It's bad news.

Photo: Davo--Weather Booth at State Fair, August 08

From Spiders to Bigger Beasties

2008-09-20T17:03:00.003-04:00

Not wanting to dwell too terribly long on the possibility of other spiders roaming around the house (so far none has made its presence known), I got online and looked for other interesting things. I found another, far more dreadful beast, the Chronophage, the elaborated mechanism topping the new Corsum clock in Cambridge. Stephen Hawking will preside over its unveiling.

The creature at the top of the clock is meant to be an animal that eats time, creeping stealthily over a circular representation of time itself, with lights indicating hours, minutes, seconds, and smaller. Stephen Taylor, the clock's creator, said he meant the clock to be terrifying, which it is, but it's also cool as hell.

Take care, websurfers--I'm sure there are important things to do, and time is short...

It's that Time of Year

2008-09-18T22:01:00.002-04:00

They're moving indoors. This makes encounter number two with arachnoid life-forms. The first one was at E&E's apartment--a rather alarming first-thing-in-the-morning event where one bigger than this crawled up my neck. This one has literary aspirations, checking out the stack of Best American Essays volumes recently bought at Half Price. Here's hoping that this was only a one-spider reconnaissance party and therefore are no others crawling around the bedroom.

Palin's Relations, or, Traveling without Moving

2008-09-14T10:41:00.003-04:00

I'd write more on Sarah Palin, but frankly, she pisses me off, and I don't write well--either an essay or on my project--when I'm pissed. The folks at Slate, however, have an article that could be similar to what I might have written if it weren't for the fact I keep getting pissed off. "Thanks but no thanks" on that bridge to nowhere, indeed. Oh, and regarding the recent talking point on Palin having foreign relations experience because Alaska is close to Russia (recited by Cindy McCain, among others, who really must think us all idiots) I read somewhere (I'll see if I can give credit to the original author later, but let it suffice for now that I didn't come up with it myself)a perfectly succinct rejoinder:

I can see the moon out of my window--that doesn't make me a fucking astronaut.

Books I'm Teaching this Fall

2008-09-08T01:04:00.004-04:00

Following Laura's lead (her blog is in my list o' links), I'll include my list, too.

The overarching theme of the books is that of becoming, of characters gaining further insight and developing, which is a rather general thread, but I didn't want to be too specific on something that, given what I'm doing with my class, would end up being of tertiary importance anyway. The list:

Two Sherlock Holmes Adventures, leading into:
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Demian by Hermann Hesse
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The obvious odd one out is the Dostoevsky, in that the Underground Man doesn't develop, doesn't gain that additional knowledge of oneself, really, but the reader does this regarding his bad example. It'll be interesting to see what the students have to say about these. I aimed to include at least a few books not often seen on undergraduate class syllabi.

Having spent about 3 hours writing just now, I'm a bit fuzzed-out regarding brain activity and am hoping my late nap this afternoon won't keep me up much longer.

Musical notation, or, Difficult Listening Hour Part III

2008-09-04T12:35:00.003-04:00

Oh, the many things I'm completely stupid in. I have a general knowledge of how standard musical notation works, but then I ran in to various performances of percussion works on YouTube and started wondering how on earth people notated that for replicable performances.

This brought me to percussion notation as well as archaic notations and notations of other cultures, who use various symbols over text to indicate musical intentions.

In looking at various examples of musical notations old and new, I was struck by the connection that can be drawn to poetic form. The limitations of Blogger make excerpts impossible for the most part, but innovations such as William Carlos Williams' stepped line and other poets' "words all over the page" which initially struck me as the result of someone's itchy Tab pinky are a way to indicate to the reader (as performer) of the poem (as score) how the piece should be executed. Musical notation has a variety of ways to control pitch, duration, and tempo. It also has brief written indications (con brio, or sehr schwer) of which Hart Crane's glosses could be seen as analogue. The piece can rely on these more than others. Bach occasionally doesn't even indicate the tempo in some movements. Morton Feldman's monumental pieces even allow the performer to determine the pitches, indicating only that some notes should be held longer. Xenakis has a "spectral" score showing the progression of the piece (watch in full screen to see what's going on).

Of those that relied more heavily, Scriabin began some of his pieces with poetry, giving ominous written instructions as the work progressed ( the darknesss enters, or the sweetness gradually becoming more and more caressing and poisonous...). Erik Satie did this far more lightheartedly, indicating that one piano work be played "like a nightingale with a toothache" or having a story printed above the staves for the performer to read (he expressly forbade the performers to read these aloud to the audience) so that the performer had something else to do in case boredom set in.

One thing I will attempt this semester is to introduce my students to the idea of musical notation in poetry, how it can be adapted and incorporated. Alice Notley gives a good indication of how this can be done in the following excerpt, one of the many striking moments in her wonderful long poem The Descent of Alette, in which she uses the quotation mark in almost the same manner a breath mark is used in vocal scores, changing the rather matter-of-fact words and syntax into something seen in a vision:

“A mother” “& child” “were both on fire, continuously”
“The fire” “was contained in them” “sealed them off
from others” “But you could see the flame” "halo
of short flame all about the” “conjoined bodies, who

sat” “they sat apart” “on a seat for two” “at end of car” “The
ghost” “of the father” “sat in flames” “beside them”
“paler flames” “sat straight ahead” “looking
straight ahead, not” “moving.” “A woman”

“another woman” “in a uniform” “from above the ground”
“entered” “the train” “She was fireproof” “She was gloves & she”
“took” “the baby” “took the baby” “away from the”
“mother” “Extracted” “the burning baby” “from the fire” “they

made together” “But the baby” “still burned”
(“But not yours” “It didn’t happen” “to you”)
“’We don’t know yet” “if it will” “stop burning,’”
“said the uniformed” “woman” “The burning woman” “was crying”

“she made a form” “in her mind” “an imaginary” “form” “to
settle” “in her arms where” “the baby” “had been” “We saw
her fiery arms” “cradle air” “She cradled air” (“They take your
children” “away” “if you’re on fire”)

“In the air that” “she cradled” “it seemed to us there” “floated”
“a flower-like” “a red flower” “its petals” “curling flames”
“She cradled” “seemed to cradle” “the burning flower of” “herself gone”
“her life” (“She saw” “whatever she saw, but what we saw” “was that flower”)

Judy Tenuta for Vice President: It could Happen...or, I Like to Hunt Because I Like Safety Orange

2008-08-30T23:15:00.009-04:00

While looking at the news, as well as at the various appearances on YouTube of the new Republican VP pick, I found myself racking my brains on who this woman reminded me of. She's brassy, she's got verve, she talks as she sees things, she knows how to handle a crowd...

And then it hit me. This woman, the running mate for McCain (McCain a man who criticizes the Democrat candidate as being light on experience), this woman who has less leadership experience than Obama, sounds uncannily like a moderately famous TV personality. As is, Palin sounds certainly like someone one would want to have coffee with after breakfast, or perhaps a beer with, after a productive day of hunting (but I'm thinking, I'm hoping, that we've moved past the age of people voting for candidates that one would want to have drinks with). I'll cut this short, however, and start with Ms. Palin:

And, with the addition of an accordion, I've finally found the person she reminds me of. Note the strange overlap in subject matter, what with hunting, dating, er, running, with older men, etc.:

Henry James and the Art of Constraint

2008-08-28T23:39:00.011-04:00

Of course I decide I'm going to post on this topic after leaving the book in question on the shelf in my office up in Lafayette, but, after a year or so of discussion on experimentalism in developing poetic texts in a non-inspirational way (many kudos to Mary Leader for that), I have finally heard of a method that would work for prose.

One of the biggest hurdles for my students to vault in my Intro to Creative Writing classes has been that the written work (poem or essay or story or novel, etc) is NOT primarily therapy. There are, of course, subsequent issues regarding this main tenet, among them the fact that one's innermost being really does not try to communicate in Longfellow-inspired rhyming couplets, one's soul really doesn't tend to use words like doth and t'was and gloaming. Mentioning anything that verges on the above statements shakes beginning writers to their very core. It shows in their class evals at the end of the semester, which makes it a bitter pill for both instructor and student to swallow.

The difficulty is in getting the budding writers to look at the manuscript produced as "it" rather than "my innermost soul in paper format." Thanks to the various things I learned in conversation (and class) with Mary Leader, I have ways to do that with poetry, but had difficulty in finding analogues in the world of fiction.

While trolling the various used bookstores of Indianapolis, I found a recent volume of The Uncollected Henry James, which, editor Floyd Horowitz claims, is a compiled selection of the earliest works by the great American novelist. Henry James burned his early papers, making research tough, and the journals submitted to had a tendency to publish anonymously, thus making the research work even more difficult. Horowitz followed his various leads, then ran the stories in question through a computer program to determine probable authorship. Based on his research (and the computer program) these are a selection of the stories determined to be among Henry James's earliest published prose works, dating all the way back to his tenth year.

In addition, Horowitz has found that, based on the James household library, Henry James used an unusual method to add an element of constraint to writing his early stories. His Latin lessons involved memorization of vocabulary, and Horowitz posits that this became the basis for writing many of these stories. For a number of the works in the volume he has issued, the central vocabulary for the works is found within a few pages of key words in the Latin/English dictionary James used for his lessons.

Whether this is actually the case will be determined by literary authorities far greater than I, but the method Horowitz mentions is intriguing regarding its possible use in creative writing classes. In looking at any foreign language dictionary, one can unlearn a rule of reading (that of not reading such a dictionary like a novel) and look at a random page for words that suggest a narrative. A random page of any foreign language dictionary gives a range of words that can be the basis for a draft. Opening my Cassel's German/English dictionary to page 320 gives me Misanthrop, Minze, mir, Minus, minuzios, mischen, miserabel. In English we have a miasanthrope, mint plants, a Me, a negative, something very small, an alloy, and miserable. Travel dictionaries give more translations per page and therefore a larger range of words, but with such a collection of base vocabulary, a narrative can be thought out and expanded upon based on entirely chance-based methods. Do beginning students have to write about Me-me-me dealing with uncaring parents and getting drunk at frat parties, and wrangling with daft roommates? No, they have a new framework to flesh out.

Whether or not Henry James actually did this in these stories that he may or may not have written, it's still an interesting--and quite forward-thinking--method to use for prose writing. I'm planning on introducing it to my students this semester. Sometimes trolling the Clearance section of used bookstores comes in handy.

The Grass has Grown under Your Feet--Alison Moyet

2008-08-23T21:56:00.010-04:00

I've been rather behind the times in spite of all the free time--I just found out that Alison Moyet, famed vocalist of 80s group Yaz (partnership with founding Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke, who later became half of Erasure), has had a new solo album out (called The Turn) since October of '07, fer godsakes. In spite of financial straits, I went right out and bought it and am finding more vocal tricks to learn yet. It sounds elemental, and I'm sure it is, but, in light of the first single from her album, I'm prepared to ask Lydia--specifically with the chorus--how to adequately deal with vibrato on open "Ah's" in high registers without going wonky on pitch or fuzzing out one's voice. Other vowels allow for certain tricks, but the low throaty vowels in high registers are really tough. So if Lydia is reading.....

In searching for various interviews in support of the new album, I found a snippet of a performance of one of the songs she made famous right after she left Yaz and right before Vince formed Erasure. The song was a single off her first solo album, and here is its incarnation in 1984, which some may remember:

The song's got a pretty decent range. Hearing the new arrangement is something that the American Idol clones need to pay attention to, and something that experienced singers already know--one can rein it in and yet do more.

The new arrangement is far more desolate and something I want to track down in its entirety:

I love the chord progression and will do all in my power to replicate it on my piano. This arrangement shall be mine.

Dream: Rabbits

2008-08-16T23:46:00.001-04:00

July 2007:

In town (looks like Indianapolis, but the feeling is more East, rather like Dayton Ohio) and I need to make my way to a school to observe or teach or something for a class. I'm on a bus. I realize I'm not quite on the right route. I'll have to get off someplace and do a bit of walking. I'm talking with the busdriver. She tells me not to worry and then drives up to a rural church, driving across a sloping median (almost flipping the lumbering bus in the process) to end up in the parking lot. I get out and find myself in the middle of the church's fundraiser, where wax figurines are $2.00. Old 1950s candles in the shapes of brides and choir members, etc.

Behind the church I see a large white house, where, evidently, some relatives of mine live. I'd been there at some point months before. I go upstairs as the relatives talk downstairs in the living room.

In the stuff I found upstairs--I realize I'd left quite a bit more behind than I thought--was a slender white Forecast suitcase and vacuum-sealed aged steak. At some point, the kids of these relatives (so I'm assuming) had slit the plastic and extracted a steak, leaving the remaining aged steak to spoil.

I still had to get to the school. I put various things in the white suitcase. Outside, I hear my father talking with the owner of the house, walking across the bif front yard, when I wake up.

The striking thing I remember from this dream is, as I was walking to the house, with the early evening sun setting behind it, was that I could see the rabbits hidden in the unmown lawn by the sun shining through their upright ears. They showed pink in the expanses of sunlit green.

Photo: Davo. Rabbit: Suzanne Blomenberg

More pix from the Fair

2008-08-15T23:31:00.009-04:00

So, while I sit here at my desk, trying not to eat the food set aside for the party, I thought I'd post a few more pix of the Fair. As with the last post, my eye kept getting caught by the signage. For example, we have the following enticements:

On the other side of the same booth is the same sentiment, spelled better, and, as an added bonus, everyone's favorite: quotation marks as "emphasis"--

These pigs, however, need no "buckels."

Now, regarding the "fried x" trend, we've come, in the past six years or so, from the fried Twinkie, to the Fried Ho-Ho, to the Ding-Dong, the fried Oreo, the fried Snickers Bar, and then, last year, we hit what I sincerely hoped would be the end of the "deep-fried x." That nadir was Deep Fried Pepsi. You heard it. And, in case you're asking (and I know you are), deep-fried Pepsi is essentially funnel-cake batter with Pepsi instead of water. After it comes out of the fryer, the powdered sugar is substituted by a drizzlin' of pure Pepsi syrup. I could only picture the chunderfest after eating one of those and hitting the teacup ride. So, after that, you'd think it'd be over. But no. Frankly, after seeing these signs, I'm thinking that they're trying too darned hard. (and the cookie dough sign has ruined the Pillsbury dough-boy for me for all time. I'll now only be able to see him as a sort of acid-freakout hellspawn , pushing death-dealing fritters.)

Davo goes to the Fair, Part Deux

2008-08-15T00:56:00.009-04:00

Deb came down with passes to the fair --including parking, so she didn't have to ride in on my handlebars for free parking --and I followed her along on her traditional route, which started with an elephant ear that both put us under gastrically for some time.I, in true allegiance to my family name, chose to show my stomach who was boss and got a corndog. Then another. The second corndog was an error. I knew this as soon as I gave my order. The folks in the booth were a mess. A real mess, and the words of my corndog order were coming out like some sort of unstoppable liquid and once I let her know I wanted a corndog I watched her extend her thumb to her mouth, lick it, use the moistened thumb to loosen the sheet of paper from the stack, and use the spitty paper to wrap my corndog. Word to the wise--as soon as you see some 60-year-old with a snakebite and an eyebrow ring taking your order, run mid-sentence.

From there we witnessed the pre-demise of the poultry barn, with the non-prize-winners stuffed into crates (chickens with ducks, ducks with geese, chickens and ducks with geese) and taken away by the truckload, then the Reubenesque curves of the draft horses pulling laquered carts with running lights.This late in the week the Fair seemed a sort of society that knows its end is near--the loopiness of the attendees, the wave of agitation that overtook the Poultry pavilion once the men came to empty the cages, the shuttering of various booths. The Gideons were handing out pamphlets--other religious groups had stands with knobbed doors with various questions on them saying things like Are you going to go to heaven? What will God do to me if I don't believe? Do pets have an afterlife? Regarding the last question, there are about 100 crates of poultry right now that are hoping the answer is Yes.

The Fair

2008-08-11T22:58:00.003-04:00

Hey folk--
Here's a preliminary look at the fair. I rode my bike too much, got too much sun, and ate far, far too much fair food. Ergo, I'm feeling waaay gross at the moment and need to lie still for a good long while. More on this in the next post.

Futurepast

2008-08-09T15:59:00.003-04:00

Dream, Pez's Birthday, 2008:

I am called on at last minute to introduce Hillary Clinton, who is campaigning. I had initial plans for the intro, but scrap these for reading a paragraph from a biography of Hillary--something that ended with "Politician, inventor, innovator" or something like that. I go up to address the audience and talk off the cuff while I thumb through the volume--I'd lost the page. I say that I'd had an intro prepared, but in place of that I'd read from this book that came out during her last campaign. I can't find the page. Hillary keeps walking in and saying in undertones that the intro can end. She wants me to finish so she can start her stump speech. Since I can't find the page--there are so many pictures!--I introduce her, using what I remembered of the paragraph, but wake up before I finish and before she can go to the podium.

As I woke, I found myself thinking two things:
First, I felt bad that my waking left Hillary in limbo, between intro and speech, in an eternally unresolved situation. My second thought was on all of those photographs--they were all pics of war--GIs in floppy hats sitting in the hatches of helicopters. Shattered jungle. So much strife. As I woke I felt perhaps it best that the speech was cut off by my waking up--her book was full of war and conflict. another candidate would be better. But then I remembered that in the dream the biography was written during her first campaign, that this dream may actually have been set in the future, that all the images of war were the result of a future administration that was ending in the dream, four years in the future. Her position as candidate seemed much stronger in that light.

A Change of Venue

2008-08-06T14:15:00.004-04:00

Hardee's:

A man who allows that the only things to touch his food are pickles and yellow mustard. Everything should taste of vinegar.

People who work in Sales sit in the next booth. Nothing is more boring than hearing such conversation, which runs the gamut of passing mentions of their convincing people to buy something, the sales deals they're putting together, and what their target customers said or did that might indicate that a sale is forthcoming. All of this is, in essence, a further selling, of self, to the other salesman. I'm busy, you see. I'm a good salesman. I can move product.

The line of sight over their commerce shows the passing billboard of a bus and a sign. The sign says Post Office. Its greenness surrounds an arrow-shaped white void that people refer to. They then turn left. turn South. turn into the greasespotted parking lot past the bank, past the Hardee's where the employees accusingly yell "Guest IN" upon entry, past the thrift store to the blondbricked post office. Over the entry is a shadowed graffito. The graffito says ASS in bloated letters. Flies run their halting course up the window.

In parking-lot islands across the nation, there are men like those out there, levering up skull-sized clods of dirt, topped with grass. They pivot, extend their arms, knock the blade free. The clod rolls heavily to the curb, which bears the mark of a brush on its surface. The man digging duplicating precisely the motions of a mime miming a shoveler.

photo by Davo. Sea Lions, Indianapolis Zoo

There He Is

2008-08-05T13:54:00.004-04:00

McDonalds:

Jimmy has cut off all his hair. He now has a C-shaped area of white shiny skin surrounding his very darkly- tanned skull.

The ice-cream ladies are late. The Cougher shoulders open the door with some difficulty. "There he is," she says to the other. They are looking at me. Behind them, cutting across the parking lot, is a man who, if he weren't wearing a bright peach polo shirt and pink shorts with white support socks, would look just like Victor Hugo. A gouty walk that implies a cane.

Behind the counter, one of the employees is asking the others, "Hey, do you smell ginger?" "In this place?" one says.

In one of the booths, on her mother's shoulder, a child replicates her spankings as she eats her Happy Meal, her fingers splayed out stiffly. She counts out the blows, stops at ten, starts over.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn 1918-2008

2008-08-03T22:00:00.016-04:00

Solzhenitsyn, who died today, was an author I had only vaguely heard of before I got the news I was going to Russia in 1993. I didn't know him by name, actually, but by the title of his largest work--The Gulag Archipelago. When I found out that I was going to be going to Moscow, I thought it would be a good idea to have at least an idea of the culture I was going to be living in for the then-foreseeable future. I picked up a paperback edition of volume 1...

...and it scared the pants off me. Invasive governments, extensive interrogations, trumped-up charges, the necessity of towing the Party line, and the cynical use of hope as a carrot to keep even the prisoners going, as with the horse in Orwell's Animal Farm.

Upon my arrival in Moscow, the place seemed a city filled with ghosts. The Stalin Gothic wedding-cake high-rises, built with Gulag prisoner labor, the stagnant, lilypad-clogged pool--the world's largest heated pool at the time, though it was evidently defunct--in place of the once-largest Russian Orthodox cathedral at the center of town, the monasteries throughout the city and elsewhere, vacated after the Revolution and thereafter used as either stables or as prison camps for those not in the Lubyanka prison (an old hotel situated, with typical irony, across the street from Children's World). But more haunting to me than all of these was the pervasiveness of Party symbology even almost two years after the fall of Communism. Red stars abounded, in the artwork of the subway, or spinning in the wind at the top of the Kremlin towers. Sheaves of wheat, freshly harvested by the Serp or Sickle. Such things were everywhere, in chandeliers, plaster moldings, and even the building footprint of various edifices, such as the Red Army Theater. My students at the time almost universally repudiated Solzhenitsyn. "He leaves during the worst of our troubles, and comes back once everything is A-OK. He's a coward." His time spent in prison, his ceaseless interrogation by Soviet officials, his efforts--at risk of his own skin and those who confided in him--at documenting in the legitimate press what had only to that point been in Samizdat all fell by the wayside for these students. I had various disagreements regarding other things he was saying, but to dismiss him for cowardice? It seemed the college students knew little of what had come before.

On my return, after recovering enough from the Russian Appendectomy to carry my luggage, I read the three volumes of Gulag Archipelago, all 1840 pages, and, through its repetition, its documentary setting-forth of the horrendous doings of the Stalinist regime, I kept returning to a comment one of the other University professors I talked to weekly said to me in her apartment not far from the Dinamo station one bitterly-cold night shortly before I left back for the States. Cheap sausages, she said. It was all because people wanted to be sure they could buy cheap sausages.

It was certainly more complicated than that, but the spirit of it holds true. Groceries stayed cheap until Gorbachev called it a night. There were many that wished for the "good old days." So what if the rabble were getting roughed up? Order must be kept. The populace must be secure. Those sausages came at a pretty high cost, looking back. The Russians had a rather dismissive pejorative nickname for Hitler, considering that the German Fuehrer killed only a fraction of what Stalin was able to. Great thinkers, poets, novelists, the greatest playwright in the country. We Americans consider ourselves smarter, not so easily taken in as uneducated peasants looking for a decent price for their carts of beets. But what have we been willing to give up for a "sense of security;" what more will we be willing to give up for a "decent price for gas?"

Yuri Dombrovsky was another author, among so many artists, that were imprisoned and sent off to [preferably] die in the network of secret prisons scattered about the great expanse of the Soviet empire. His novel The Faculty of Useless Knowledge is a pretty tough-to-handle read regarding the interrogations. Orwell says in 1984 that Room 101, the interrogation room, contains "the worst thing in the world." He wasn't far off. Who is in charge of the room now?

Pic: Chasnik: Fabric Design (1920s), swiped from unknown source, 2004

Your Weekend Musil

2008-08-03T00:59:00.002-04:00

"I am even prepared to admit something else, something quite different. The experts never get to the end of anything. Its not only that they haven't got to the end of anything today. But they can't even picture the idea of their activities ever being complete. Perhaps they can't even wish it. Can one imagine, for instance, that man will still have a soul once he has learnt to understand it completely and manage it biologically and psychologically? And yet that is the state of things we are trying to achieve. There it is. Knowledge is an attitude, a passion. Actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is just like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all true that the scientist goes out after truth. It is out after him. It is something he suffers from. The truth is true and the fact is real without taking any noice of him. All he has is the passion for it. He is a dipsomaniac whose tipple is facts, and that leaves its mark on his character. And he doesn't care a damn whether what comes of his discoveries is something whole, human, perfect--or indeed what becomes of them! It's all full of contradictions and passive suffering and at the same time enormously active and energetic."

--from Man without Qualities

.Davo lifts a thermo-mug full of cold water: Here's to being imbalanced...

--Photo: Davo, Seattle, December 2007

#8 Meal with Diet Coke

2008-08-01T01:05:00.006-04:00

McDonalds:

A stocky black man sits down at the booth across from the Ice Cream Ladies, the larger of the ladies hasn't had her coughing fit yet. The ladies sit, licking their cones in silence with their customary look of exhaustion. This is retirement. This is what things sink into. The houses empty first of children, then of spouse, and now the hours have settled into an early-morning wake-up, the spoiling of a dog of manageable size, and, once lunchtime comes around, regular meetings here at the grease-stained corner on 10th street. "Gosh, it's hot out," one of the ladies manages to say.

"I'm from 125 miles out of Dallas," the man says, "x miles from Texarkana." I'm busy with my crossword and miss out on the expression of the Ice Cream Ladies, who continue licking. I think, somehow, that this statement, which has been left out there on its own, is in relation to the temperature outside, the humidity, and how it compares with the no-doubt more intense Texarkana sultriness, but perhaps not.

"Raised on a farm," he continues, after quite a long period of silence, filled only with the shooing of flies, which still plague the place, and the licking of vanilla soft-serve. "Near East Dangerfield."

To my eyes, this commentary has gotten no response from the Ladies whatsoever. ""Christmas. Thanksgiving. The Fourth of July. Those were the biggest days of the year. I still appreciate em. And movies. 9 cents to get in and 5 for a Coke."

"What happened to those days?" One of the ladies says, without any change in her resigned expression. Several more people walk in, refer to the menu board. The ice machine rattles.

"Had a good mother and a good daddy. No disrespect. No cussing. None of that." The talking man has not stopped with his fries. "And I tell you. You may not believe it. There was no such thing as 'I don't want that' or 'can I have...' You got what it was without questioning."

"If they said jump," the lady who didn't cough halfway through her cone spoke up, "you said 'how high.'"

"Those days have disappeared." the man says. Silence. "Nice talking to you." With no further words, he picks up his tray, tips it over the trash cans, and walks out. The ladies lick their cones.

"My dad," one of the ladies says finally, "had an apartment building, and when they passed a law saying you had to rent to em, if one of em would come to see the place, Dad'd say it was already rented and wouldn't even show it to em." The comment sank slowly beneath the accumulating layers of fast-food orders at the counter and the 80s pop music on the PA. The sun slants through the glass.

"Everyday he's here," one says, glancing at me. The other doesn't bother turning.

Sad Times Ahead

2008-07-30T15:06:00.006-04:00

McDonalds:

After their meal, a woman has given her grandchild some money to get her a soda while she goes to the restroom. As she turns he hits the counter, gets a hamburger, then goes to the other side of the trashcans in view of the restroom door. He eats hurriedly.

The door opens and he ducks, waits until she pushes open the back door of the restaurant. He greedily stuffs the rest of the burger in his mouth as she walks to the car. He is still chewing as he goes to the counter to order a large soda and apple pie. At the drink bar he eats the pie as fast as possible. Grandma is waiting in the car, the window open.

He fills the soda cup, drinks it halfway down, refills, drinks it halfway down again. He is breathing heavily--he hasn't given himself much time to breathe for the past three minutes. He fills the cup to the top and, affecting sudden casualness, walks out the door to Grandma's open window, hands her the soda and her change, gets in the back seat.

He is perhaps nine years old.

Dream 08 June

2008-07-30T11:14:00.004-04:00

I am interviewing for a job at a place that takes elderly intensive care patients during peak season. I place a saucer and an address book on a gurney in an empty conference room. As I walk over to where I would have my meeting I pass a receptionist. I make the mental note that I sure would like to have a job like hers if it didn't mean a cut in pay.

The place was laid out like a typical modern office building. In walking to where my interview is, I find a room in which there is a group of elderly patients in intensive-care wheeled bassinets, their heads turned to the side, mouths agape, busy with the gasping noises of sleep. An old man is among them, sitting in a wheelchair, his arms out and moving with the disturbing swing of a mobile. I walk into the middle of the group and listen to all of their snores as if it were music and the old crazy man were directing.. I can't help smiling, feeling oddly touched by this. I thread my way past the patients and find my saucer and address book on the gurney, which had been pushed to the back of the room.

Photo by Davo: Scottsdale, Arizona, 2004

Monday Quotes

2008-07-28T15:59:00.004-04:00

Andre Gide:

"Many authors write rather good books today who could write different ones that would be just as good. I do not feel any secret relationship between them and their work, and they themselves do not interest me; they remain litterateurs and instead of listening to their demon (they have none), they listen to the public taste. They adapt themselves to what is, and, far from that bothering them, they do not recognize themselves as bothersome."
--31 Dec. 1929

"The only drama that really intereste me and that I should always be willing to depict anew is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often, the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental."
--03 July 1930

24 August 2007

2008-07-26T11:16:00.004-04:00

Dream:
I am back, visiting my 8th grade classroom. The teacher and students are practicing for some school program. Afterwards I sit at the piano, which is very shinily, glossily black and has the extended keyboard of some Bosendorfers. The instrument is freshly, resonantly in tune, except for the bottom one-and-a-half octaves or so, the keys of which are brittle and loose. They are gilded like the top edge of old books and chaotically out of tune. These keys play their own music is what I say to myself.

Photo by Davo: inside the Holocaust Museum, Berlin, 2004

A Food-Based Discussion

2008-07-25T10:21:00.006-04:00

McDonalds:

I step up to the counter and order a Quarter Pounder meal "with mustard... hold it--is there already mustard on a Quarter Pounder?" The cashier turns immediately to the employee next to her and asks her the same question. The other employee, who seems to be some sort of shift leader gives her a look: "Yeah, he-LLO, and you should know that."

"Dont talk to me," my cashier says, "He's the one that asked. I didn't ask."
"Yes you did, cos you didn't know."
"I only asked because he did."
"In that case," I interject, "I won't have any extra mustard, since it's on there already." The cashier turns to me, not in the slightest bit flustered by this exchange so far. "You wouldn't have gotten any extra mustard anyway," she says.

The shift leader's mouth snaps open. "He certainly would, if that's what he asks for." The cashier turns to me, as if really letting me know, confidentially, how it is. "No you wouldn't. You know how stingy they are on fries and stuff. Like as if it comes outta their own pocket." She gives me the largest cup in the rack and goes to get my fries.

Once I sit down, I stay within earshot of the counter. The shift leader hangs around her with sidelong looks. A man orders his stuff to go. The cashier looks up from the keyboard of her register, smiles a bit, leans over confidentially, says cheerfully, "You aren't going anywhere."

--photo: Davo, detail of one of the many paintings entitled Untitled, Indianapolis Museum of Art

Location Sketch

2008-07-24T11:49:00.005-04:00

McDonalds:
"The Greeter" is back, hopped up on something, his speech coming in quick short bursts of as many words as possible crammed into one to two seconds of talking. He is complimenting the young man, nicknamed "Goldilocks" by the crew, on his new cornrow braids which, counter to his likely intent, make him look even more like a fourth-grade girl. "Your hair's god, man. It's tight," The Greeter says.

The cashier taking my order is getting cornrows, too; is about a third of the way, the little red rubberbands form a dotted line that arcs over her head, beginning just before her ear. I think of asking whether the entire crew is getting cornrows as a sort of solidarity thing.

An old woman with crapey skin, loose and puckered like a half-deflated balloon, comes in with her friend almost every day to get ice cream. About 20 licks in she has a coughing fit, the building hacking up of a gurgle from deep in her chest to the back of her throat. She licks again, swallows thickly. Her friend always pauses during these moments until she's done.

The employee with the whitish lipstick bordered by dark brown lipliner is glossing the quarry-tile floor with bleachwater. My flipflops hydroplane in spite of the sign admonishing me to watch my step. The place is busy: there are burgers all the way back to the restrooms, each burger the keystone to an arch formed by forearms propped on tables.

"Look!" the bilingual blue sign says: "Mira! The meal numbers have changed!" Dimes chime on the floor. The crapey lady's friend picks them up laboriously. They shuffle to the counter, get another cone each.

I can tell by the smell that they are cleaning off the grill. A smell of hot steel wool and pink soap, which combine with the fry grease and bleachwater in a way that smells, surprisingly, like grilling tuna steak, an actually appetizing smell.

The caffeine is making me jitter a bit. I twitch as if I've just been called up for karaoke, the blue screen's white squares counting down the time to when I should start singing. I drink Diet Coke till a dull ache starts in my chest, till my mouth is tired of the chemical bitterness of what's in the paper cup. Then what next? A walk through the traffic and trees and robins along the weed-choked 11th street curb to my buglighted porch, its clotted cobwebs, its alligator-varnished wood door.

Agrarian Updates

2008-07-22T17:48:00.007-04:00

Well, to keep the afternoon from becoming a complete waste of time, a blog post.

The first wave of the garden is officially over, and I was a bit late on the second wave, so nothing new is up yet. The chard is everywhere,

The beets are going to be way way more beetness than I'll be able to handle,

And the tomatoes are within reach of engulfing my house.

The second crop of robins is coming along nicely, too--four of them, right outside my kitchen window. The parents are rather laissez-faire regarding me, and aren't particularly interested in divebombing me while I weed the veggies under the nest.

Give Me Your Shadow

2008-07-22T00:44:00.002-04:00

I've worked all day on a semester plan for my Composition class, but fear it's all for naught. My class seems to be taken over by The Golem, Batman, The Student from Prague, Hermann Grosz, and the new video from Portishead for their song We Carry on, which I posted a few days ago. Oh, but I have so much more to read up on before I try it. Why am I not smarter?

What Most Hope For

2008-07-21T23:36:00.003-04:00

"And maybe for poets of anger, writers of anger, it is that place which has been obliterated or denied us. A place of humaneness. A place of deep intelligence, of reverence for intelligence. The delectable mountain. The place of fellowship. Of music. Of art. Of loving. Not of banality, not of greed. Even though many in their lives may compromise, seeking for this or that prize, this or that honor, in their dream they long for the great and beautiful place.

"Henry James longed for the great and beautiful place. Henry Miller longed for it. I long for it. It's a noble place. And our argument against people like Reagan, like Bush, is that they not so much take it away from us, but that they never even imagined it...they're clueless, and it's this that we are furious about. That and their indifference."

Gerald Stern, interview for The Writer's Chronicle, March/April 2007.

Shop Talk

2008-07-21T23:12:00.003-04:00

"The useful drafting that you do--as part of the discipline of all those choices in form, structure, diction, image, rhythm, and th rest--gets you to a new understandinf of the subject. Frost said 'no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.' Writing needs to be an act of discovery, a way of looking at the world and learning something. And sometimes, if you're willful and didactic as I am, you need to let yourself be surprised--let your peripheral vision do the work. You focus somewhere else. Or, say, lineation, or structure, or the clarity of a figure. [...]

"We think of drafting poems as having material at hand and looking for ways to structure that material, but there's no reason why the reverse can't happen--that is, devising an interesting structure which will invite or prompt material. And sometimes this other way can be less preemptive or overly determined, and can lead to fresher insights."

--Ellen Bryant Voight,
Interview for Sycamore Review, Spring 2004

It's Grinding Down the View--Herrmann Grosz and the new Expressionism

2008-07-19T20:19:00.016-04:00

Portishead's brilliant new CD (aptly named Third) is out, and has been, for quite some time now. The latest video--

--which could be some sort of sleek ultra-sophisticate-bit of esoteric sterility (the sound of the track certainly begs to some extent for such a treatment) instead goes for retro pencil-and-paper narrative that mirrors the works of Grosz, a man out to skewer the corruption of Weimar Republic Germany and its slide into Nazism. It also mirrors the skewed cityscapes of Expressionist movies of the era, such as Caligari. Regarding the Portishead track, this certainly isn't the video I'd have imagined for such a machinistic--and to a great extent horrifying--track of such bleakness, but it certainly adds an important layer to it. It also fits into the Big Movie of the Moment, Batman, and its focus on those who simply want to watch the world burn. There was much of that in the Thirties, and is much of that in the Twenty-aughts.

A Series of Questions

2008-07-19T17:51:00.005-04:00

"What do we serve, we who work in language? Is it not possible to imagine an aircraft carrier named Pushkin or a submarine named Dostoevsky or an interplanetary vehicle for a conquest of planets Gogol: Poor Gogol. He did not want this. He did not know. And we, do we now know how we will be used?

--Czeslaw Milosz

As a continuation of said sentiment regarding one's use to others...

"How do I know I have no friends? It's very easy: I discovered it the day I thought of killing myself to play a trick on them, in a way. But to punish whom? Some would be surprised, and no one would feel punished. I realized I had no friends: Besides, even if I had had, I shouldn't be any better off. If I had been able to commit suicide and then see their reaction, why then the game would have been worth the candle. But the earth is dark, cher ami, the coffin thick, the shroud opaque...Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death...But you kill yourself and what does it matter whether or not they believe you? You are not there to see their amazement and their contrition. In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all.
...Ah cheri,, how poor in invention men are! They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. That never occurs to them, no. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea that you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood, never!

--The Fall, Albert Camus, pg 75-76

Ten Years Ago this Week

2008-07-17T20:46:00.004-04:00

In Pittsburgh, visiting Kristen. At a bookstore:

A charming little boy, perhaps 5, in the back of the literature section. A cat is on a chair in the corner. The boy wants to touch it, but isn't sure.
"You go play with him," I say to the cat.
"You like cats?" the child asks. I nod. "Do you have any pets?" I say.
"No," he says, "Once I had a goldfish in a bowl, but then Dad put chlorinator in the water and the fish went blind and died."

The child pets the cat lightly on the tail and the cat bats angrily, claws out. "Be sure to pet it the right way," I say. The boy tries again and the cat gets alarmingly close to biting the boy's hand. In a flash, the cat hits, claws out.

For a long second, the boy's hand is stuck to the cat's paw--the claws are under the skin. The child, frozen, can't pull back his hand. The cat can't retract his claws. The cat looks further inconvenienced by this. For that second the child looks at me as if expecting me to tell him what to do next, then I hear the skin give way with soft snapping sounds. The boy brings his hand far back, up to his shoulder; covers the wounded hand with his other.

I think the cat is in a bad mood. Maybe you should just leave it alone for now is what I manage to say after a few more seconds of the boy looking at me, his hand, covered, drawn back, the cat looking at me also, self-satisfied. The boy walks away slowly backwards, not saying anything, then runs down the aisle. The cat looks up at me with a smile and a blink. I kick it off the chair, without checking to see if the owner or anyone is behind me.

Happy Meal?

2008-07-15T22:06:00.007-04:00

At my neigh- borhood Mc Donalds (yeah, yeah, I said I wasn't gonna go there, that I was gonna eat better, etc--I popped in to sit and get free refills on my Diet Coke, so sue me):

A redheaded kid holds up two plastic transformer toys. Has them chase each other in air. then, with a violent spitting noise, enacts the direct hit of one by the other. The shots never miss, so there is no need to shoot more than once--a great wet spitting noise signals not only the firing of the weapon, but also a direct hit. But it isn't the shot that seems to hold the child's fascination. It is the moment after of continued flight, the robot/plane immediately after the irreversible event, the slo-mo arc down to the crushing impact on the salt-scattered tabletop. This sequence of events--the brief flight, the splat of the single shot, the slow continuation of flight sagging into impact--is repeated endlessly as his grandmother stares sullenly at her book.

Photo: Punksmoke, July 4

Gadget Hype.

2008-07-14T11:22:00.002-04:00

After watching the news and reading various randomness from the Internet regarding the new iPhone, all I can say about this hubbub is: It's a phone. And the main question I ask regarding this now less-overpriced-doohicky is: Will it Blend?? See below.

Ah, I feel much better.

Further post on the Lameness that is Garfield

2008-07-11T12:40:00.005-04:00

Oh, and to believe that in 7th grade I read Garfield books cover to cover. Thank God I never actually bought one. I made an earlier post regarding what folks are doing to this strip, and, as further illustration regarding the cultural touchstone that is the Garfield comic strip, we have Lasagnacat, a live-action enactment of selected Garfield comics over the extremely long course of the strip through history. I include one for your edification below:

And, of course, an obligatory scenario regarding compulsive eating of non-food items:

Today, I hope to finish up reading about Golems and move on to other things that have nothing to do with websurfing. And for all--this will be the one and only time I will ever have either Snoop Dogg or Limp Bizkit on my shizz. Fer Shurzzle.

I Have Learned to Clip My Wings

2008-07-10T11:38:00.007-04:00

I'm likely the last one to have seen this (and at two million views, that is at least partially accurate), but Royale de Luxe had a happening in London. The musical backing for "The Sultan's Elephant" is my favorite song of the last five minutes (as I've only heard it five minutes ago and love it), by Les Balayeurs du Desert. I thought I might share the video:

The song features a rather ghostly snippet of Blossom Dearie, singing "It Amazes Me" back in 1958.

Today, it's a toss-up between reading (the first story of Sycamore Review has me on a strange new track, that of the Golem, which moves on to Frankenstein) all day or cleaning the garage. I have a feeling that the garage is gonna lose out.

To close, here is the "elephant" part of "The Sultan's Elephant". This would have been really cool to see in person.

More Tech News--I See You, Do You See Me?

2008-07-09T16:54:00.005-04:00

I just noticed that Google has a Maps feature called Street View that allows one to see, at street level view, the neighborhoods that one selects. I thought that this feature might be only for the main streets of major cities, but there is a panoramic view not only of my home city, but my entire neighborhood. It's cool, but kinda creepy.

By the look of my house, it was shot in Spring of last year, on a weekend, with rather warm temperatures. The trash cans are out, which means it's Sunday afternoon. I was home at the time--my car is in the driveway, my back door is open. My neighbor's wife is at work. The other neighbors' parents are visiting. So, in Google Street View, I am always at home, the grass is always dead, and the door is always open.

Various groups are complaining about the feature. I can see its helpfulness, but I am wondering what's next...

Wand'ring, Lonely as a Cloud...

2008-07-09T11:31:00.001-04:00

A certain very famous poem is 200. To mark the occasion, we have a rapping squirrel:

Many thanks to Mr. Brian Burtt for sending this along!

Harry Crosby--The Sun is the Only Thing in Life that Does Not Disillusion

2008-07-08T23:55:00.004-04:00

Harry Crosby is not a man whose name falls from the lips of many. He survived WWI; the experience threw him on a new life course. He spent much of his time (and quite a bit of money) in Paris and North Africa and his exploits are of the sort that just don't happen anymore, such as paying four cabbies, driving horse-drawn fiacres, to race, Ben-Hur style, down the Champs Elysees.

His life as banker back in New York bored him. He missed his loved wife-to-be, who remained in Europe. His marriage proposal to her was by telegram: "Enough of this hell. Sailing steerage Aquitania. Have engaged bridal suite for return trip. Say yes." A woman in first class befriended him, lowering a basket over the railing with "figs, bananas, and a bottle of Benedictine. Madonna of the Promenade Deck."

His diaries are quite interesting. May 22, 1923,back in New York: Bank banquet. A dismal affair. Poor people trying to enjoy themselves are more pathetic than rich people trying to have a good time [...], for the poor are utterly defenceless whereas the rich are sheltered by their cynicism. Utterly defenceless. Why. Because they come with illusions.

Paris held more for him. June 20, 1923: innumerable glasses of brandy, and home stark naked in a taxicab. On July 12, on seeing a woman at a cafe perhaps: ...and wouldn't it be fun to make love to a girl as corpulent? At any rate not in this weather.

He and his wife tramped about, dubbing themselves the "Vicomte and Vicomtesse Myopia," hiring someone to haul them to the Ritz in a vegetable cart while they sat high above, in evening dress, reclining on cabbages and carrots. They visited Italy, "in Pisa, the tower like a soul that has been hurt by love."

They read each other Wilde aloud: "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them."

He founded, with some of his money, the Black Sun Press, the early publishers of writers such as Hart Crane (the beautiful edition of The Bridge is sitting on the general literature shelves in the Purdue library, though it is a rather rare book). His experiences in the War still haunted him, and things didn't end quite so well with Crosby, though they ended on his terms. The diaries are well worth reading as a document of expatriates of the Lost Generation and Paris of the Twenties.

Monticello: George Bush and the Declaration of Independence--another tardy indictment.

2008-07-05T19:53:00.008-04:00

Bush showed up at Monticello on July 4th for a gimme patriotic appearance. The audience, overall what would be considered a favorable one, in light of the fact that he was speaking from Monticello after all, and to an audience of soon-to-be-sworn-in American Citizens and their families. The people in the chairs, however, weren't as carefully picked as the town-hall meetings and various appearances Bush has been used to speaking to in the past eight years, with all dissenters relegated to "free speech zones" well out of the way.

What I found interesting was his repeated reference to the Declaration of Independence, a reading of which I heard, in bed, on the radio the morning of his speech. As the second section of the Declaration--a series of offenses the British king made against the people of the Colonies, and therefore a list of reasons why America was justified in cutting ties with such a government--began, I rolled over and really started paying attention.

These were leveled against said British Monarch, and, as I was listening, the Declaration, in light of recent events, sounded almost subversive. Which, of course, it was, regarding the British perspective at the time. It certainly would have sounded so from the American perspective not long ago. I take the liberty of highlighting certain text:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People; unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.

He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.

He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and Amount and Payment of their Salaries.

He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.

He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislature.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule in these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Powers to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.

He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic Insurrections among us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

---in the above list, just how many strike very close to the current administration? Not all of them are red text. Bush certainly hasn't dissolved the House or Senate, but has certainly taken advantage of their inability to coalesce into an active entity.

Only those in a state of greatest subservience are in a state of great security. Those in a more secure such state are those in charge of such a subservient group.

--Photo: Davo, Archie McPhee's, 22 Dec '07

In the Bullpen...

2008-07-05T19:04:00.004-04:00

For reasons even I don't know, I've suddenly turned to Anthony Trollope after the Paul Bowles novel. In spite of the strife and such of Barsetshire, the experience of reading Victorian novels is in my mind analogue to the image of a ship coursing steadily through a clear ocean. I'm not sure why. This also gives a sense of solace in the reading--with Dickens and Trollope and even Henry James (who is not Victorian), the reader gets a sort of momentum and plows through all those words to the end. It's a very different experience compared to reading the Germans or the Russians. I'm debating reading the Barsetshire sequence of novels (of which I have the first five of six), but, barring that or some other caprice, here's a partial list of what's going down for the rest of the summer:
Lucy Church Amiably--Gertrude Stein
The Making of Americans--Gertrude Stein (only 925 pages)
Pilate's Wife--H. D.
The Guiltless--Herrmann Broch
Complete Stories of Paul Bowles
The Spider's House--Paul Bowles
Molloy--Samuel Beckett
Firebird--Mark Doty
...and the Masochist in me is inclined to throw Lawrence and Henry James in there, too. No Russians, only one German, and, to some extent surprisingly, no poetry.

In other news, I'm officially out of the hellhole methlab shitbox that was my grad apartment for my coursework years. Good riddance. Such quality folks were my neighbors that, in moving my stuff out of the apartment (I had little left--two tables, two lamps, and a chair), the chair was stolen right out of the yard while I was getting things together. And that was the main thing I wanted to keep. Neighbors, though home, refused to answer their door. Creeps.

The Out-basket Thus Far...

2008-07-04T10:05:00.004-04:00

I told myself I was going to get some reading done this summer, and that, at least is one of the few things I've been getting done. The finito stack, since the end of the semester:

Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust--Nathanael West
Illness as Metaphor--Susan Sontag
Seven Nights--Jorge Luis Borges
The Shadow Line--Joseph Conrad
Demian--Hermann Hesse
The Jaguar Smile--Salman Rushdie
Kora and Ka/Mira-Mare--H. D.
Street of Crocodiles--Bruno Schwarz
Confessions of a Justified Sinner--James Hogg
A Night in the Forest--Blaise Cendrars
Bowl of Cherries--Millard Kaufman
Perfume--Patrick Suskind
Let it Come Down--Paul Bowles

I've been feeling rather muddle-headed this past week, rather like how one feels coming out of a bad cold or the flu--I'll see if I can scrape together the grey matter necessary for a more interesting post in the coming days.

--Photo: Davo, Indianapolis Zoo, Underwater Rocks with Spectators

Christopher Hitchens and Waterboarding.

2008-07-02T22:52:00.001-04:00

Christopher Hitchens hops on board and says what we all know to be true.

A Wednesday Fleur

2008-07-02T15:36:00.001-04:00

...for all my fan(s).

The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes--A Tardy Gripe

2008-07-01T23:18:00.004-04:00

Ok, now--is it just me, or are certain things just not holding water? Over the past 8 years we've seen various civil rights laws eroded all in the name of civic safety, only to see little outcome, save from said erosion of civil rights and liberties. Not long ago, we were being encouraged to buy nonperishables, duct tape, and Visqueen--by no one less than Cheney--in case of attack. Grocery stores complied with National need and were selling Ramen noodles at 20 for $1.00. I'll admit that I went ahead and bought two dollars worth, though I opted out on the Visqueen and duct tape part of the Cheney Terrorist Kit equation. Back then even, I wasn't seeing the logic of this whole thing. The Government is doing all they can to stop the no-doubt imminent threat of terrorist attack, but it is up to the Populace to protect themselves in case it actually did happen. Strong whiffs of Cold War America came wafting out of the National basement. If hundreds of people are entering the country illegally over borders--ostensibly for jobs that will pay them enough for them to send money down to their families, and these folks have been crossing for quite some time, that means that, if various operatives have been actively trying to get into the country--with radioactive material, mind you--to cause mayhem, they'd be crossing right now. If they hadn't crossed already. And for years, even after 9/11, the problem went unchecked.

This started me thinking, back around 2004, on whether the threat was quite as big as Cheney & Co. were saying it was. The WTC and Pentagon thing was pretty damned splashy, but were these nutso fundamentalists going to be doing the same thing country-wide? It seemed improbable. And as the years passed by, so many other chinks in the armor have made themselves evident. Good Ol' Boys in charge of things whey shouldn't be (Brownie and his tenure at FEMA), Air travel, fer godsakes (passengers going through all that crap while caterers and food personnel weren't even checked as they drove onto airport grounds), and now the biggie--food safety. Really, if hijacking an airplane is so much more difficult now, why would saboteurs/terrorists bother with that, when with the American food system we have untraceable ways to make grand numbers of the American populace sick or dead? Taking a cue from the unsolved Anthrax mess, people out to cause mayhem could easily look elsewhere. It wasn't long ago that it was impossible--for quite a while--to get a salad in this country, unless it was home-grown spinach and lettuce. And now, in spite of that mess, we have a similar hoo-hah with salmonella-ridden tomatoes (or is it tomatoes? We aren't quite sure) whose source can't be traced at all.

For all their focus on eroding civil liberties and wiretapping, you'd think the grand braintrust at Homeland Security (and those higher above) would have thought of this by now and made some sort of plan. Almost a decade after WTC, a simple, easily untraceable sabotaging of the food supply could easily do more damage than any flashy airplane kamikaze run. For all the repeated claims that they've got us covered, I see nothing but bungling here. Rather than simply going for civil liberties and constitutional contradictions (anyone remember Gonzalez and his Habeas Corpus argument?), what about accountability and oversight?

The Monday Stein

2008-06-30T23:00:00.002-04:00

It comes too easily it comes to me too easily it comes too easily to me too easily to me too easily. Yes sir.

--Chapter 52, in its entirety, of A Novel of Thank You

The Moscow Covered Bridge Festival

2008-06-28T17:35:00.005-04:00

Ah, it's the end of June, and that means Moscow, Indiana, is having their shindig. This year, however, it's gonna be different.

Hearing about the bridge yesterday evening made me really sad--I vividly remember riding my bike across that bridge--all the more so because the gaps between the wooden planks that formed the roadbed were about an inch to two inches wide, which was more than enough to stop my forward momentum in a quick and decisive way. I rode slowly and in the middle of the planks, trying not to focus so much on the clearly visible water swirling around the rocks directly under my wheels.

For those interested in small town festivals, this one is a good one, and you oughta go. They are still having the festival this week as a benefit toward reconstruction of the bridge. It's a great place for corndogs, flea market bargains, and the nearby Amish clean up the buggies, wear their good clothes, and hang out to impress the Amish girls.

My promised commentary on books is postponed, as I still don't quite know what to talk about yet.

One last memory of the Covered Bridge Festival is of the road past the bridge--after a couple of sharp turns and an incline, the road straightens out into open country, with a wonderful long steep hill , then about a mile or so of perfectly flat road before a corresponding incline. As I reach the top of the hill, I notice in the distance a one-horse, two-wheel buggy heading my way. By the bottom of the hill, I'm f l y i n g . I'm nearing the buggy rapidly. The horse, at a trot, perhaps has never seen a bike on this road before--certainly nothing making a beeline straight for him. The horse freaks right on out, rears, moves to the ditch, rears. The buggy bucks wildly, and as I speed past, I can see that the young man behind the glass is, while deperately trying not to wreck the buggy or lose the horse or get hurt, is managing, at the same time he is handling the reins, to doff his hat in a neighborly hello. What a guy.

--photo from http://www.moscowfestivalin.org/

Governmental Grammarians

2008-06-26T16:34:00.003-04:00

Not having done much today other than read and prespire, I thought I'd treat my fives of readers with part of a placard on display in the Indiana Capitol building. You can click on it to make it big enough to read easily. Don't these people have other people that proofread this sort of thing? Do our squillion pages of legislation also have this level of accuracy? Does "centennial" really need to be parenthetically defined? So, so many questions...

In other news, I have done a bit of tidying up at LibraryThing and can happily say that, in spite of my unprecedented rate of book acquisition in the past two years, I've actually upped the percentage of books read--I'm now at almost 30%, as opposed to only 24% ten or so years ago. I plan to comment on a couple of them in tomorrow's post, but I need to let them mull a bit more.

The Valley of the Shadow of Internal Revenue

2008-06-25T17:34:00.003-04:00

Heigh Ho, Davo the Blog here.

Earlier this week I received a rather confusing note from the State Department of Internal Revenue, stating that I owed over twice the amount of tax that I paid them back in March. Attempting to contact via phone simply didn't work, so, I headed down there in person. Once past all the crazies waiting outside either furiously smoking or reading pulp novels while furiously smoking--they all appeared to be State employees--I sat down with someone on the other side of a grey cube wall and found out that they were missing my Schedule 1 and therefore were disallowing all of my deductions.

So, after a day or so, I scared up my Schedule 1 and headed back in to Government Complex 1 (or was it Government Complex West?) to show them that I did, in fact, have deductions worth considering.

That appeared to be the magic key. The nice lady photocopied my Schedule 1, stamped my own copy, and my penalty, interest, and additional tax liability were summarily erased. It all happened so quickly I began to doubt that I was, in fact, dealing with State government.

Considering that I still had so much time left on my parking meter, I decided to walk across the street and check out the Capitol building, which I hadn't been in (aside from killing time waiting for a bus back in '97 or so) since I was there with the Glee Club. We were, of course, there to sing the State song and moan through the background for God Bless the USA, and did so both in the House as well as the Senate. But that was back in pre-terrorist times. I remember walking in through the big oak doors that led onto the main floor. Nowadays, the public must enter through the west basement door, go through the obligatory security checkpoint, then weave through a warren of cubicle-land offices, pop-machine alcoves, and so forth before you find either the elevator or the basement steps. The general populace now needs to enter, if you will, by the service entrance. This doesn't surprise, but does disappoint.

In other news, my great friend Joe took Royce and me out for dinner and spent an exorbitant amount of money on us. We were at the restaurant for four hours. By the time the creme brulee came around, I was so full I could hardly move. Thanks, Joe, for a wonderful dinner and grand conversation!

Regarding QR codes...

2008-06-24T00:37:00.003-04:00

...here is a link to nothing but the tearpad part of the PSB video, which recently won an award at Cannes. For those that want to explore the QR code frames in the video...click here.

More Canoeing; variability and fluid dynamics

2008-06-23T19:28:00.010-04:00

Regarding canoeing yesterday, the weather was, shall we say, up and down. We managed to luck out rather well, in that the rain only hit on the way back to the canoe rental place after we finished lunch, and within minutes of our getting to a place to eat for dinner after we docked.

The waterway itself seemed like a locale, in other meteorological conditions, for l'amours,the entire length of the wooded banks. The stone formations made inlets and lees and banks of current-smoothed stones where various couples met or miscellaneous articles of clothing lingered, in the silt-coated extremities of tree-limbs in various shady nooks the banks gave on the way to the southwest.

Once we clambered back up on the bank, we found this tourist photo souvenir place as we trudged to our cars. As various people can verify regarding my longhair days, I don't do well with shoulder- length. It only gets tangly. One wakes up with it up one's nose, or wrapped around one's neck. Ergo, long hair doesn't work for me. Or a bikini top.

The weather was wonderful. The sandals were variable.

An Accumulation of Errors

2008-06-22T21:45:00.007-04:00

Today was the big day that Erin, Kim, and I were to meet up at Turkey Run to go canoeing. It was a good idea, spearheaded by Erin and Kim, and it fit in well with my exercise/ outdoors- based regimen that I mentioned in my previous post. Kim called last night with basic instructions on how to get there from here and that was that.

I woke up this morning bright and early, logged on, and checked the approximate drive time between there and here on Mapquest. 1 hour 45 minutes. Looking at the clock, had I dropped everything and shown up at the dock in my underwear, I would have been ten minutes late. Luckily, I noticed that the route chosen was rather illogical. The most likely route would get me there sooner. I cleaned up a bit and then hit the road, with my ever-attentive mind making sure to leave my towel, cooler with bottled water and soda, and sandals behind.

Of course, the one exit necessary to get off 465 to the necessary highway was closed, with an illegible flashboard sign evidently trying to indicate such only a half mile earlier. Cue various choice words directed at the forces that chose this particular exit to be closed.

15 minutes later, once on the correct highway, I settled back a bit, looking at the clock--at normal highway speeds, I'd get there with time to spare. Unfortunately, the highway for miles had a speed limit of 40-freakin-5. After an eternity of stop-and-go, I finally got to open road, then to the final highway turnoff that would take me to the canoe rental.

With three miles to go, the signs indicate that the highway is closed. Cue more choice words yelled over the dash. Consulting my trusty Indiana County Road atlas, I find no real options to get from there to my destination. I have five minutes. After consulting my second power-walking soccer mom, I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't gonna make it. I'm speeding down winding country roads, then literally through a cattle farm, then off-pavement, then through some woods, to return to the highway I need...right in front of the wrong side of the roadblock.

After yet more choice words, I call Erin/Kim to let them know of my predicament. They were stalling the folks at the canoe rental. Good. I made my way through the trailer-park desolation of Bloomingdale, Indiana, to get to the canoe rental place, just in time for my other party to lock their keys--and some of what was necessary--in their car. Cue, no doubt, more choice words spoken internally by Erin and Kim. Luck was on our side--the canoe folks had slim-jims. Unfortunately, none of us had any luck in breaking into Erin's car. The mosquitoes were spreading the word that fresh meat was available, and the recent heavy rains ensured that there were plenty of their numbers.

Long story short, after three or so trips to/around Rockville, we got sunscreen, got food, ice cream, and a man to give the final magical open sesame to Erin's car, which is a rather formidable challenge, even to professionals. We were ready to hit the water at long last.

Within 100 yards of our launch, we find ourselves snarled by a tree in heavy current, which we got almost past before we flipped over, putting everything into the drink, including our food, my bookbag, camera, and our oars. Once we got all that put back to rights, we found ourselves in pretty darned good shape. The food was ok, the camera was untouched by water, and we got settled into shipboard life. In spite of all the permutations of our trip (were we to actually canoe? Might we hike instead? Perhaps just go garage-saling? ), no one got inordinately frustrated. And the change in our luck? Eating ice cream. I wasn't thrilled with the place: it was deserted in a sort of "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" kind of way, and the rest-room, swathed in spider webs and, well, extremely primitive, certainly didn't make the place seem good, but after ice cream there, the clouds parted, the car was unlocked, we sang songs, and we achieved our objective. More pix in the next post.
Thanks to Erin and Kim for havin' me along! And happy birthday, Kim!

Biking starts...

2008-06-21T11:21:00.005-04:00

...and the burgers stop. Yesterday was my first day of the new regimen-- the bike as a car, the car as a way to keep weeds from growing in the cracks of the driveway, and no stopgap trips to McCorporate Deathburger. Honestly, I can't eat that crap anymore. Ugh. And the people one meets there. Three days ago, I sat down next to a table where an off-duty employee was trying to cheer up an on-duty employee who had just found out that she is pregnant. In looking around, everyone else in the place had little kids. One came up, wanted my fries, tried to grab them, then ran back to her table. From then on, every single customer that came in had at least one kid under three in tow.

Or two days ago, when I walked in and there was no A/C. The same creepy off-duty employee with the Ray Parker Jr. Jheri-curled hair was there, acting as personal greeter to everyone. "Hey howyadoin," he'd say, "nice ta seeya. Your daughter has really pretty hair. How it curls and such. Yeah, really pretty hair." And everyone in there looking as if they had a glandular disorder.

It's the 21st and time for a change and therefore time to put serious mileage on the bike.

The American Way? Or, Omelettes and Breaking Eggs

2008-06-20T15:49:00.005-04:00

"[...] Tell me straight out, I call on you--answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears--would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth."
" No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly.
"And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?"

--Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, Chapter 4.

Down Another Rabbit Hole

2008-06-19T23:15:00.004-04:00

A badly- formed entry, but I've got motivation to read this evening more than writing.

I'm not sure how these things happen, but every book I've opened today--and I've been pretty random these past two days, actually--all seem somehow related, though the connection is something I have to look more deeply into. Mandeville's ambiguous Fable of the Bees links in some mysterious way with the idea residing in the difficult mess of prose of Rene Daumal's philosophical treatise You've Always Been Wrong [I found there also is, in translation, his last, unfinished novel Mount Analogue, subtitled A Symbolically Non-Euclidian Adventures in Mountain Climbing (!)], which speaks of sleepwalking, and laughter as a means of rejection, rebellion, of negation. This ties in, perhaps, with Herrmann Broch's The Sleepwalkers which I read a couple of times five years ago, perhaps also with Demons of Heimito von Doderer. And for some reason this reminded me of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor chapter. I open Karamazov to, not the chapter in question, but to two pages before. Oddly enough, Euclidean thought shows up here (how often does one run into that word in a day outside of discussions of geometry?) and rejection, rebellion is here, too:

Atheist Ivan and newbie monk Alyosha are in heated discussion:

"Oh yes, when the mother and the torturer whose hounds tore her son to pieces embrace each other, and all three cry out with tears: 'Just art Thou, oh Lord,' then of course the crown of knowledge will have come and everything will be explained. [...] It may well be that if I live until that moment, or rise again in order to see it, I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest, looking at the mother embracing her child's tormentor: 'Just art Thou, Oh Lord!" but I do not want to cry out with them. While there's still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears! Not worth it, because her tears remained unredeemed. They must be redeemed, otherwise there can be no harmony. But how will you redeem them? Is it possible? [...] And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price. I do not, finally want the mother to embrace the tormentor who let his dogs tear her son to pieces! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she wants to, let her forgive the tormentor her immeasurable maternal suffering, but she has no right to forgive the suffering of her child who was torn to pieces... And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, then where is the harmony? Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can't afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket. And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead of time as possible. Which is what I am doing. It's not that I don't accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return the ticket."
"That is rebellion," Alyosha said softly...

Rebellion, negation, Euclidean thought, remaining wakeful. I'm not sure why all the books I open all tumble these ideas end over end. I strive for connections--and further fodder for essays.

photo: Davo, taken at Archie McPhee's, Ballard, Washington

BTW
My vague interest in the Queens of the Stone Age is officially over. Regardless as to what a dick one is being, referring to sexual orientation as pejorative is out in my book. Fine, the lead singer is sick. Fine, the guy may have been an asshole. But calling him a fucking faggot? No more concerts for me, thanks.

The Sleepwalkers

2008-06-18T22:55:00.007-04:00

An announce- ment was made on the news this evening that the Marines were going to be holding manoeuvres here in Indianapolis. They declined to say what they were or when they were going to be, but, the news anchor said, they were to train the Marines to act efficiently and effectively in the event of a terrorist attack in the area. Whatever it was and whenever it was, its happening is only a drill and not the real thing.
Now safely past twilight, large Chinook helicopters have moved swiftly and at low altitude over our neighborhood, heading northwest. Not long after, they moved in the same path right back to the southeast. Hopefully they won't be doing horse-laps over the Metro area all night keeping everyone awake...
---

A few months ago, I heard a radio show on Memory which gave, as one of the examples on how strangely memory works, a man who, in a traumatic accident, even today remains in a state of complete and never-ending amnesia. He isn't the classic made-for-TV-movie example, wherein one suddenly wakes and starts all over. He can make no new memories whatsoever. Of the things he carries with him, he remembers language perfectly, and he remembers his wife, though rarely can he remember her name. His face lights up when she comes to visit: Thank God you've come. He constantly has moments of complete clarity, but they are almost instantly lost. He looks across the room and exclaims I'm awake! I'm awake! When he is led to his old church and placed in front of a choir with a score, his old profession comes to him automatically--he conducts wonderfully, sculpting the sound from the air there in the loft. When asked about what he'd just done, he has no memory of having done it. He looks at wonder at video of himself doing the conducting, the expression on his face there on screen, living in some sort of other present where a past doesn't so much matter; where the music is all that there needs to be. But outside of music, how exhausting it must be, to work at forming those connections, to piece together where he is, who he is, who these people are. He figures it out, the synapse fires, the spark jumps across: I'm awake! I'm awake! And then it's gone. He pieces these things together again and again until his nameless wife opens the door--some small bit that he can fall back on, that will allow him some rest.

I found a book not long ago by Rene Daumal, someone who died young and whose work is haunted by the need to be conscious; of being awake. "Awakening," he says, "is not a state, it's an act. " He continues:

"A man wakes up in the morning in bed. Scarcely on his feet, he's already asleep again. Going through all the automatic impulses which make his body get dressed, go out, walk, get to work, go through the prescribed daily routine, eat, chat, read a newspaper (as it's generally the body which takes care of all that by itself)--doing all that--he's sleeping. ... He can thus spend entire days without waking for a single moment. [...] And it's easy for slumber, which is the inertia of consciousness, to catch man in its traps; for man, being naturally and almost irremediably lazy, might indeed be willing to awaken. But since the effort is repugnant to him (and naively he thinks it is possible ) in a permanent or at least lengthy waking state. Then wanting to rest in his awakening, he falls asleep. Just as one cannot will oneself to sleep, since willing, in whatever form, is still an awakening, one can remain awakened only if one wills it at every moment.
"And the only direct act which you can carry out is that of awakening, of becoming conscious of yourself. Look back on what you think you've done since the beginning of today: this is perhaps the first time you have awakened. And it's only now that you're conscious of all you've done as a thoughtless automaton. In most ases people never awaken even enough to realize that they have slept. Right now, go ahead and accept, if you wish, this sleepwalker's existence. You will be able to behave in life as an idler, a worker, a peasant, a merchant, a diplomat, an artist, a philosopher, without ever awakening more than just enough, now and then, to enjoy or suffer from the way in which you sleep. It might even be more convenient, without changing anything in your appearance, not to awaken at all."

--All rather heady stuff for someone writing this in his early twenties. Even more interesting that this man so concerned about remaining ever-conscious was hooked on huffing dry-cleaning chemicals, weakening his lungs to the point that tuberculosis saw its opportunity, killing him off at the age of 36.

photo: Davo: museum exhibit, Loveland Museum, interior of wrecked Pullman car.

If You've Nothing to Hide, You've Nothing to Fear: Hogg, The Presets, and Violence

2008-06-16T17:13:00.022-04:00

I know, I know, like this is a new thing. I woke up after vivid dreams to cough for about 45 minutes, then continued where I left off two weeks ago with James Hogg's The Confessions of a Justified Sinner and find it--again--especially timely. My colleague Mr. Sealy tried to teach Crime and Punishment a while ago to his freshmen (much to my great admiration) and I think that it could readily be taught alongside this much shorter novel, with its first-person perspective of a religious zealot who sees any means within his power to be justified and the "higher path," even though we as readers all see him as an agent of nothing but evil:

"But if it will be accounted unfair to take up a conqueror, and punish him in his own way, I answer: That if a man is sent on a positive mission by his master, and hath laid himself under vows to do his work, he ought not to be too nice in the means of accomplishing it; and, further, I appeal to holy writ, wherein many instances are recorded of the pleasure the Lord takes in the final extinction of the wicked and profane; and this position I take to be unanswerable."
So long as one can get a holy book to justify one's actions, one's accountability evaporates. Sheer insanity. It's the same argument used by those who shoot and bomb abortion clinics, then go home or to church to praise the God that supposedly put them on such a mission.

---

While shopping for books in the same shop I, not long ago was book-trolling with James and Mike and others, I found volume one (solely, unfortunately) of a scholarly edition of Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, which seems to also touch on the same subject, in which the "poem" speaks of a "grumbling hive" where we have Swiftian representation of Society in which corruption works alongside with goodness to make the hive function. And some things don't change even today:

The soldiers, that were forc'd to fight,
If they surviv'd, got Honour by't;
Tho' some, that shunn'd the bloody Fray,
Had Limbs shot off, that ran away:
Some valiant Gen'rals fought the Foe;
Others took Bribes to let them go:
Some ventur'd always where 'twas warm,
Lost now a Leg, and then an Arm;
Till quite disabled, and put by,
They liv'd on half their Salary;
While others never came in Play,
And staid at home for double Pay.

This and the other works are fermenting toward the possible end result of some sort of essay.

In other news, I've run into the new release by the Australian group The Presets. For fans of the 80s, that decade is officially back, by the sound of this disc, and the Presets have a Cd that, at least initially, has all you could ask for. The music is spiny, angular, and actually has ideas behind it, aside from some bunch of newcomers out to plunder the vaults for suggestions of a Sound. Ultimately, the new CD sounds like a melding of the darker moments of Information Society with Nitzer Ebb fronted by the vocalist of Blancmange, the "Blind Vision" of which could point to the uniformity of purpose that seems to justify the universal ID card craze that has hit various country governments and which the Pet Shop Boys skewer in their most recent video, "Integral," with its pixellated representations of planes and eyescans. For an annual fee, you can wait in a much shorter line for the airplane, so long as you give the government a retinal scan and a DNA sample. The video, in it's tearpad pixellations, includes many subliminal scan codes that lead to documents that deal with civil rights issues and governmental invasiveness.

On repeated listenings for those who like their sonic background more sophisticated the Presets disc sounds a bit cheap and shallow in spite of all the sonic ideas that show up as the disc plays out. Some electro discs draw the listener inward with a great maze of interlocking sound, but this one tends to only skate along the surface. I'm entertaining thoughts of a brief discussion on visual rhetoric on the Presets' video This Boy's in Love, in which the violence of the video is brought into an entirely new context--that of the homoerotic--simply by being shown in slo-mo. It reminds me of a video I saw somewhere where a techno song is played over slo-mo video of people being punched in the face. Violence, after all, is what people pay attention to.

No Tents, No Cats, No Siding

2008-06-15T17:14:00.002-04:00

I'm home. Dad left and is likely still on the road. The lawn isn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be, and I'm tired. I'm going to bed. And I can actually say, for the first time in two weeks, that it is, in fact, a bed I am going to.

'Night, all.

If Only...

2008-06-14T13:28:00.004-04:00

...grandpa's house was three stories high. If it was, this'd be the view from one of the bedrooms. I snapped this while wrestling with the chimney a couple of days ago.

Today is my last day here in Colorado (and there was much rejoicing...)--I'll be on the shuttle by 6:15 in the morning tomorrow. I'm going to look in to having the bike shipped, but I might just leave it here. I seriously considered riding it all the way back to Indy on an epic trip, but thought better of it. With the lungs, etc., this just isn't the time to do it.

This trip certainly could've gone better. But the bike, the lovely beer from Ft. Collins, and the baby bunnyrabbits frolicking in the backyard have helped quite a bit. After lunch, Grandpa and I will go to see how much it will cost to ship the bike back, as well as the tent and sleeping bag. It'll be great to get back to my house, where I can resume my reading schedule and not deal with any siding for a while.

UPDATE:
The bike shipping would be over $100, with an additional $30 for the necessary crate, so it looks like the bike will be staying here in Colorado for the nonce. It appears we might actually be working on trim, but considering it's after 2p.m. I'm not sure how long Dad'll be working. Once we're done, I'm getting some Fat Tire, by g-d.