Our times ago

Those waves of silence you once could hear sweeping your shores of yesteryears, our times ago. Could you tell? Or could you see it in the old ruffled quilt of unmending half-truths left fraying behind? In the wrinkled lace of your hanging cloud? Could you, maybe, just hear it? In the slithering rain finding its way through the armies of blades that  armor your ground. And again, in the squelched rolling whisper of late spring breeze seeking safe haven and shade beneath the palms in the tree. Could you tell? That there is faith in the presence of your absence; That there is no coincidence in the absence of your presence. Could you believe it? Needless to say.

Unexpected solidarities: The case for permeability of cultures

In his syncretic theory of fiction CA argues that suppressing the referential to the basic condition of " necessary and sufficient" while finely tuning the injunctive and elevating emotive and poetic functions would secure a viable stylistic matrix in any given artifact (see the " fountain of youth" example). Perhaps. But isn't it too formulaic, too prescriptive, and entirely oblivious of a cultural paradigm? We obviously favor LB- Troheu, nu trofeu! - and his staunch belief in the cultural persuasion of unexpected, immediate, inherent or unrequited solidarities; his inclination towards abyssal noesis (sic!) and unguarded view on the permeability of cultures, as such:

Teach your pitch: That phatic feeling

Not a found voice, not a lost one rather. Again, you may have all the proper words and orientation of thoughts, gather and etch them on lead tablets  and they are still untimely fluffy and specious. You recall O elaborating on textual identities and valences of hypertext. Like then, now you still believe, regardless of their medium, the simplest of ideas are incorruptible. You can illusion the eyes, muffle the sounds, but how does one ever suppress that phatic feeling of your mind?

Teach your pitch: Marks of suprasegmentation revisited

You can have all the right words, decorous and just, true and balanced, simply adding up to none, a most un-credible sum. You can hang the most desirable notions in the most thriving syntax yet, when shaking its fruitful-appearing tree, leave with a fruitless basket. 

The betrayal of your voice is more explicit than a poor turn of phrase. And the betrayal of a gaze. At times, the quality of your thoughts shines through those dull marks of suprasegmentation. 

The Practice of Everyday Life on Outer Drive

From your vantage point this city seems the most beautiful in the world and at the same time the most cruel of all. You stare at the street, its pattern of puddles, the discombobulated but strategic traffic; still, in reality, I'm eyeing you, your familiar constant songless stride, the silhouette of your presence in the late fall quiet spiky rain, the mark of time in the obnubilated light. I count your footsteps from a streetlight to the next, then again and yet again- their cadence matches the orientation of your thoughts. At the entryway, you leave your umbrella, hang your overcoat and candor and bring home the remains of the day. 

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Vastly unknown, the substance of his misery thickens by the hour. It reminded him of F meticulously checking for the best texture of her Béchamel. His misery had certainly reached its perfect thickening. Where are the lush meadows, the promise of lightness and ease, the incumbent joy of the seemingly free juvenile? He recollects and whispers to himself: " In time, the logic of each presence becomes evident" .

Peruse the old picture albums, leaf your collection of postcards, search on an on  the treasure box of yesteryear glitter, shine, and sparkle, tune into the kids' giggles at the sight of the rusty carousel. Looks like the real thing, except for the faded colors, the deafening sound of its toiled machinery, its hiccuping song, a symphony of stridence and discarded. 

On Outer Drive, there is no hymn of leaping spring. Only a modal joy and the silent movie of carefree summer. 

2UU2. Scribblings on the S(h)elf: The Constant Gardener and the With-otic Quest

It is the void, bored and ebulient self that avidly seeks the crutches of external validation and recognition, which, btw, are hallmarks of sufficiency and not prerequisite, or indicative, of communing, cooperative living , conviviality, or , more precisely, being-in-the-world-with-and-for-others, in short, this withism that mercilessly encroached on our collective imagination and seized the grounds of our entire discourse. [Ahem! ] The besieged, or reluctantly warring, self knows its terra firma and has no need to showcase it to the world. Exception makes only the rare truly vocationally exceptional. As such, one is simply mistaken to assume we are our museum keepers and its visitors in this world. Perhaps, at times, voluntary archeologists or professional curators of  a show or another but, in essence, we are profoundly devout constant gardeners.

**********

There is a time for words and a time for their aspects. Ideally, you should not aim to switch modes; simply reject all Baroque mental furnishings and  always opt- (with)in contemporary, minimalist inner decorations, clear sleek lines, neuter or pastel palette. Aim denotatively, keep the bubbling connotations under duress and march onwards. In fact, most tend to live and judge with this clear expectation, yet they rarely let it steer them in their unequivocal commonsensical pursuits and gracious conducts.

***********

 We do not listen. We mainly seek to recognize our words within the other's: extract them wholesome - decant the others - and pile them reassured in the " constructive" mound for further fail-proof reference and later use. In the amazing race, the construction of the self often entails the purposeful de(con)struction of the other. Hence, we must move synchronously within the same register, twirl around the same speech acts at once, or else cry sotto voce turbidly: bias, offece, untruths, nonsense, mockery, dishonor! In any given encounter, " the other" sits on an Ikea piece, while you slouch on a Louis XIV, lavishing in golden- embroidered azure silks of seamless, unsized self-acceptance, esteem, and righteousness. In times ebullient this is our perfect withness, the mutualism we deem decorous. Yet, exceptionally, under siege, the warring self will stand and deliver its work as our only loyal constant gardener.

*************

And who said this withness of ours was pretty? Or, looked flattering in the mirror?... Which  is why we choose to gently turn it on another and make it our diaphanous withotic quest. To intromit a more sagacious voice and its secretly admired chalkboard: " You don't think this will last forever, do you?".

*************

.PS with embedded disclaimer: To make my point infallible, this is neither a response, nor a conversation. It is a mere timely nod and reverence to the besieged, the warring, self - via PT, NS, Pr.S and SB- in constant gardening of the meek, the mild , the austere and the pithy. It is obviously not a mockery, either. At best, it is a diffuse daily self reflection, when not an explicit self - irony. Actually, highly recommended to all the better selves, too; it is known to recalibrate both the austere and the ebullient self''s radar.

To make my point fallible though,  I wrote the most winded, lengthy sentence yet; it is my intentional offering to the perfect withness we so humbly flaunt. Only because when we are alone with our thoughts we all know this withness is but the made-up face of our loyal inescapable withlessness.

In all truth, however, it is a thankful note to the unparalleled, beloved U2. 

The S(h)elf, part 1: The Amazing Race

" That is precisely what a journal is- one way of explaining things, unfolding in words the scroll of our life. Most people are left behind packed, folded, placed on a certain shelf designed and mounted by our society and environment. In fact, we all vie " to explain ourselves", to unpack, unfold ourselves to tell why we did or did not do a certain thing, what we set ourselves to do, what we would have done had we but world enough and time." (GL) 

Everyone is drawn for this amazing race. Ab initio.

In sum, those who make it their point to tell or remonstrate your story, in fact unfold themselves. Those who choose to speak your language, involuntarily unpack themselves. No matter the stance from what we act or speak, originally or mimetic, we simply dust off our own s(h)elf in the room rather than cast a bright blinding light on " the other". In other words, if you suddenly dim up the light, you are more likely to blind yourself than another.

To think otherwise is to foolishly underestimate what makes us human. This is, in fact, PT' s lesson. Entrapped and robbed of his life and work, he remained invincibly serene and candid to the core. No bitterness, no pumping of the fist or stumping of the feet at the obvious systematic injustice and pervasive hatread. Derisive words, malicious intents, demeaning acts, utter injustice, all left him unscathed. He qualified his resilience as basic human quality, unremarkable and unheroic, the inherent work of the average mind and heart. Because, under maleficent siege, the typical mind will block out untrue rancid words; the heart will resist disingenuous cobwebbed acts. Their endless recurrence only demonetizes any shade of meaning and annihilates all intended effects.  Malicious projects fail in essence precisely because they are inhuman or they lack a basic understanding of our human nature. We are essentially immune to unlikely or maleficent deeds and words and their redundancy does not overwhelm, choke, or ambush. If anything, unavoidably, they speak everything about their authors, and their shortcomings, failures and ineptitude. In fact they speak so loudly - not necessarily literally- their authors lack the courage and ability to tune in and listen. Which only makes them increasingly vocal, verbose and overactive, in detriment of their own -misguided-self-fulfillment. 

Ultimately we are only owned by our words - are we, truly?- and even more so, by their layered manifest, explicit, implicit, and tacit intents. Fortunately, it is impossible to concern one' s mind with what it will not concern itself. This is also PT's lesson and a telling reminder of why memory- its casual, literary and historic praxis- matters.

Days of Our Lives: " In Search of the Lost Classic Movies Vault", True Celluloid Loves

To the omniscient reader and arduous collector of biographical ennui, a comprehensive list of actual
dreamworks and an account of many days of our younger lives:

http://agenda.liternet.ro/articol/In-cautarea-cinematecii-pierdute.html

 .

Literariness, need vs. use: The illustrious praxis of biographical fiction

"... n-as pune indiferenta, platitudinea si blazarea la un loc. Blazat n-am fost, chiar daca am putut sa par. Dimpotriva, desi n-am avut forta de a ma angaja în ea si n-am fost activ decat atat cat m-a silit sa fiu, viata m-a pasionat. N-am fost un actor al vietii, ci numai un spectator interesat, cum poti sa fii meloman fara sa ai calitati de muzician... Dar nu încerc sa-mi rascumpar, scriind, aceasta blazare, ci, mai onest, zic eu, ma dezinteresez. 

Platitudinea nu e problema mea. Este misiunea criticilor si a cititorilor sa decida ca sunt plat, daca sunt. Nu-ti poti propune sa nu fii banal. Sau poti, dar e inutil. În sfarsit, indiferenta nu-mi cere s-o rascumpar si nu ma roaga s-o flagelez. .... indiferenta e cel mai bogat filon al meu. Cel mai bogat si singurul care îmi da sansa de acces la o zona care nu îi e accesibila oricui. Cat de bine mi-o exploatez, aceasta sansa, nu mie îmi revine sa apreciez.

Deznadejde..., nicicand. De obicei, cand scriu sunt bine dispus, de o autoironica admiratie, care s-ar putea formula în cuvintele: ia uita-te la asta, ce-i mai trece prin cap! Cand scrisul merge prost, sunt indispus, iar cand îmi dau seama prea tarziu... foarte indispus. Deznadajduit, nu. Ar însemna sa ma iau prea în serios. De altfel, buna dispozitie îmi ritmeaza existenta. Viata ma înveseleste tot atat cat ma deznadajduieste. Ma înveseleste mai ales personajul care îsi spune eu. Sunt chiar mirat ca veselia trece, de obicei, neobservata de critici. Iar cele doua stari, deznadejdea si veselia, nu sunt decat accente pe un fond facut din curiozitate, neliniste si nepasare. Ma pasioneaza spectacolul lumii, ce mi se întampla ma nelinisteste ori de cate ori sunt silit sa actionez; în restul timpului, sunt nepasator.

Un argument în favoarea literaritatii autobiografiei. Oricat de fidel ar vrea sa-si fie, autobiograful, atunci cand e scriitor, se inventeaza ca personaj. Puteti, de altfel, sa verificati. Scriind aici, sunt frivol. Întalnindu-ma cu dvs. pe strada, sunt un domn batran, posac si stanjenit. Va asigur ca nici unul, nici celalalt nu este "cel adevarat". " ( lifted from the worldwide web, where knowledge abounds)

The Ubiquitous Culprit

has unmistakably been the System. But is it, really? In his fragments of memorialistic literature  RF - like many of his companions who were trapped on the shabby, screeching  carousel of history for most of their life- exposes the organization, the inner and outer workings, the fine tunings, self-corrections and lesser known predicaments of the oppressive system.  A bestiary with human faces entertains a system of actual pulleys and metaphysical buttons meant to numb any semblance of spontaneity and free will. Perfect compliance with the system is the ultimate goal. However, as mindful as its minders could be, as subversive their means and modes, absolute compliance remained wishful thinking. Apart from the routinized indomitable resilience of the human spirit, what stood out was a minimized reliable ally: time. If the System failed it was sensibly due to poor timing. He gives countless examples of diminished vituperance and muffled blows resulting from known and unknown temporal errors. From this wide angle, timing is, indeed, everything. What is often unseen is the saving grace of this ubiquitous culprit.

Facets of Humor, Breaths of Fresh Air: A Duet with Yo-Yo Ma

Watercooler Words and Ways: Who and Whom, or Iovanutz + Despina finally allow for a lesson in creative writing

Now, omnisciently, faking the author; the golden measure of the frustrated talent:

                                       IG @ Polirom.ro

Note: Selective, if not discriminating, readers as we are we may have not learnt a thing, like, for instance, the subtle rhetorical engineering, fictional acumen, and cultural prowess of the 1-4-3-1 winning writing script. Yet, we have not failed to notice that lukewarm feeling the beguiling fascination with politically correct omniscience  still triggers, after all these years, in omniscient readers and writers alike. Also, our polls continue to show that those relentless fine fissures in omniscience tend to be way more laughable than the oceans of ignorance flooding our unomnisciented shores. Humor emerges from slight dissonance not from perfect congruence. To put it coarsely, it is way more hilarious when the wholesomely informed hiccup than when the lacking yawn. But indeed, it is the grand prerogative of the most concatenated minds to take on minuscule sentence makers (of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthic inclination). And truly everyone - from dazzling minds to dazzled empanada makers- seems to agree on one thing though: only with laughter can we win. (Un)fortunately, some of us also think that winning isn't quite everything. Go figure!

So, back to The Original of Iovanutz + Despinutza; because we love IG since ' 92- '93 (for the assiduous  archivists of biographical ennui).

Ideatic Apparels: What we talk about when we talk about the end of a *story

The world is not equally split in primacy and latency effect true believers ( EH - Thanks, Heavens, for all the things you learn in school! ). We have an overwhelming bias for the latter, which is why a destiny - a trajectory, in general- becomes somewhat predictable. For at least a quarter century we have had a clear thick description of an " ending" hence, to those critics who say we are more concerned with how to dot the I's and cross the T' s than the substance of all things deep, we admit: of course, we are! Why bother, after all? When you are redundant/ repetitive in substance you are simply recurrent, enhancing the validity and reliability, i.e., adding to scholarship. The impact is thus limited to a minority of thinkalikes. When you are repetitive in appearance, you commit a universal crime of decorum, infinitely more vexing and noticeable than any fallacy of substance. Hence, the overpowering tendency to give our best to current trends, masks, and appearances.

Again, when we talk about the ending of a (hi)story, this is what we tacitly imply - in our watercooler words and ways, of course - even if we dress it up more casually, or outdoorsy:

“ The end of history will be a very sad time....” (Go to Fukuyama, The End of History)

Amarcord: Time, Its Moments, Their Records.

Time isn't kind or unkind

You used to say

I wonder what you say today ( SB) 

A moment defying norm or expectation falls into eternity. ( Time stops and gasps for air.) Your thin long pale fingers gently cup it and carry it on silver trays into our daily dwellings. Memory sits it on a vintage chair at your writing desk. The golden ink bottle opens itself and brings the feather to its feast. Once comfortably placed among its deep crimson velvet cushions, the eager moment boldly stares at your face, seizes your gaze, then simply takes your hand and blatantly demands its golden record in your book of time. Your patient right hand slips in a finely embroidered bookmark.

Time is kind in its moments and unkind in its records.

 .

The Temptation of Omniscience: Omniscience for Omniscient's Sake , Ode to the Third Person

" Omniscient Readers of the World, Unite! " (Irony intended!): What we talk about when we talk about "him" 

I drafted the previous post (and a few others) with "him" in mind, i. e., the omniscient reader,  apparently an inherent fallacious intellectual reflex of " Illuminist" bend - a particular variety of reductionist Enlightenment- emerged in visceral response to the Realist omniscient writer and " his" voice. ( Who said that history cannot be defied or challenged, at least, if need be? ) It is a popular category I've come to appreciate later in life and, in many ways, a somewhat endearing, albeit endangering, species. Yet, despite ( or, maybe, because) of their definitional feature, omniscient  readers may fail to gather that, while the sketch below is a pale attempt to whimsically pamphlet their heads, tails, and ranks and files, it is also a curtesy bow to the lost art of the petit point, James Thurber and a childhood memory, not strictly denotatively speaking and certainly not necessarily in this order. 

In brief, all this because a petit point is not necessarily a little point, although it could be. Likewise, a petite person is not necessarily a little person, although it could be. However, a petit intrest is what it is, the daily occupation of a little person, true, majoring in minor things with flaunted omniscience and little if any ( I venture, here) introspection.  Last, but not least, it is a motherly scold to speculative, arrogant, and precious stupidity in all its neighborly or distant, familiar, friendly, or familial, expressed or suppressed forms. Let us always remember that omniscient writing is not intended for omniscient reading, or as Thurber-  the instigator of it all- in his own tribute to omniscience and selective omniscience, put it bluntly in his own professorial ending: "You've found the figure, but have you found the carpet?" Now, obviously, we ain't Thurber, not even James, but we can still remember an exquisite turn of the screw and what Maisie knew and be ambassadors of our country in his or if invited at his exemplary carnival. Or not. 

As always, it depends who (sic!) you love. Selectively omniscient at best, we heart James, for instance. The first and the last. The rest is simply, devant la lettre, mere omniscience for omniscient's sake.

PS. There are, of course, those who think we cannot stand for clear options. Hence, let us reiterate firmly: we are against omniscience. Which is precisely what we talk about when we talk about " that 19th century inside us ".  That precarious temptation of auctorial omniscience we all entertain and our deliberate, felicitous placement against it. That I-know-that-I-know-nothing, but do You, (dear Grand Author)? (This PS, of course, for the 19th century in All of Us)

The Memory of Reading at the Old School of Gobelins: Petit Point Musings and a Little Tribute to the Omniscient Reader

He would comb the tapestry of limpid past, locate an interjection and stretch it on the confounding frame of present time to pin down its end points  and pore through it - the way the sewer pores the canvas of a fine gobelin to fill a tiny gap in contrast color or of a different shade. For instance, he now arrested his discerning eye on an unforgivingly almost - forgotten work: The Lady and the Book.

Quickening thoughts streamed out of his mind like late spring downhill rivulets that part the mountain to find themselves meandering in lush flood plains, largely uncharted. Long sentences, hard- working paragraphs...The purpose of this convoluted clutter only to screen intended " inner" meanings; try to give back a sense of necessary wander to reaffirm the power of the shortest path.  Then  bursts the secret of the obvious notion, the one so clear, so translucent, if duly noted, it must blur the mind. Beneath a must, in fact, an inner obligation; beneath an implied  nod, the whole world upside down. He turns to punctuation marks for guidance as well as light: all too revealing, nothing left to hide. Pause, end, rejoice, inquire, and command.

Structure and style, recalls a musty corner of his mind. Sought-out detachment, implied trendy malaise, an obviousness of erudition poked only by a penchant for mimesis and cracks in the foundation too wide to detect.  Immediately, what could be bridge is ditch,  what's new is old, what could be trendy, trite. Simplicity is overdone in the simplistic, pitch over-raised , angle too far outstretched, tone fumbled in an oddly mix of muffled with a tint of strident, intent displayed in blazing glory with self-assuredness and detente. " We read to recall " - his tried memory proposed - " The Lady and the Book" .

A staying memory from the gallery on 59th St: The Eternal Return of the Assiduous Bespectacled Accountant, brut sans anee, charcoal on paper, private collection.

A sensible ardor moves him to pore through all the signs and codes, naughts and what-not's, unscramble their employment, weigh on their sensefullness, ascribe contained meanings on giddy, jingly vectors of  personal emotion and distinct interjection. Then hunchbacked, down he bows into a newfound light and carefully gathers and mixes all their trajectories into a spring bouquet designed to match his interior decorations in indiscernible palette for equally the blinded  and the cogent eye.  Nevertheless, a uniquely fragrant desk is now impeccably dressed up to meet its daily scribe, an industrious bespectacled  accountant, who  diligently balances and records the flightless flies and withered cacti needles left over in his vision of the world. Behind his Swiss banker's chair, a musty self-actualizing banner giveth in inherent indulgence of old Greek persuasion transcribed in vulgata Latin:  Nothing is ever lost in, everything is always found out. And right underneath reads the endorsement, the mission, and the business offer: UBS, but I don' t! Checks and balances.

Out of desert flowers, fragrant humors. Out of the dusty corners of his guts, prandial specks of gourmet glitter, proudly displayed in edible arrangements. Out of this world: Homo Economicus, checked and balanced. Or naught.

The sound of our music, once upon a time

we all loved Celi. It was the time when it seemed everything was somehow going to be fine, everybody could only turn out to be good, and both would eventually get even better; that time when we would not miss any of the Friday concerts and would long revel in unforgettable performances: Grigore, Ruha, Estrella, and always our beloved local stars. Then, there were the idle Sunday afternoons of pure delight and inner rumminations at the Dome or Millenium, witnessing again and again the happy marriage of light and sound. Trio Contraste and their contemporary teasers. The rite of spring: the annual symphonic music festival.The rite of fall: the concert in the cave at R. LB, under the bridge year round. An irreplicable August fortnight of music, gracious life, companionship, and mountains: Rimsky- Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and gentle-and-joyous all-encompassing classical education on winding Northern roads, sharing the car with the superb, beautiful, funny, and exquisite pianists D, M, &, then very-very young Di Mi, as well as KP & our perfect guides and hosts, the 3Ms. Day after day, the sound of instruments in study practices filling the streets and tramway stops around the Old Town-hall. You had no choice but catch the tram and a, say Mozart,  movement. Year after year, they were the true signposts of our living in the city and breathing in the world. At first, precursors of unadulterated freedom and later on its constant, precious iteration. As a culmination, in one of those years, I taught a few classes at the Conservatory. Martha & Dino Ghezzo visited the school and I had the chance of showing them around and interpreting during their official visit. I ended up translating one of their textbooks and I was formally thankful to offer a modicum of service to what was always and forever the best of all possible worlds. Once upon a time we all loved Celi and we were incredibly lucky he was an unforbidden love.

* In essence, if you ask when you ask, are we free we who are free, the immediate unnecessary answer surrenders, it depends who (sic!) you love.

The joke

We joked a lot...When all is said and done, when you are finished counting all the sun rays of the day from intrepid dawn till squinting dusk, you won't deny you joked a lot. But it is not so much the laughter that remains. It is the blinding light chowing your sight like the dentition of a lion. 

The abrasion of a dandelion's fluff capriciously blown in your eyes. 

The infallible nod of fall to all the shrugging, blasé trees of summer.

The breathless draft a Northern loon's feathers will give. 

The prying call of a concerned quail slicing the idling painted desert. 

The taunt. 

The spite. 

The poke, the bile, the stunt, the shock.

The humors.

The- did-I-say-that and the-yes-I-said-that...now-what?

 Unreal, unreliable and unguarded, the referent of our jokes was always somewhere in the stratosphere, far removed from any sense of the daily course, basking in the eternal shadow of the obscured and iffy. You used to say: the truth is known, why bother speak of it? All the implied wisdom came from you, all the suggestions of disquiet uncover me. Between the trial of your steady soul and the commitment of my probing mind: a chasm of untelling silence and foretold failures, all the untold jokes of the world. And, true, you never said: Our joke is known, why bother speak of it?

The stars were always known, unknown was just their blueprint in the night.

Personal Chronotopes: From Huta to Utah, beneath and beyond.

                                                                               

The trouble with snails is not their transparent  pretext of a head and body. It's their twirling house of brittle stone. " Why build? " the treader in the dirt must ask. When not confined inside the shell, he stares at the world through green cages of sharpened blades. Yet, somehow, the snail is free: freer than the firebird.

Erratic flickers of stern candlelight dot randomly the jailed rambunctious valley beneath revealing ice. An arc of sheer time, the humming din of silence, muffled concatenated thoughts, self-weaving meshes of tiny teardrop diamonds.  Dim lit towns stretch disciplined in squared patterns, in deep oblivion that they don't belong in the original immensity of brush, boulders, long grass, and dust. Fields of living will wedding a trusting earth.

The rustle of a carry-on unmasks concealed intents. Forget the good neighbor, meet the nurse of worse, fully equipped to spread maleficence at best. Man's incurable pest? A sister of mercy and a ring of bad intents. Memento GM.

Rites of spring... Firebird... Barber and Britten....the music of another season. Long forgotten crispy days of fall. The color of youth, the unrestrained imminence of good, casting over the world like curtains of silver rain and pearls, when time is gained, regained and never lost.

The trouble with words is that they don't obey, at best delay, and obfuscate. They are sisters of mercy, too, in a rigged game to brightly color the immaculate and dull the shine and sharpness of a rusty sword. Memento Reading. Back to Reading.

The today show

Time stretched thin like an impassable red line the world had set for oblivion. Dreams of the past laid flaccid in the ditch of history; dreams of the future, immovable like never ending defiant ranges of merciless peaks. Stranded between, a man, his mercy, and a compass left in the desert to unearth a feeble spring, a thin blue line stretching from yesterday into tomorrow. But now, curtains asunder, N is standing amused and scrutinizing the audience from the right corner of the dusty moaning stage. Their faces tell the whole story, luminous and hopeful, brimming with confidence and choking emotions, like first timers, blinded by the spotlights, mesmerized by the rustling folds of velvety, blue curtains trimmed with faded gold adornments all around. Apart, the conclave of the regulars attending show just to atone or entertain the disconcerting shadows of a single notion, a line, a monologue.

Faces and gazes, grins and gestures...

G never smiles and can't relax. Lost in her labyrinthic thoughts she squints and groans and decidedly declaims the devil in the immensity of details. " The good has sunken; the wrong is light and fluffy, blanketing the world... It's us and them, below and up, question or exclamation, zero or one". Few seem to listen, none to get it. A slicing thought jams her orderly mind: " The strings have broken. Music has died." .

A's face is long yet kind. The gravitas of the betrayed and yet defiant royal: staunch, unforgiving, focused, and determined. To fight the fight. On her face, the brewing storm, in her voice, the rolling thunder, in her eyes, an unredeemable happiness and a long- forgotten lightness of being. She cannot listen, but when she speaks she lets it out, softly: " I've only tried to save my daughter..."  Her cheeks, fallen and parched; she conceals the imminence of tragedy in her smoky eye shades. She cannot help but wonder: " Where did that extra beat come from?" When did hard luck soften? How did we get here and when will we finally reach there?"  She'd welcome some answers now, only to find reason to discard those answers she was already dealt. Yet, she knew she was right. She knew that fight was the just option; wrestle the specter, keep the pages turning, while pondering incessantly at both the depth and breadth of scourge. " Beauty is in the soul of the beholder ", she thought. Beauty is elsewhere.

The Case For Fiction: The Superb Storyteller on Freedom as Invention

When you said invent, invent, this is what you meant...

The Good News

You are leafing the news with remote interest. It has been a while and although not missing on anything essential, you give in to the jingle of “ breaking” and the (pro)found sound (of) understanding. The news? From this a-distance mostly predictable: gregarious, senseless, and forgettable. Yet some reprieve that out there, in the dust or mud, emerge more vigorously the springs of pretty brighter blossoms: handfuls of good news, signs of breakthrough, and innumerable measures of normalcy. Dynamic days, vociferous squares, hefty conversations. Alas! The poison of the poly-ticks is flowing in artsy, insouciant meanders across the endless prairies of unfaltering principles and values. We give to “now” our most and best. Still. With notable exceptions.

Then, out there in the wilderness of things lurk shadows and originals of hoax, of less-than-so, unlike-the-truth. The semblance of style, the simulated wit, mimesis of the n-th grade. Tense and pretense of knowledge, understanding, unattachment, freedom, truth. Goliathic endeavor to faken the faked a tad more fakely and liken the unlikely more intently, thus send into the world a risible projection of what we-are-sure-and-we-think-we-know. Except, you don’t and rarely we do. Let us remember we read the “old masters” to learn to tell the virtual edifice from that of porphyry and marble, to treasure ruins over steel-cum-glass, to separate the world “as is” from that of as a few would rather have it. In truth, if you can poison all the oceans, you can’t account for all the endless rivulets that shall remain unspoiled, unmapped and barely attractive to greedy eyes and opportunistic forays. One may have all the facts and still be eluded any comprehension as illo tempore the most telling tales remain untold. Perhaps with one, one just exception.

It is about tense*, you fool, and not pretense, sentence, or tension. *Not even time, if we must, by all those means, be understood. Just tenses and their aspects.

True, knowledge helps: the mind misunderstands.

Kinship matters

  

                                                                                                                                                 @lib-art.com      

Aspen

The most majestic couple

Romeo & Juliet of NE Florida.

                                                                                                           @ eagles.org

Structure

                                                                                                      @ Wikipedia. org

You tap into a thought and let it twist, turn, and  meander so it becomes unrecognizable to all your own. Dressed in its best polyester, you send it out to stride there firmly, then dwell decidedly into the outer world. It's how we like to build: clad word upon clad word upon clad word upon clad word to make believe our deep cut story. The world would probe, fit it and lastly settle its own desirable cut of any habitable truth or probable intent.

We dwell in surface structures. Oblivious or neglectful of our daily story's taproot history we tread with joy and overconfidence the still treacherous waters of all the puddles left behind in the most recent flashflood.

We live in mudrooms, disorderly and overcrowded, to leave untouched for longest time the luxurious tidy appearance of a perfect home like many others. A home out there in the world, we own, mindless of our home-within-that-home unlike another.

We gather, split and often part with many words piled in-between ourselves ready to burst like better-days bonfires, always so pious with ourselves and in contempt of one another. Mysteriously or not, immediately we gather, split and part again, each time with brighter sparks and thicker remnant and more toxic ashes, as if to prove there really is no lesson to be learnt. And to recall: a place under the sun is a just a timid stroke of light painting the dust before incoming clouds.

We move within the same recurrent story, always foretold and soon forgotten.

The Saddest Wail

FREE WILLY, WILL YOU?

I guess this is for everyone to decide. I saw one of the Shamu shows a few years ago. I am glad I did - I said it then & I say it now. And like I said it then, I am glad that I did because it's  done and I don't have to go back.

In all fairness, there is a multitude of excellent things going on in that park and kids, particularly, enjoy it wildly. There are also vast educational opportunities, for all ages, and lots of valuable and truly insightful wildlife research packaged and delivered to all audiences. The big attractor, I found it, was indeed the orcas show. The audience went crazy at all the splashes, slides, jumps, tricks etc. and everyone hyperventilated in amazement and excitement. And still, I thought it was the saddest great show that could ever be. Great, because it is indeed amazing what those whales can do, the extent to which they go to please and obey and entertain, the depth of their learning and intense focus, and the exceptional communication they have with their trainers. It is also mind-blowing to see and learn what those trainers do, the total involvement in that learning process, their dedication and commitment beyond duty and words, as well as the special bonds with those whales transpiring from all interactions. It is humbling, heart-wrenching to see nature overpowering nurture, and nurture making fine inroads into pure nature, what a whale can do and say and what a trainer throws into the mix to forge that bond, with every praise, command, act, and close encounter. It truly is. But this is also where the good ends and the lesser good begins. Because everything you are so well and eagerly taught about the species and their behavior, everything your eyes see and your mind grasps in the process screams: Get me out of here! And PLEASE free the whales, too! The unbearable noise and hyperstimulation, the music, the pressure, the small pool, the large whale, the artificial surroundings involuntarily triggers both your imagination and will to place them elsewhere, in the open sea and bottomless ocean, among their families, within their culture. Back to their mythical magic and traditionally revered spiritual power. Even if everything the movie shows and tell can be successfully contested or amended, a few moments are above any argument. Perhaps the most cautionary tale is the incident that brings an expert senior trainer to his knees, that is the bottom of the pool. And then dragged up for a few breaths and dragged back again to the bottom of the pool. Again, and again, and again. Like in a breathtaking tango of life-and-death the finite man and the infinite marine creature explain nature, territory, control, and, why not, bond to all who have eyes to see and hearts to feel. You cannot help but wonder : in the end, who obeys who? Because no fool could deny that the teaching and learning happen equally both ways. And then, of course, the most unbearably sad scene is the separation of mother and calf. And if you bring just strictly reason into judgment - and how could you?- there is still the most persuasive image of it all: a pod of air-blowing whales, at dawn, in the stillness of Puget Sound. Really, it' s the only way we all make sense, man & whale.

Above all the fray, Blackfish is a subtle tribute to nature and man's endless standing in error always making the same unreasonable choice of paying a way higher price on never-learning than on truly-learning itself.

Intertext Will Provide: As Much as I Dare, the Likely Discovery of Guyana

 

                                                                                @ Wikipedia.org



" I read as much as I dare" writes in a letter B's younger sister, J, and you are reminded of her wit- at a time it was indecorous for women to be witty- when you happen upon a dimwit's secretory exploration of VW' s art of motherhood.  Of course, the connection is less of a pure knee-jerk reaction and more of an oxyto-cynically induced one, as J earned her right to a room of her own when she was well in her 60s. Nevertheless, she still enjoyed it and she went on to read as much as she did. All this stellar life while her illustrious brother went on to enlighten the world.

Then, isn't Breslin right to insist: " It's okay to dislike people" ?!.." Oh, the many layers of the mind!" Or, as Dr. A would always gently remind: " Intertext giveth! ". Now, hurry, put that on a T-shirt, wallpaper, wallbridge, & Swiss cheese...Tote, too. Japanese tote. From Paris, GA & Rome, WA State. Not to be outdone in Petersburg, OH, of course. Nor Milan, TX.  Only in New York, North Carolina. Fresh from Barbados to South Carolina and Alabama, then off to Guyana!

Indeed, oh, the places B. went... and the books J. read.

                                                                         @ Wikipedia.org

The Incurious Alliance of the Unoriginal Dr. Beck-Ill and the Original Mr. Chi-D

                                                                                                     @ Wikipedia.org


Dr Beck-Ill unraveled daily as the pretentious and ungraspable thick- skinned genius of  the sleepy  sophomoric province aspiring to take over the whole wide world.  A closeted prodigy of the digital world, he would put on daily the viciously victimized self-made accoutrements to compliment his invariable choice of eternally youthful adornments so typical of the innocent lamb seeking more Arcadian pastures. He had charisma, zest, and humor, all boisterously springing from his mind of import, mask for export, and pernicious soul for black-market sale. Always befriending the potent, he could also easily mill around the accomplished, the in-betweens, and the  scourge with the same semi-obscure intent to simply mine them of any hidden ore and then discard them stripped or hollow.  Dr Beck-Ill would not see people, only numbers, shaped, cohesive, organized binary collections of digits- 100101110001010- in useful matrixes employed in complex computations of internal logic and domestic use. He sought them out with unrestrained fervor and constrained team support. His bespectacled face read as sagacious pursuits only, his heart as vacuous four-chambered haven designed to shelter envy, scorn, deceit, and hate, essential mix for every breath. Indeed, he gasped for hate as most would gasp for air, breathed in and out only contempt, derision, odium, and malice as any deep-sea diver whose single option is a tank of such a choice. Only his mind curled, angled, meandered, and sinuously elapsed between an ill-will and another off inconspicuous, maleficent synapse.

Now, Mr. Chi-D was purely a man of strictly obtuse right angles, no skin, and thinly layered heart. An academic artifact of firm pulleys, cropped smarts, and long- farmed benevolence, he was the bravest when most were weakest and meekest when most were bravest. Not merely because it was all he could, but also because so he would. Thus, on this two-men show, he played the dashing man of letters and embodied the law-abiding lawful man of law;  silently he charged, defended, or convicted any mortal according to his flimsy heart delight, with legendary calm, proverbial ease, and newly gentrified, just copyrighted, wit. Reprove, reprove, reprove and something will prove! - he loved to say while swishing his bellicose sword in times of all-encompassing peace. He made it widely known he never longed, nor did he yearn, for nothing and nobody. He only combusted in imaginary wars, mostly with self , sometimes with others, atop a white horse and in shining armor, defending Dr Beck-Ill's superior coat of arms by birth, fluke, history, and resounding marital alliance. And in return, the highly knowledgeable of the inner and outer motions of the world Dr Beck- Ill led the forever compliant and unbreakable Mr. Chi-D believe they shared precious sips from the exquisite grail of this one buddyhood unlike another. And that they always played for the same team of the firm, the righteous, and the unparalleled, while all this time, the omnipotent pedestrian Dr. Beck- Ill had traded him a center-field to the opposing team of the grand lelevellers, the  entitled, and the trickled-down-to-pump-it-uppers.  If the equestrian Mr. Chi- D could not see it was simply because  both, both, loved that barely read, widely known book: Two Lives that Prove Something and for Mr Chi-D Esq., attorney-at-law and large, it' s all it took.

Character: JK's fictional lecture

To charge a character, to cut it in and out of parchment paper, enflesh him through perils and trials, in confrontations and exchanges and concatenations, foreseeable, unthinkable. Apply conditions. Vary them finely and abruptly. Record the motions, trace them lightly on the birth-given matrix. Accelerate him on the banal of everyday lane, in the common somber toiling and undermining routine of the usual. Then, in the sacredness of everyday foraging, the mysticism of hoisting the builder's boulder, and the sublime in the (for)giving routine of the usual. Gift him the life of mind. The thirst for growth, the gaze through time, the hunger for perfection. The quest for grace. And in the beginning of beginnings: the aim. For journey. Knowledge and enlightenment.        

                                                                                       @ npg.org.uk

Encounters of a certain grade: The seamstress' son

                                                                                                   @ About.com

entered the room waltzing on the ear-splitting tune of "just married", shiny trinkets dragging erratically on the sinuous trajectory of a used car. An overgrown child of many tainted colors, brusque and ungiving, he always sought, captured, and disposed with juvenile mindless ease and casual unrepentance. " Nothing is out of reach" thought this big kid on the little playground. Indeed, everything was within reach for the overgrown boy and it was not because he had a special talent  beyond his brashness, but merely because he was the son of a seamless seamstress, who would always deliver a newly trimmed garment with a precious emphatic yet overly giddy pitch: " Here it is. Fit to fit" only to silently add " for maximum profit". Each delivery was her deliverance; she strictly lived for the pure joy of serving this 10 words into thin air. Then she would return back to her dingy shop " Zelda Zender's Only Trimmings" and would apply a fresh fuchsia paint coating on its rusty sign. Robust and gregarious, she certainly was a force of reckless nature, untamed but by pure violence which, her Egyptologist on and off consort would naturally deliver with an occasional strategic blow and perennial deceit.  In more than this one way, they were "the perfect fit". Thus, she groomed him long and tenderly to become a fitting role model for her befitting lackluster son.

 No doubt, the seamstress took immense public pride in her progeny- this perfect exemplary of spotless mediocrity and ever so partial integrity- while privately subjecting him to her overreaching scorn, conniving maneuverings, and insoluble dissatisfaction.  Yet, among her best friends and closest family she invariably sold the overgrown design as her sole and only sartorial masterpiece of clean cuts, unique trimmings and fine adjustments. A lie-within-a-lie herself she was serving the world a lie-outside-a-lie in her finest gold engraved  China on a sparkling silver tray. It was precisely her vulgar blend of faulty heart and cheap callousness, as well as the unique show of glitz and gutter she could so easily present, what would entice the Egyptologist again and again, and would keep him loosely hinged on the mythical loop of the eternal return.

 Your friend, the seamstress son's German tutor, had not prepared you for this encounter. When they rang she let them in and they took over the room with unrestrainable cheerful verbiage. The seamstress complimented everything she found and could not find in you and your friend. To bring it to a faster end you obliged back maintaining that her son' s "progress in German is not without immediate notice ". With a sparkle in her eyes that simply lit the room she then whispered back: " His father... was a poet... German poet. " " Indeed? " your friend and you released in a fake wonderment to make up for the shown embarrassment. She nodded twice emphatically  and with a triumphant smile and all-imperial blink she postured confidently as she would simply make another seam: " A-hem.  It's how I always like to say: ' The things you don't know when you know...the things you know when you don't know...' "

                                                                                 @ Wikipedia