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Monday, June 27th, 2011
Les diremos todo a ellos, todo el cuento a Antonia y a sus amigas, todo el cuento desde el inicio. Lo contaremos, como te has despertado aquella mañana, también agotada, repitiendo esas frases melosas y vacÃas que habÃas oÃdo en sueños. Como no podÃa hacer cara o cruz de todo lo y he bajado para preparar café.
posted evening of June 27th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, June 26th, 2011
I find myself fascinated by Steven White's statement about Alfonso Cortés, Nicaragua's "poeta loco," that he "was prone to fits of violence that coincided with the full moon" -- I am finding in Cortés' poetry some beautiful fragments without its yet coming together for me as a whole. Inscribed on Cortés' tomb in León (adjacent to the tomb of Rubén Dario) is his poem "Supplication."
Time is hunger, space is cold
pray, pray: only supplication
can satisfy the longings of the void.
Dreaming is a lonely rock
where the eagle of the soul can build his nest:
dream, dream, dream the whole day long.
 (I see a couple of references, in the few of Cortés' poems that White includes, to ether -- I wonder if he was a recreational user and if so, whether that had anything to do with his reputation for insanity.)
posted evening of June 26th, 2011: 2 responses
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 The old Boyd Hat Company factory The ride through Orange and West Orange was led by Patrick Morrissey, executive director of HANDS, Inc. and proprietor of Hat City Kitchen. He showed us around the old hat manufacturing district in the valley, we saw some gorgeous old factories and warehouses that HANDS is redeveloping into mixed-use condominiums and business and art space, and some that have been condemned; we looked at the art spaces that have already been developed as part of the Valley Arts District; we saw the east fork of the east branch of the Rahway, a river fork I had not known about -- it is mostly underground in culverts but the narrow channel where it is at the surface, behind the old Monroe Calculator Company factory, is a lovely hidden bit of wilderness rising up in the middle of the city. We ended up at Hat City Kitchen, where Pat treated us to a beer, and then rode on home. A nice ride, not particularly challenging but with lots to see and learn. I was not looking for challenge as I had worn myself out earlier in the day making another attempt on Walker Street -- nearly made it to the top this time!
posted morning of June 26th, 2011: Respond
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Last night's (intensely visual) dream involved a long walk and an unexpected park. Monique and Jeremy were visiting NYC and we had made plans to meet up in Astoria; I had some time to kill beforehand so took the subway up to the Bronx and started walking... I was looking for a place to cross into Manhattan -- my plan was to walk around the northern tip of Manhattan and then cross to Queens. (The imagined geometry of dream-NYC was not exactly the same as real life but was roughly similar.) There was a bridge without a pedestrian walkway, but I noticed a narrow foot bridge next to and below it. Pedestrian traffic on this bridge was quite heavy, it looked like the sidewalk of Broadway in Midtown. I crossed over, jostled by the crowd, to a point on the west side of Manhattan just below the northern tip, and started walking north. As I rounded the northern extremity of the island, I happened on a park I had never known about. It was designed around a long pier of bedrock extending north into the waters of the Hudson, the tip of which had been carved into a dragon figurehead for the prow of Manhattan. Behind this was a reflecting sculpture -- a large rock sphere hollowed out and lined with mirrors arranged in a complex pattern, and with a small pool of luminescent liquid in its base. I spent a long time gazing into this and was startled from my reverie by my cell phone ringing. It was Ellen, telling me that she and Sylvia had gotten home safely after a long and unpleasant train ride. While we were talking, I woke up.
posted morning of June 26th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, June 25th, 2011
 Filipino-American journalist Jose Antonio Vargas writes a piece of memoir for this week's New York Times Magazine which is astonishing in its audacious bravery. Vargas is coming out for the second time in his life, coming out in a role which could hold very real, dreadful repercussions for his life and his livelihood.
posted morning of June 25th, 2011: 3 responses
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El signo que se cuelga sobre la puerta de la pupuserÃa se destaca verde e oval contra los ladrillos rojos de la pared. He comprado unos pupusas para el almuerzo, pasaba por allà de camino a casa. Aquà tienes una de queso, una de chicharrón para mi. Vamos, creo que tenemos un poco repollo encurtido en la nevera... y tal vez una salsa. Tardes perezosas. El peso de la pupusa en mi boca. La masticación agradable me distrae de lo que me decÃa el médico esta mañana. Es claramente más fácil no pensar en ello, el café sorber, tu presencia sentir... Mirar fijamente al vacÃo.
posted morning of June 25th, 2011: Respond
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Friday, June 24th, 2011
Charles Bonnet said 250 years ago, he wondered, thinking of these hallucinations, as he put it, how the theatre of the mind could be generated by the machinery of the brain. Now 250 years later, I think we're beginning to glimpse how this is done. At a TED lecture from 2009, Oliver Sacks talks about different sorts of hallucinations and what they reveal about neurological functions.Thanks for the link, Basileios!
posted evening of June 24th, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
A lot of writing, and a fair amount of interesting writing, has been done at The Hooded Utilitarian over the past few weeks on the topic of racist images in R. Crumb's work. At the beginning of the month Domingos Isabelinho's strongly negative reference to Angelfood McSpade provoked an enormous, vituperative comments thread. (A large portion of the posts coming from one embarrassingly devoted Crumb fan who will not hear any evil spoken of his object of adoration -- but with plenty of worthwhile thinking as well.) Today, Robert Stanley Martin devotes a lengthy post to the issue, with reference to McSpade, the Cheap Thrills album cover, and Al Jolson(!) And in comments, Noah Berlatsky promises a post of his own about the Cheap Thrills cover.* Well, I'm not sure quite what to make of this... I think of Crumb as a great cartoonist and of the racist and misogynistic imagery as a key, integral part of his work. Certainly worth reading and writing about.
 * Update: Noah's post is here.
Update II: and Sean Michael Robinson's contribution to the conversation.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Chad Post of 3% links to an interview with Sergio Chejfec at Fric-Frac Club (and in translation at Read This Next), which includes a hilarious anecdote about Chejfec's first experience (as "a very and consistently bored child" -- which "was a common thing for my generation, at least it’s what I’ve got to think") writing fiction:
One day, it occurred to me to send a fictitious postcard to my mother : it would be written by a sister she had never heard of, who would announce therein that she had numerous revelations to disclose : a dark and scandalous family past, a very sad past, and so on, a real melodrama. In order that the story seem truer, I had to send the card from another country: Paraguay. During my childhood, Paraguay had been for me an exotic country (it was by way of Paraguay that my parents had come secretly into Argentina, after the Second World War). The text was written and I was ready to go buy the postcard at the corner bookstore, on which to to copy it out. But once there, I realized that they didn’t sell postcards for Paraguay, and more problematically even, that I could not send a card from Paraguay! These obstacles proved insurmountable, I had to resign myself finally to the plan’s failure.
I don’t know if there’s some lesson to be taken from this story, or whether to consider it a major defeat. I think that today I would not assign so much importance to details, which seemed so essential then to the making of a credible story. But it was the first time I wrote a fiction and I still remember my anxiety on the walk to the bookstore, in search of a postcard for Asunción del Paraguay.
posted evening of June 22nd, 2011: Respond
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Monday, June 20th, 2011
A parking lot I walk by every morning on my way to work prompted this poem, composed on the way to work this morning and revised on the way home this evening.
CrumpledSympathetic gleaming crumpled chassis by the body shop,
I pass her every morning when I'm walking to the train: a shame --
been there two months, I guess she's totalled, looks brand-new...
except for at the front end where her frame is mashed together...
shiny hood is bent in half; bright jet-black paint job powerless
to cover up the damage that's been done.
This parking lot image also had a role to play in shaping my response to Dave Bonta's prompt at today's Morning Porch.
 Update -- another use of the parking lot image.
posted evening of June 20th, 2011: Respond
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