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Me and Sylvia, smiling for the camera (August 2005)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

John Stuart Mill


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Sunday, July 8th, 2012

🦋 Otro poema de Maximiliano Josner Ávala, con nota explanatoria tentativa

Mi esperanza es (supongo) que esa especie de composición (intento decir, el movimiento de imagen vaga, abstracta, nada muy específica, en combinación con ritmo escuchado -- justo al español, sin intervencíon de inglés en la medida en que soy capaz de eso) vale la pena si nada más, en la instrucción idiomática... El español que hallaré con ese método de instrucción sonará muy ajeno, muy forzado, y de vez en cuando incoherente, pero también (tal vez) muy distintivo, una voz verdadera/engañosa. No tengo idea qué destinación busco, vamos a ver luego, cuando llegamos.

Mi tía descansa, su cara resplandece
Con luz infinita y magia y misterio
Viva retrato de dios
Hija

posted afternoon of July 8th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Poetry

🦋 Dogwood down!

One day,

-- the next,
Time to rent a chainsaw... I seem to remember hearing dogwood makes nice carving/turning wood, will try to get some blanks out of this.

posted morning of July 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The garden

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

🦋 Notas marginales

... His second book was even more successful than the first, professors in North American, and some of the most distinguished ones among the academic world of those long-past days, wrote enthusiastic reviews, wrote books about the books which were commenting on the Fox's books.

And from this moment on, the Fox felt -- with good reason -- that he was content; the years passed by without his publishing anything.

Well, people started talking. "What's up with the Fox?" -- when he showed up right on time for cocktails they would come up to him and be like, You ought to publish something more.

-- But look, I've already published two books.

-- And good ones, too! -- would come the reply -- That's exactly why you should publish another one!

And here the Fox did not say anything, but thought to himself: "What they're really looking for, is for me to publish a lousy book. But because I am the Fox, I'm not going to do it."

And he didn't.

"Fox is the smart one."
The Black Sheep and other fables
Augusto Monterroso

It's the funniest thing -- somehow I had gotten it into my head that the title of Bartleby y compañia was Bartlett y companía -- this despite many times of reading the correct title, and of writing it out, and even of ordering it on Amazon [and it occurs to me now that I have not really read anything, anything that sticks in my memory, about it, just references to the title]... thinking it had something to do with the quotations dude. (And to be sure there are a lot of quotations in the text -- that's not really here nor there though.) This is my introduction to Vila-Matas and it sure is a pleasant one. The idea of "un cuaderno de notas a pie de página que comentaron un texto invisible" is just about exactly what I am wanting to be reading right now -- and here I am experiencing that reverse-projection which I refer to as identification with the text in spades, I feel like the first chapter of the book is written in my voice. Thanks for the impetus, Richard. (And I am going to throw caution to the wind disregarding the hinted warning in Jean de la Bruyère's epigraph. Tal vez soy yo entre los otros a quienes la gloria consistiría en no escribir, pero...)

posted afternoon of July 7th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Bartleby y compañía

🦋 (silly)

It's foreign, outlandish, in Spanish extraño,
the moving hand writes and escribe la mano
you play with your meanings and juegas con rima
built up from an image, imagen encima

posted morning of July 7th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Friday, July 6th, 2012

🦋 3000

Still not sure what to call this project. At first it was a poem, then a story, now something is nagging at me to think of it as a book, a novel! I wonder if there will actually be that much material in it...

Details of the work keep cropping up and interesting me and changing, I want to look at the project as a whole for a minute. The idea is that Peter, a conflicted youngish man with anxieties and a love of Spanish poetry and a love for his girlfriend, Laura, who also has some anxieties, though different ones; Peter is making a project of translating poetry from this 19th-C. Chilean poet Maximiliano Josner Ávala. And woven into this is a back-story about Ávala's work being mostly unpublished, and about Ávala's life and work. Everything is still very unfocused; I'll be thinking over the next couple of weeks how to bring portions of it into focus.

posted evening of July 6th, 2012: Respond

Está bien te dices
Déjalo sencillamente
Transpirar acerca de ti
Solamente hunde
En el momento ajeno
Luego harás.
Se llama ésto «técnica»,
Técnica desechable.

posted evening of July 6th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

🦋 La obra de Josner Ávala

La cuerda corta: finidades, la poesía de Maximiliano Josner Ávala fue 1914 publicada en la prensa Universidad Técnica del Estado, editado y con introducción del colega y discípulo de Josner Ávala, Miguel Arroncoyo de Marcoa. Fue el único libro de Josner Ávala desde su tesis Sobre las tradiciones y instituciones de los peruanos indígenos casi 40 años antes, y fue publicada unos seis años despues de su muerte inoportuna. Su opus magnum, un tratado acerca de la divinidad del tiempo, nunca se completase.

La ambición de Miguel Arroncoyo editar y publicar ese tratado puede bien haber influido el escogimiento de poemas que componen las Finidades -- esas 229 estrofas representan las miles de páginas de los diarios que fueron donados a la biblioteca de la universidad, en armonia con el último testamento de Josner Ávala. De Marcoa las define en su introducción como «poemas breves y crípticos sobre magia» y como una «investigación en la divinidad»; pero las leyendo en el contexto de los diarios, se muy fácil entienden como notas personales, pensamientos sobre su infancia y su orfandad, la pérdida de la madre y luego de los abuelos.

posted evening of July 5th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about This Silent House

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

🦋 El día en que nací yo, como dice la canción

Here is (I think) the song that the opening credits of Cría Cuervos make reference to -- El día que nací yo, by Carlos Cano.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Crí­a Cuervos

🦋 "brief cryptic poems about magic and the divinity of time"

Here's a bit of how I'm imagining Maximiliano Josner's voice...

corta euforia ya no ciego
gustaría a mi abuelo ver
la cuerda corta que lo separa
de dios

del tuerto el juego de manos
sonrisa, rápido ofuscamiento
el robo consagrado

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Language

🦋 Some other approaches to Laura and Peter (mistranslation and shortcuts)

Trying to flesh out the characters slightly... here are some different, fragmentary approaches, and a picture of my backyard that I'm happy with.

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about SOPOSP

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