Nin Andrews: What You Have To Listen To

March 28, 2014, 7:15 am

≫ Next: Thomas De Quincey: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On board Virgin Atlantic A340 (G-VELO), economy cabin interior: photo by A Sutanto, 10 May 2012

Certain people I hate.
Number one on my list:
anyone who talks to me on an airplane.
Take my last trip.
I'm just settling in, taking a blanket
from the overhead bin
when this platinum blond, maybe 40,
sits down next to me,
whips out her lipstick and compact
arranges her face,
smiles at it and asks,
-- Are you from Pittsburgh?
-- No.
-- Me either.
What a shit hole, Pittsburgh,
know what I mean?
It's really the pits. Like its name.
I'm from Lynchburg.
Have you been to Lynchburg?
-- Nope. Did they lynch people there?
-- Of course not. It's a gorgeous town.
It's the Chapstick capital of the world.
Do you use Chapstick?
-- No.
-- I thought everyone used Chapstick.
I never leave home without it.
Even Jerry Falwell used Chapstick.
Did you listen to Jerry Falwell?
He would slide some on his lips
right in the middle of a sermon.
I think he licked his lips when he was inspired,
like, by the Holy Spirit.
Did you know Jerry Falwell?
-- No.
-- Oh, he was divine. I mean, for real.
He resided in Lynchburg,
and he was on the radio and the TV.
He was on Donahue loads of times.
And he was the President's preacher.
George Bush, I mean.
Everyone I knew loved Falwell.
We listened to him on the radio on Sundays
if we didn't go to church.
What radio station do you listen to?
-- I don't.
-- Oh well, just so long as you don't listen to NPR.
They say it's news but it's not.
Jerry Falwell said they just make stuff up
and then say it on the air. Like global warming.
He said NPR tells folks cold is hot, and hot is cold.
You feel how cold it is this winter?
-- And how hot it was last summer?
-- I am talking cold here.
But maybe you don't notice it like I do.
You must be from the north. I can hear it
in your accent. Just like my ex.
He was from Maine.
He stayed out in a blizzard one time,
and I kid you not,
he got frostbite on his extremities.
All of them. I mean, really.
Said he never felt a thing.
That's a Mainer for you.
Icicles everywhere.
Not a heart inside them.
And they call this global warming.
Did you ever get frostbit?
-- No.
-- Well, you never met my husband.
I was with him until I was saved.
I don't even talk to him anymore
but sometimes he calls
and just starts talking and talking,
and I think, why do I have to listen to this?
Know what I mean?
-- Yes, I think I do.

Nin Andrews: What You Have To Listen To, from Nin Andrews, 26 March 2014

untitled [img316w): photo by john keys (rolleimppl), 8 November 2013

EVA Air Business Class Bulkhead. The business class bulkhead with drawing of Hello Kitty on EVA Airways' Hello Kitty Jet "Sanrio Family Hand-in-Hand", a Boeing 777-300ER. Photo taken onboard BR15 from Los Angeles to Taiwan Taoyuan: photo by Luke lai, 8 February 2014

Standing by for the takeoff clearance on Lisbon's runway 21. Unusually dense fog for Lisbon is present making this an LVTO (Low Visibility Take Off) since the reported touchdown zone RVR (runway visual range) is 200m. A319 CS-TTP bound to Oslo: photo by Mathieu Neuforge, 1 December 2011

OpenSpace claustrophobia (London): photo by fabioliguori, 26 November 2013

↧

Thomas De Quincey: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

March 29, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: John Clare: Cottage Fears

≪ Previous: Nin Andrews: What You Have To Listen To

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Washington Allston (1779-1843), 1814, from Rosemary Ashton: The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1997; image by Materialscientist, 11 June 2012

It was not long after this event that my own introduction to Coleridge occurred. At that time some negotiation was pending between him and the Royal Institution,which ended in their engaging him to deliver a course of lectures on Poetry and the Fine Arts during the ensuing winter. For this series (twelve or sixteen, I think) he received a sum of one hundred guineas. And, considering the slightness of the pains which he bestowed upon them, he was well remunerated. I fear that they did not increase his reputation; for never did any man treat his audience with less respect, or his task with less careful attention. I was in London for part of the time, and can report the circumstances, having made a point of attending duly at the appointed hours. Coleridge was at that time living uncomfortably enough at the "Courier" office, in the Strand. In such a situation, annoyed by the sound of feet passing his chamber-door continually to the printing-rooms of this great establishment, and with no gentle ministrations of female hands to sustain his cheerfulness, naturally enough his spirits flagged; and he took more than ordinary doses of opium. I called upon him daily, and pitied his forlorn condition. There was no bell in the room; which for many months answered the double purpose of bedroom and sitting-room. Consequently, I often saw him, picturesquely enveloped in nightcaps, surmounted by handkerchiefs indorsed upon handkerchiefs, shouting from the attics of the "Courier" office, down three or four flights of stairs, to a certain "Mrs. Brainbridge," his sole attendant,whose dwelling was in the subterranean regions of the house. There did I often see the philosopher, with the most lugubrious of faces, invoking with all his might this uncouth name of "Brainbridge," each syllable of which he intonated with long-drawn emphasis, in order to overpower the hostile hubbub coming downwards from the creaking press, and the roar from the Strand, which entered at all the front windows. "Mistress Brainbridge! I say, Mistress Brainbridge!" was the perpetual cry, until I expected to hear the Strand, and distant Fleet Street, take up the echo of "Brainbridge!" Thus unhappily situated, he sank more than ever under the dominion of opium; so that, at two o'clock, when he should have been in attendance at the Royal Institution, he was too often unable to rise from bed. Then came dismissals of audience after audience, with pleas of illness; and on many of his lecture days I have seen all Albemarle Street closed by a "lock" of carriages, filled with women of distinction, until the servants of the Institution or their own footmen advanced to the carriage-doors with the intelligence that Mr. Coleridge had been suddenly taken ill. This plea, which at first had been received with expressions of concern, repeated too often, began to rouse disgust. Many in anger, and some in real uncertainty whether it would not be trouble thrown away, ceased to attend. And we that were more constant too often found reason to be disappointed with the quality of his lecture. His appearance was generally that of a person struggling with pain and overmastering illness. His lips were baked with feverish heat, and often black in colour; and, in spite of the water which he continued drinking through the whole course of his lecture, he often seemed to labour under an almost paralytic inability to raise the upper jaw from the lower. In such a state, it is clear that nothing could save the lecture itself from reflecting his own feebleness and exhaustion, except the advantage of having been precomposed in some happier mood. But that never happened: most unfortunately he relied upon his extempore ability to carry him through. Now, had he been in spirits, or had he gathered animation, and kindled by his own motion, no written lecture could have been more effectual than one of his unpremeditated colloquial harangues. But either he was depressed originally below the point from which any re-ascent was possible, or else this re-action was intercepted by continual disgust from looking back upon his own ill-success; for, assuredly, he never once recovered that free and eloquent movement of thought which he could command at any time in a private company. The passages he read, moreover, in illustrating his doctrines, were generally unhappily chosen, because chosen at haphazard, from the difficulty of finding at a moment's summons those passages which his purpose required. Nor do I remember any that produced much effect, except two or three, which I myself put ready marked into his hands, among the Metrical Romances edited by Ritson.

Generally speaking, the selections were as injudicious and as inappropriate as they were ill delivered; for, amongst Coleridge's accomplishments, good reading was not one; he had neither voice (so, at least, I thought) nor management of voice. This defect is unfortunate in a public lecturer; for it is inconceivable how much weight and effectual pathos can be communicated by sonorous depth and melodious cadences of the human voice to sentiments the most trivial; nor, on the other hand, how the grandest are emasculated by a style of reading which fails in distributing the lights and shadows of a musical intonation. However, this defect chiefly concerned the immediate impression; the most afflicting to a friend of Coleridge's was the entire absence of his own peculiar and majestic intellect; no heart, no soul, was in anything he said; no strength of feeling in recalling universal truths; no power of originality or compass of moral relations in his novelties: all was a poor faint reflection from jewels once scattered in the highway by himself in the prodigality of his early opulence -- a mendicant dependence on the alms dropped from his own overflowing treasury of happier times.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859): Samuel Taylor Coleridge (from the series Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets), in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, 1834

Thomas De Quincey: Sir John Watson-Gordon (d. 1864), n.d.; image by Dcoetzee, 30 March 2009 (National Portrait Gallery, London)

↧

John Clare: Cottage Fears

March 30, 2014, 8:07 am

≫ Next: Fernando Pessoa: Inscription XIII ("The thought whole... like a pitcher spilt")

≪ Previous: Thomas De Quincey: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Cottage Roof, Lower Darnley, Prince Edward Island: photo by Jim Rohan, 22 March 2014

                       The evening gathers from the gloomy woods
                        And darkling creeps oer silent vale and hill
                        While the snug village in nights happy moods
                        Is resting calm and beautifully still
                       The windows gleam with light the yelping curs
                       That guards the henroost from the thieving fox
                       Barks now and then as something passing stirs
                        And distant dogs the noises often mocks
                       While foxes from the woods send dismal cries
                        Like somthing in distress the cottager
                       Hears the dread noise and thinks of danger nigh
                        And locks up door in haste -- nor cares to stir
                       From the snug safety of his humble shed
                       Then tells strange tales till time to go to bed

JohnClare (1793-1864): Cottage Fears, composed c. 1832-1835

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Fernando Pessoa: Inscription XIII ("The thought whole... like a pitcher spilt")

March 31, 2014, 7:16 am

≫ Next: In Chinatown

≪ Previous: John Clare: Cottage Fears

A Lady and Two Gentlemen (detail): Johannes Vermeer, (1632-1675) c. 1659, oil on canvas (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig)

XIII

The work is done. The hammer is laid down.

The artisans, that built the slow-grown town,

Have been succeeded by those who still built.

All this is something lack-of-something screening.
The thought whole has no meaning
But lies by Time's wall like a pitcher spilt.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935): Inscription XIII, from Inscriptions, 1920, in English Poems, Lisbon, 1921

A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (detail): Johannes Vermeer, 1662-65, oil on canvas (Buckingham Palace, London)

The Milkmaid (detail): Johannes Vermeer, c. 1658, oil on canvas (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

↧

In Chinatown

April 1, 2014, 8:05 am

≫ Next: Life is amazing (Heavenly City)

≪ Previous: Fernando Pessoa: Inscription XIII ("The thought whole... like a pitcher spilt")

Hop Sing (Chinatown, Los Angeles): photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

-- from Chinatown (1974), directed by Roman Polanski, script by Robert Towne

Chinatown, Los Angeles: photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

Three buildings (Chinatown, Los Angeles): photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

Fong's (Chinatown, Los Angeles): photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

Apartments (Chinatown, Los Angeles): photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

Shadows (Chinatown, Los Angeles): photo by micjaelj1998, 26 March 2014

↧

Life is amazing (Heavenly City)

April 2, 2014, 6:54 am

≫ Next: The View from Here

≪ Previous: In Chinatown

Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 20 January 2014

When did it all begin? he thought. When did I go under? A dark, vaguely familiar Aztec lake. The nightmare. How do I get away? How do I take control? And the questions kept coming. Was getting away what he really wanted? Did he really want to leave it all behind? And he also thought: the pain doesn't matter anymore. And also: maybe it all began with my mother's death. And also the pain doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't get any worse, as long as it isn't unbearable. And also: fuck, it hurts, fuck, it hurts. Pay it no mind, pay it no mind. And all around him, ghosts.
.

He could see hills on the horizon. The hills were dark yellow and black. Past the hills, he guessed, was the desert. He felt the urge to leave and drive into the hills, but when he got back to his table the woman had brought him a beer and a very thick kind of sandwich. He took a bite and it was good. The taste was strange, spicy. Out of curiosity, he lifted the piece of bread on top: the sandwich was full of all kinds of things. He took a long drink of beer and stretched in his chair. Through the vine leaves he saw a bee, perched motionless. Two slender rays of sun fell vertically on the dirt floor. When the man came back he asked how to get to the hills. The man laughed. He spoke a few words Fate didn’t understand and then he said not pretty, several times.

“Not pretty?”

“Not pretty,” said the man, and he laughed again.

Then he took Fate by the arm and dragged him into a room that served as a kitchen and that looked very tidy to Fate, each thing in its place, not a spot of grease on the white-tiled wall, and he pointed to the garbage can.

“Hills not pretty?” asked Fate.

The man laughed again.

“Hills are garbage?”

The man couldn’t stop laughing. He had a bird tattooed on his left forearm. Not a bird in flight, like most tattoos of birds, but a bird perched on a branch, a little bird, possibly a swallow.

“Hills a garbage dump?”

The man laughed even more and nodded his head.
.

“One day, for reasons that are beside the point, I went with a doctor friend of mine to the university morgue. I doubt you’ve ever been there. The morgue is underground and it’s a long room with white-tiled walls and a wooden ceiling. In the middle there’s a stage where autopsies, dissections, and other scientific atrocities are performed. Then there are two small offices, one for the dean of forensic studies and the other for another professor. At each end are the refrigerated rooms where the corpses are stored, the bodies of the destitute or people without papers visited by death in cheap hotel rooms.

“In those days I showed a doubtless morbid interest in these facilities and my doctor friend kindly took it upon himself to give me a detailed tour. We even attended the last autopsy of the day. Then my friend went into the dean’s office and I was left alone outside in the corridor, waiting for him, as the students left and a kind of crepuscular lethargy crept from under the doors like poison gas. After ten minutes of waiting I was startled by a noise from one of the refrigerated rooms. In those days, I promise you, that was enough to frighten anyone, but I’ve never been particularly cowardly and I went to see what it was.

“When I opened the door a gust of cold air hit me in the face. At the back of the room, by a stretcher, a man was trying to open one of the lockers to stow away a corpse, but no matter how hard he struggled, the door to the locker or cell wouldn’t budge. Without moving from the threshold, I asked whether he needed help. The man straightened up, he was very tall, and gave me what seemed to me a despairing look. Perhaps it was because I sensed despair in his gaze that I was emboldened to approach him. As I did, flanked by corpses, I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves and when I reached him the first thing I did was offer him another cigarette, perhaps forcing a false camaraderie.

“Only then did the morgue worker look at me and it was as if I had gone back in time. His eyes were exactly like the eyes of the great writer whose Cologne lectures I had devoutly attended. I confess that just then, for a few seconds, I even thought I was going mad. It was the morgue worker’s voice, nothing like the warm voice of the great writer, that rescued me from my panic. He said: smoking isn’t allowed here.

“I didn’t know what to answer. He added: smoke is harmful to the dead. I laughed. He supplied an explanatory note: smoke interferes with the process of preservation. I made a noncommittal gesture. He tried a last time: he spoke about filters, he spoke about moisture levels, he uttered the word purity. I offered him a cigarette again and he announced with resignation that he didn’t smoke. I asked whether he had worked there for a long time. In an impersonal and somewhat shrill voice, he said he had worked at the university since long before the 1914 war.

“‘Always at the morgue?’ I asked.

“‘Here and nowhere else,’ he answered.

“‘It’s funny,’ I said, ‘but your face, and especially your eyes, remind me of a great German writer.’ At this point I mentioned the writer’s name.

“‘I’ve never heard of him,’ was his response.

“In earlier days this reply would have outraged me, but thanks God I was living a new life. I remarked that working at the morgue must surely prompt wise or at least original reflections on human fate. He looked at me as if I were mocking him or speaking French. I insisted. These surroundings, I said, with a gesture that encompassed the whole morgue, are in a certain way the ideal place to contemplate the brevity of life, the unfathomable fate of mankind, the futility of earthly strife.

“With a shudder of horror, I was suddenly aware that I was talking to him as if he were the great German writer and this was the conversation we’d never had. I don’t have much time, he said. I looked him in the eye again. There could be no doubt about it: he had the eyes of my idol. And his reply: I don’t have much time. How many doors it opened! How many paths were suddenly cleared, revealed to me!

“I don’t have much time, I have to haul corpses. I don’t have much time, I have to breathe, eat, drink, sleep. I don’t have much time, I have to keep the gears meshing. I don’t have much time, I’m busy living. I don’t have much time, I’m busy dying. As you can imagine, there were no more questions. I helped him open the locker. I wanted to help him slide the corpse in, but my clumsiness was such that the sheet slipped and then I saw the face of the corpse and I closed my eyes and bowed my head and let him work in peace.

“When my friend came out he watched me from the door in silence. Everything all right? he asked. I couldn’t answer, or didn’t know how to answer. Maybe I said: everything’s wrong. But that wasn’t what I meant to say.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003): from The Part About Fate and The Part About Archimboldi, in 2666, published posthumously 2004, English translation by Natasha Wimmer, 2008

Police helicopter, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 30 June 2009

Monterrey, Nuevo Leon: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 22 January 2014

Execution, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 8 March 2014

Life is amazing (Mexico City): photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 7 March 2014

Street, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 18 March 2014

Murder victim, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 March 2014

Execution victim, Valle de Chalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 10 March 2014

Execution victim, Tlalnepantla: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 6 March 2014

Murder victim, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 18 July 2013

The world's most wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin Loera Guzman, known as El Chapo, is captured, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 22 February 2014

Street, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 5 March 2014

Heavenly city (Tenochtitlan), Mexico: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 28 January 2014

Accident scene, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 December 2013

Accident scene, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 September 2013

Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 17 July 2013

Fatal accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 11 October 2013

Hurricane, Acapulco, Guerrero: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 20 September 2013

Slide area, Cuajimalpa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 September 2013

Tlalpan, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 24 November 2013

Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 15 September 2012

Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 20 January 2013

Metro, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 4 February 2013

St. Jude the Protector, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 28 July 2012

St. Jude the Protector, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 17 March 2012

Soul brothers, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 15 October 2012

Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 4 May 2013

Santa Anita, Iztacalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 1 June 2013

Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 April 2012

Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 1 May 2013

Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 9 May 2012

Exit, Gomez Palacio, Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 1 June 2012

Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 27 April 2012

↧

The View from Here

April 3, 2014, 5:34 am

≫ Next: Purity

≪ Previous: Life is amazing (Heavenly City)

San Francisco Skyline: photo by Jim Rohan, 24 March 2014

A strong jolt, the sound of heavy metal
and heavy metal interacting. Honk!
One of those long trains of white cloud
streaming onshore over El Cerrito

paused. The first driver pulled himself out.

Fat guy in khaki t-shirt. He said quietly, Fuck.

Standing at the window I turned away.

Bay Bridge #3 (San Francisco): photo by Jim Rohan, 11 March 2014

↧

Purity

April 4, 2014, 6:30 am

≫ Next: Red Shuttleworth: Buffaloes

≪ Previous: The View from Here

Radish Queen (Oaxaca): photo by colin, 24 December 2011

And when Barack Obama arrived at the White House, Alice immediately wrote to him. "At this moment in time, you have a unique opportunity to set the tone for how our nation should feed itself. The purity and wholesomeness of the Obama movement must be accompanied by a parallel effort in food at the most visible and symbolic place in America -- the White House."

In the sixties, most Americans ate more or less the same: bad things. Chicken à la king with a wedge of iceberg lettuce was a popular dish, while fondue made its way among the more daring. But in the new millennium, food divided Americans as rigidly as just about everything else. Some people ate better, more carefully than ever, while others got grossly overweight on processed foods. Some families, usually intact, educated, prosperous ones, made a point of sitting down together to a locally sourced, mindfully prepared dinner at home several nights a week. Others ate fast-food takeout together in the car, if at all. Alice helped make food into a political cause, but in the age of Chez Panisse, food could not help being about class. Her refusal to compromise her own standards led others to turn her revolutionary spirit on its head.

For some Americans, the local, organic movement became a righteous retreat into an ethic defined by consumer choices. The movement, and the moral pressure it brought to bear in parts of society, declared: Whatever else we can't achieve, we can always purify our bodies. The evidence lay in the fanaticism of the choices. A mother wondered aloud on a neighborhood Listserv whether it was right to let her little girl go on being friends with another girl whose mother fed them hot dogs. This woman was sanitizing herself and her daughter against contamination from a dangerous and disorderly society in which the lives and bodies of the poor presented a harsh example. Alice hated the word elitist, but these were elite choices, because a single mother working three jobs could never have the time, money and energy to bring home kale with the right pedigree, or share Alice's sublime faith in its beneficence.

Alice wanted to bring people to a better life, but she had trouble understanding that the immediate comfort of a walking taco might be exactly what a twelve-year-old wanted. When she heard the criticism, she turned away, to the radishes and flowers. Anyone who was passionate enough about organic strawberries, she believed, could afford to buy them. "We make decisions every day about what we're going to eat. And some people want to buy Nike shoes -- two pairs! -- and other people want to buy Bronx grapes, and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do."

George Packer: from Radish Queen: Alice Waters, in The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013)

Chez Panisse menu: photo by Misty Smith, 3 January 2012

Heirloom Tomatoes: photo by Amy, 16 August 2013

I think it’s become almost a form of class prejudice. This hysteria that people in my class have about what they eat, and what they allow their children to eat -- it’s almost as if they’re afraid that the world out there is going to contaminate their family. It also feels a little bit defeatist for that much effort to go into heirloom tomatoes. Since we can’t solve any other problems at least we can keep our bodies purified.

George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013), from an interview by Dan Oppenheimer in Salon, 26 May 2013

Nike Air Force III: photo by Edgar Alejandro Romo Magdalena, 21 December 2010

2525 -- design by Gerardo Rodriguez (grodz): photo by Raul Lopez Mestres (rOlo). 3 November 2010

CREATIVELY -- design by Gerardo Rodriguez (grodz): photo by Raul Lopez Mestres (rOlo). 3 November 2010

JUST DID -- design by Gerardo Rodriguez (grodz): photo by Raul Lopez Mestres (rOlo). 3 November 2010

Last week's menu -- Chez Panisse, Berkeley: photo by dogenfrost, 2 February 2014

Aparatif: Kir. A pre-dinner aperitif is served for each dinner as part of the Friday and Saturday Chez Panisse menus: photo by ulterior epicure, 9 June 2006

Chez Panisse Café: photo by _e.t, 7 July 2007

Chez Panisse -- Vino. That bottle of wine :). At Chez Panisse: photo by Your Hauness, 25 September 2009

Chez Panisse -- Glass Cup! So cute! They have their own glass cups for water!: photo by Your Hauness, 25 September 2009

At Chez Panisse -- With the check! Chocolate-dipped tangerines, and an Italian cookie (forgot the name :(): photo by Your Hauness, 25 September 2009

Busker and missionaries, Downtown Berkeley BART station: photo by dgollub, 27 February 2014

Busker with homemade drum kit, Center Street at Shattuck Avenue outside Downtown Berkeley BART station: photo by dgollub, 20 February 2014

↧

Red Shuttleworth: Buffaloes

April 5, 2014, 8:26 am

≫ Next: Lock On

≪ Previous: Purity

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/American_bison_k5680-1.jpg

American Bison (Bison bison): photo by Jack Dykinga, 28 September 2005 (U. S. Department of Agriculture)

I knew it wouldn't work.
Still we met at the museum
to gaze unseeing at a mummy.

We walked in the park
past places where we once kissed.
We spoke of each other
as one would of a friend
dead for a few years.

You caught me admiring
a young swaying body.
You asked at that moment,
"What're you thinking about?"

"Buffaloes," I lied.

RedShuttleworth: Buffaloes, from Chicago Tribune Magazine, 30 September 1973

http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/FullRes/natdiglib/34A47D47-AD13-4C14-B3AE89E9E9D181DD.jpg

Bison herd grazing at the National Bison Range, Montana: photo by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 24 June 2008 (USFWS/Dept. of Interior)

Bison roam with Teton Range in background, Montana: photo by Dag Peak, 22 August 2004

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Lock On

April 6, 2014, 5:46 am

≫ Next: Interrogation

≪ Previous: Red Shuttleworth: Buffaloes

At an Airport, Huntsville, Alabama: photo by Austin Granger, 5 March 2014

Viper Strike

a 44-pound

low-collateral damage

precision-guided

GPS-aided

laser-seeking

weapon system

that can deliver

a whole world of hurt

in less time than

it can take

that bad guy

even to begin

to think about

crossing that street

or coming out of that cave

whoever

and wherever

they are

Viper in attack mode. We stumbled over this really big viper (80 cm), and he or she didn't like it: photo by Jan Kroep, 11 June 2011

Windy night in Desert Hot Springs: photo by Jody Miller, 25 March 2014

Missiles with Saturn V Rocket, Huntsville, Alabama: photo by Austin Granger, 7 September 2013

Rocket Engine with Garbage Can, Huntsville, Alabama: photo by Austin Granger, 7 September 2013

Missiles with Saturn V Rocket, Huntsville, Alabama: photo by Austin Granger, 6 September 2013

Abandoned swimming pool, Keeler, California: photo by Jody Miller, 12 February 2014

↧

Interrogation

April 7, 2014, 4:51 am

≫ Next: Mahmoud Darwish: Identity Card

≪ Previous: Lock On

0009-112: photo by sebati. 11 November 2003

You always have to know the right question

The one to which there can never be a correct reply

0009-113: photo by sebati. 11 November 2003

0009-117: photo by sebati. 11 November 2003

↧

Mahmoud Darwish: Identity Card

April 8, 2014, 6:01 am

≫ Next: Submission

≪ Previous: Interrogation

Mahmoud Darwish: photo by Dar Al Hayat, n.d.; image edit by AnomalousNYC, 11 August 2008

Put it on record.

........I am an Arab

And the number of my card is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is due after summer.
........What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record
.........I am an Arab

Working with comrades of toil in a quarry.
I have eight children
For them I wrest the loaf of bread,
The clothes and exercise books
From the rocks
And beg for no alms at your door,

Lower not myself at your doorstep.
.........What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record.
.........I am an Arab.

I am a name without a title,
Patient in a country where everything
Lives in a whirlpool of anger.

.........My roots
.........Took hold before the birth of time
........Before the burgeoning of the ages,
.........Before cypress and olive trees,.........
.........Before the proliferation of weeds.

My father is from the family of the plough
.........Not from highborn nobles.

And my grandfather was a peasant
.........Without line or genealogy.

My house is a watchman's hut
.........Made of sticks and reeds.

Does my status satisfy you?
.........I am a name without a surname.

Put it on record.
.........I am an Arab.

Color of hair: jet black.
Color of eyes: brown.
My distinguishing features:
.........On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh
........Scratching him who touches it.

My address:
.........I'm from a village, remote, forgotten,
.........Its streets without name
.........And all its men in the fields and quarry.

.........What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record.
.........I am an Arab.

You stole my forefathers' vineyards
.........And land I used to till,
.........I and all my children,
.........And you left us and all my grandchildren
.........Nothing but these rocks.
.........Will your government be taking them too
.........As is being said?

So!
.........Put it on record at the top of page one:
.........I don't hate people,
.........I trespass on no one's property.

And yet, if I were to become hungry
.........I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
.........Beware, beware of my hunger
.........And of my anger!

MahmoudDarwish (13 March 1941-9 August 2008): Identity Card, from Leaves of Olives, 1964; English translation by Denys Johnson-Davies

Passport of Mahmoud Darwish: photographer unknown, via Mahmoud Darwish Foundation

Mahmoud Darwish wall graffiti, Ramallah, Palestine: photo by outside the bubble, 1 May 2009

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Submission

April 9, 2014, 6:07 am

≫ Next: Joseph Ceravolo: I work in a dreamscape of reality

≪ Previous: Mahmoud Darwish: Identity Card

NOT: photo by Nick Lyle, 20 November 2013

This O lord is my supplication

Let all those

near and dear who spent their sad

lives submitting themselves

to you get a bit of peace

someday

Cactus Home: photo by Nick Lyle, 26 November 2013

Rainy Light House: photo by Nick Lyle, 3 April 2014

Mudflat Clouds: photo by Nick Lyle, 3 April 2014

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Joseph Ceravolo: I work in a dreamscape of reality

April 10, 2014, 5:35 am

≫ Next: Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers

≪ Previous: Submission

[Untitled]: photo by A.D.Q, (Arthur Quesada II), 21 September 2013

I work in a dreamscape of reality. Everything seems to shut down for a split second. The language the feeling seems to exist on the edge of shutdown when suddenly all opens up. It's a tremendous relief. One doesn't worry about success or failure, only the motion of the gods feeding the words, and that freedom, that freedom.

15 July 1986

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): I work in a dreamscape of reality..., from Mad Angels (poems 1976-1988), in Collected Poems, 2013

[Untitled]: photo by A.D.Q, (Arthur Quesada II), 19 September 2013

[Untitled]: photo by A.D.Q, (Arthur Quesada II), 1 September 2012

↧

Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers

April 11, 2014, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Josephine Miles: Reason

≪ Previous: Joseph Ceravolo: I work in a dreamscape of reality

Old man, India: photo by Glenn Losack MD, 17 December 2011

To this man, to his boned shoulders

Came the descent of pain.

All kinds,

Cruel, blind, dear, horrid, hallowed,

Rained, again, again.

To this small white blind boned face,

Wherever it was,

Descended

The blows of pain, it took as it were blinded,

As it were made for this.

We were there. We uneasy

Did not know if it were.

Knew neither

The reason nor the man nor whether

To share, or to beware.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): The Sympathizers, from Local Measures, 1946

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Josephine Miles: Reason

April 12, 2014, 6:25 am

≫ Next: I see you

≪ Previous: Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers

Resident at the Highland Manor Retirement Home, New Ulm, Minnesota: photo by Flip Schulke for the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project, c. 1975 (US National Archive)

Said, Pull her up a bit will you, Mac, I want to unload there.
Said, Pull her up my rear end, first come first served.
Said, give her the gun, Bud, he needs a taste of his own bumper.
Then the usher came out and got into the act:

Said, Pull her up, pull her up a bit, we need this space, sir.
Said, For God's sake, is this still a free country or what?
You go back and take care of Gary Cooper's horse
And leave me handle my own car.

Saw them unloading the lame old lady,
Ducked out under the wheel and gave her an elbow.
Said, All you needed to do was just explain;
Reason, Reason is my middle name.

Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Reason, from Prefabrications, 1955

↧

I see you

April 13, 2014, 5:48 am

≫ Next: Lust for Life

≪ Previous: Josephine Miles: Reason

Old Diner (Barclay Hotel, Los Angeles): photo by michaelj1998, 2 April 2014

Frank walked down the steps. He didn't like elevators. He didn't like many things. He disliked steps less than he disliked elevators. The desk clerk called to him: "Mr. Evans! Would you step over here, please?" The desk clerk's face looked like cornmeal mush. It was all Frank could do to keep from hitting him. The desk clerk looked about the lobby, then leaned very close. "Mr. Evans, we've been watching you." The desk clerk again looked about the lobby, saw that there wasn't anybody near, then leaned forward again. "Mr. Evans, we've been watching you and we believe that you're losing your mind."

Charles Bukowski: from An Evil Town, in Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, 1972

Checking In (Barclay Hotel, Los Angeles): photo by michaelj1998, 2 April 2014

I seeyou (Barclay Hotel, Los Angeles): photo by michaelj1998, 2 April 2014

Free (Los Angeles): photo by michaelj1998, 2 April 2014

↧

Lust for Life

April 14, 2014, 6:27 am

≫ Next: A Guide to Men

≪ Previous: I see you

Cowboy (Olympic Blvd., L.A.): photo by Michaelj1998. 23 August 2013

In life

even the emptiest day has something in it

whereas after life

even the fullest of days has

nothing in it

becomes a sort of mantra
after a while

as the empty days and nights

go by...wa-hoo!...yee-haw!

Shorts (Downtown L.A.): photo by Michaelj1998, 5 October 2013

Barbershop (Bellflower, Ca.): photo by Michaelj1998, 11 April 2009

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A Guide to Men

April 15, 2014, 7:06 am

≫ Next: Millennial Rising

≪ Previous: Lust for Life

Oops -- Cardiff, Wales, St Mary Street, Friday night: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 25 May 2006

This is a song about common sense
Folded backwards into itself

--fromAGuide to Men, in The Plot Against Common Sense (2012) by Future of the Left, a Cardiff band

Huw in the club, Cardiff. The Glamorgan County Council Staff Club, Cardiff, Wales: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 12 November 2005

Three Men -- Financial District, New York: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 15 October 2010

Rituals in Gandak-- Soneur, India. Asia' s largest cattle fair: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 17 November 2013

22:19 -- Saturday night, Cardiff, Wales: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 20 March 2010

On the Beach -- Aden, Yemen: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 29 December 2007

02:45 -- Saturday night, Cardiff, Wales: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 31 May 2009

Coke --Sonepur Mela, India: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 22 November 2010

00:46 -- Saturday night, Cardiff city centre, Wales: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 13 June 2009

Tea -- Istanbul. A little tea shop in Balet, a wonderful colourful area of Istanbul: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 8 May 2013

22:41 -- Cardiff, Wales, the chippy alley on matchday. The guy literally dived into that pile of garbage a few seconds before, just for fun I guess. He didn't realize that he could get dirty a bit: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 18 June 2008

Priest --Sonepur, India. A quiet moment in one of the temples of Sonepur: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 18 November 2013

Pink Hat -- Cardiff, Wales, St Mary Street on Saturday night: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 25 June 2006

Night calls -- Bangkok, Thailand. Night calls from a tailor shop in Khao San Road, Bangkok: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 28 February 2014

Late Night Meal -- Cardiff. Wales, Caroline Street, the chippy alley: photo by Maciej Dakowicz, 24 July 2006

↧

Millennial Rising

April 16, 2014, 6:35 am

≫ Next: Soft Parade

≪ Previous: A Guide to Men

[Untitled]: photo by wiissa, 25 March 2013

When we reach the threshold of our aspirations

We know that the uplifting beam of generational self approval will fall over us

Slip quietly beneath us without our really knowing it

And transport us as if by magic carpet

Into a challenging yet inspiring new dimension in which

We will take on the amazing ability to stand upright under our own power

And reach up with fingertips at least partially extended
And maybe even almost touch the ceiling

So as to change the world

The Millennial Or: The New Lost: photo by Logan Zillmer, 11 November 2013

[Untitled]: photo by wiissa, 25 March 2013

Young, wired and living life on the digital edge: Meet the Millennials. (Or maybe it's all BS.): photo by Erin Nekervis, 24 December 2007

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