tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122662702009-07-04T12:14:23.437-04:00Bill Bly's weblogbblynoreply@blogger.comBlogger114125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-81241199728904614372009-03-24T09:51:00.005-04:002009-04-21T10:49:28.010-04:00

Ada Lovelace DayIt could be a thousand years ago. Maybe not. When the bell? When the Roman Empire fell, the church used a bellfor a hell of devious scheme:To summon their flock, they invented the clockthey made time with their new machine...The mass bell at SS Simon & Jude cleanses the air of noise, driving city groan all the way to the horizon, each peal a stroke of the wet sponge down the slate

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-63681328312677787242009-03-07T14:40:00.002-05:002009-04-24T08:45:20.989-04:00

My friend John McDaid tagged me with this challenge, which really underestimates the amount of time needed for completing it. And when I finished, I realized I'd left a couple out!ShareSaturday 07 March 2009 2:40 PMThink of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-14699517523099889052009-01-28T10:10:00.011-05:002009-02-07T09:44:54.820-05:00

When the telephone first came to our upcountry farm in Kula,there was only one wire. The numbers were a digit different,but it was the same line. When anybody's rang, ours rangin the kitchen, and so rang the receivers in every other house.No matter what somebody said, anybody could be listening,and everybody knew it, so nobody ever said anything importantor personal on the phone. Phones were

bblynoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-82511103767300394932009-01-24T10:45:00.008-05:002009-01-29T09:00:32.119-05:00

To the tune of "We're Havin' a Heat Wave..."I'm havin' a flashback,A terrible flashback...Yesterday, believe it or not, I went Christmas shopping for my wife. Over the past few years, we've been having a serious motivation problem with The Holidaze — the decorating, the doing the shopping, the wrapping the presents, the getting everything shipped in time, then the scheduling the visits, the

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-1790129454401118912009-01-23T10:11:00.007-05:002009-01-29T09:02:02.521-05:00

My first and favorite experience in samizdat was The Pick-Pocket's Packet, published by the W.P.A.O.P.P. (Western Pennsylvania Association of Organized Pick-Pockets), Rich Kenny, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.It was eighth grade, that liminal year which in other municipalities would have been the last year of grammar school, but in those days, in our proto-burb just outside the orbit of metro

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-40158843237605789452009-01-14T07:41:00.001-05:002009-04-23T07:45:01.450-04:00

I want to say to the father at the bus stop every morning fall winter spring with his now two crazy boys yelling running stomping staggering nonstop right up the bus steps when it finally comes that there is a pair of boy-sized blue knit gloves lying on the window sill next to the door of the house on the corner where they wait that must well might belong to one of his sons who probably lost them

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-79556764534024011942009-01-10T09:51:00.002-05:002009-04-18T10:28:48.802-04:00

... bringing it back down from the opaque dome just beyond the trees' reach, dropping it on them, the sidewalk, the tops of cars patient as cows lined up to wait out the first storm of the year. The squirrel is pissed, but the crows flap on, kidding & laughing, towards their sunrise staff meeting in the oaks around the old folks' home, where they'll decide, among other things, what to do about

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-37284346555674000302008-12-15T23:49:00.008-05:002008-12-16T00:04:11.041-05:00

This past weekend the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, of which I am a whisky tenor, performed the Vivaldi Gloria and Bach's Magnificat (the one in D). Both are magnificent, dancing works to sing, and I love the Magnificat especially, it being the first major work of his that I performed in my half century of choristing. The tenor aria in that work, "Deposuit," is one of the most exciting,

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-4629808984534124702008-09-08T08:48:00.001-04:002009-04-23T08:50:46.415-04:00

I thump the spider on the outside of my sliding screen from the inside with my figernail, worried about finding her there, worried she'll get in. But, whereas an insect or slug would either fly away or fall, she just pops right back to the exact same spot as if held there by a strong rubber band, which, functionally speaking, she is, and grapples more deeply into the seam where the screen tucks

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-33832300824046142842008-08-29T08:08:00.000-04:002009-04-23T08:10:59.836-04:00

Out of the background of joggers, speed walkers, strollers, the saunterers with their leash-straining pets, she gallops straight at me down the middle of the street, so tall she can't be a dog, but too small for a horse, stick legs drumming, black toes clicking on the asphalt, just after I've pulled around the corner, before I've picked up any speed; I jerk my foot off the gas but can't find the

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-48950196600249665602008-08-24T07:56:00.000-04:002009-04-23T07:58:28.954-04:00

The sun slips, demure yet sure, out from hiding behind the maple that overhangs the playground where the workmen pound & shout. Behind me, upon an aural bed of late August crickets, a single locust echoes: sliding in, then blazing. 

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-60904658178529908812008-02-25T13:42:00.006-05:002008-02-26T05:32:14.801-05:00

Today is the birthday of my grandson, Elijah Bly Arougheti. He's 3.In his honor, I've prepared my first podcast. To play it in your browser (and sing along):Elijah3.mp3For the multimedia version, head on over to:Elijah3 {at} dot-Mac

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-32035386786907930622007-10-05T12:50:00.000-04:002007-10-05T12:56:45.138-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing some new plays in Manhattan, part of the Australia Project, a production of the Production Company, an Australian-American alliance, which put on eleven new plays over the past three weekends at Chashama 217, on East 42nd St between Third and Second Aves.Stupidly, I'd written the address down as 217 *West* 42nd St, believing that this was the same Chashama

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-37868427264521886702007-07-05T08:06:00.000-04:002007-07-05T08:21:53.629-04:00

I had seen the snake before.I had watched the copperhead unwind itselffrom the gut and leather bindingsof a pair of snowshoes that hung on the wallin my father's woodshop, though what it was doing there, I do not know. Another time,it slithered away from the woodpile, what at first seemed a nest of dead leavesunfolding in one smooth rope of molassesand honey. Its scales sparkled in the sunas it

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-16821090667176119992007-06-15T08:00:00.000-04:002007-06-15T08:11:35.944-04:00

As physics has developed, it has deprived us step by step of what we thought we knew concerning the intimate nature of the physical world. Color and sound, light and shade, form and texture, belong no longer to that external nature that the Ionians sought as the bride of their devotion. All these things have been transferred from the beloved to the lover, and the beloved has become a skeleton of

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-24813100809794059982007-06-03T06:49:00.000-04:002007-06-15T07:56:38.744-04:00

He wondered, then, if the others who had remained on Earth experienced the void this way. Or was it peculiar to his peculiar biological identity, a freak generated by his inept sensory apparatus? Interesting question, Isidore thought. But whom could he compare notes with? He lived alone in this deteriorating, blind building of a thousand uninhabited apartments, which like all its counterparts

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-74361359257939045122007-05-25T10:01:00.000-04:002007-06-14T10:01:41.719-04:00

Sunset Boulevard blazed, empty, rinsed in sunshine, the stray cars like bugs streaming in the footprint of a vast lifted rock.— Jonathan Lethem, You Don't Love Me Yet, 124.

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-37252551319266727402007-05-13T09:57:00.000-04:002007-06-14T09:58:04.453-04:00

It takes a long time for a mouse to realize he's in a trap, but, once he does, something inside him never stops shaking.— Laurie Anderson, quoted in New Yorker Rock & Pop listings, for May 21, 2007, 10.

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-41588235381932589242007-05-11T09:49:00.000-04:002007-06-14T09:53:45.416-04:00

It was a strange land,With many roads and few destinations.There were signs everywhereInstructing people to do thisProhibiting people from doing that,But mostly people did as they pleased,And the only rules that were enforced Were the one protecting those people in power,The people who broke the rules most often.In the blink of an eye,The soft, irregular shapes of the landBecame hard and

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-86146384815410080822007-05-10T10:08:00.000-04:002007-05-10T10:19:46.920-04:00

A week ago I attended the ELO/MITH Symposium on the Future of Electronic Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park. It had been a long time since I'd seen many of my friends and colleagues from what we used to call the hypertext community, and it was wonderful to catch up on what they were doing.My first job upon returning was to write it up as a feature article for Arts Hub (

bblynoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-16641483741214987862007-04-26T06:15:00.000-04:002007-06-15T07:59:20.997-04:00

The idea that our life is a story is by no means new. Thus the great bard Shakespeare said that life"... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (Macbeth) However, it took philosophers some time to discover the philosophical import of this view of life. It was actually a German chap called William Schapp who first gave this age-old idea a philosophical twist. He

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-14837099050348614852007-04-21T06:05:00.000-04:002007-06-13T06:14:35.293-04:00

In a motel in Iowa City I looked at the journal of the first day and a half of my trip. I've learned to write down certain things I've seen rather than the banal thoughts that don't bear rereading, or when you do reread them your soul yawns in the stuffy air... — David, in Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth, 187.

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-60294476399236316862007-04-19T10:20:00.002-04:002009-01-31T21:39:31.438-05:00

In 8th grade, I was a founding member of the Chess Club, which met on Tuesdays during Activity period. I'd originally tried to join the Science Club, but found out that there were two Science Clubs: the one that looked through telescopes and studied the stars was full by the time I got there, and I had to take the other one, the one that did Nature hikes on Saturdays and studied pond scum. Didn't

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-36576694048195331502007-04-17T08:20:00.000-04:002007-04-17T08:27:38.733-04:00

In "Our Town," a most edifying article in the April 2 New Yorker, Jill Lepore considers the reputation of John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown, the first successful English colony in what we once innocently termed the New World. Summing up at the end, she addresses the idea some scholars have that Smith was one of early America's best ethnographers. "After all, compared with his

bblynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12266270.post-1611073378111427052007-04-12T07:21:00.001-04:002009-01-24T11:36:11.056-05:00

These big-hearted men, the poets — I don't trust them suddenly. Not that I trust anyone or anything, but... distrust of them is special, cuz they say the truth, or see it & say what they saw, which is never quite the same thing, is it?Point is, what do I see in their sawing? — to use an antique form, with its seven types of ambiguity: 1) seeing; 2) saying; 3) cutting in, between 2 things once 1,

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