2x3x7

You know you've hit writer's block when...

2009-07-14T13:58:00.003-04:00

...you consume a pint of Guinness and six Barthelme short stories for lunch, and you still can't find the inspiration to write.

In other news, can I just say that I feel personally betrayed by Capitalism. What's the point of free enterprise if you can't get proper service even if you're willing to pay for it? Thrice in the last week I've ordered things on 'expedited' delivery, only to receive apologies and a refund when they didn't arrive by the agreed deadline (NOTE to vendors: I don't want a @#%&!ng refund, I want my shipment!!).

I don't understand why Capitalism is doing this to me, after all that we've been through the years. Can it be she finally found out about by affair with Marxism in college? Is this her way of taking revenge?

Joblessness redefined

2009-07-11T18:34:00.002-04:00

Ron
is gone
but the con
goes on

- placard at Anti-Scientology demonstration outside the Church of Scientology, Minneapolis.

Personally, I have no use for scientology (or any other organized system of faith), but I can't help thinking that organizing a demonstration against it, complete with placards and masks and loudspeaker and soap bubbles (don't ask!) is overkill. One protests evil, not silliness.

Oh, and as the more lynx-eyed among you have already noticed, I've bid farewell to Philadelphia and moved to Minneapolis, where I'm currently busy assembling furniture (correction: trying to assemble furniture) and stocking my kitchen and generally being depressingly domestic. Will return to blogging once I've managed to wrestle myself back to civilization.

Betrayal

2009-07-07T16:38:00.003-04:00

He would have been dismayed by the betrayal if he hadn't suspected it all along. Which is not to say it didn't surprise him, but only in the way that one is surprised by the inevitable arrival of a long-lost brother bearing an unexpected gift. Not that the traitor in this instance was his brother, or indeed, a relation of any sort, which is what made the betrayal so puzzling, because why pretend allegiance to someone whom you owe nothing? So perhaps there was something the traitor owed, or thought he owed. Had he helped the traitor in some way, done him some unconscious kindness, the burden of which had now caused him to snap? It was possible. And should he then forgive him, or choose reprisal, even vengeance, as a way of balancing things out? Would it be more of a penalty to betray him in turn, or to ensure his guilt by refusing to betray him? And wasn't this calculation itself a betrayal? What were the ethics of mirrors? Was it possible to observe oneself in a moral stance?

Eisoptrophobia

2009-07-07T12:43:00.002-04:00

The fear that cannot face itself.

Amazon

2009-07-03T15:53:00.001-04:00

...now has copies of etudes for sale.

Just so you know.

Something

2009-07-02T16:29:00.002-04:00

Measure the magnitude of an injustice by the smallness of what counts as a triumph.

Not a victory, then, but an achievement, a giving way.

How obscene to have to celebrate this; to have to celebrate the fact that having sex with someone you love no longer makes you a criminal.

And for that reason alone, how necessary to celebrate it.

It's good to know that India has finally arrived in the 20th century. Here's hoping it doesn't take till 2109 to get to the 21st.

That's Dr. Falstaff to you

2009-06-25T13:41:00.002-04:00

5 years

= STATA + JSTOR + rewrites + conference presentations + the annual caffeine output of a medium-sized Colombian plantation

= 49,000 words + 300 references + 24 tables

= 15 slides + 1 hour defense

= 1 dissertation, signed and delivered.

And it's barely lunchtime.

Four years

2009-06-24T20:42:00.002-04:00

Depressing thought # 1461: This blog has now lasted longer than any relationship I've been in.

Booklamite

2009-06-23T23:53:00.003-04:00

After he stopped sleeping, he moved into the library, staying hidden when the doors closed in the evening so he could spend all night wandering the shelves, picking out books at random, reading straight through till dawn.

He estimated it would take him twenty five years to read every book the library had. In fact, it took him twenty seven.

By the time he finished, he could no longer speak with anyone. A long habit of absolute silence made that impossible. Instead he spent three days sitting quietly in his carrel, thinking back over all he had read. On the fourth day he made a decision, found the book that he wanted, began to re-read.

Abandon

2009-06-21T17:22:00.002-04:00

"Maybe all people are abandoned children. Perhaps birth is like being abandoned on earth by God."

- Yasunari Kawabata The Old Capital [1]

Or like running away. Here we are then, delinquents in search of adventure, impatient of safety, a galaxy of shooting stars. The self an assertion of independence. Mortality a coming of age.

At what point does escape turn into exile?

Robert Frost defines home as "something you somehow haven't to deserve". Who can blame us then, if death feels like home?

[1] translated from the Japanese by J. Martin Holman

Gladioli

2009-06-21T17:14:00.003-04:00

Every Sunday she buys seven white gladioli, arranges them in the tall vase in her bedroom, their long stems immersed in water. Their presence gives the room a kind of clarity, a sense of well-being she draws sustenance from, even though she knows her joy is rootless, that her hope, even as it opens, is beginning to fade.

The best policy

2009-06-07T23:43:00.002-04:00

He put his cards on the table. Found himself playing solitaire.

Rhymes

2009-06-07T17:57:00.004-04:00

You know how people who don't know anything about it are always saying that they don't like modern poetry because it doesn't rhyme? Well, aside from being lazy and short-sighted, that particular prejudice isn't even true - a fair number of modern poets do, in fact, work in rhyme, and this month's issue of Poetry features two of the finest I know. Here's Stephen Edgar:

Look. The moon’s pale-copper sphere

Rings—a gong too faint to hear—

Through the city.

- Stephen Edgar, 'The Building of Light'

and A.E. Stallings:

I hate you,

How the children plead

At ﬁrst sight—

I want, I need,

I hate how nearly

Always I

At ﬁrst say no,

And then comply.

(Soon, soon

They will grow bored

Clutching your
Umbilical cord)

- A.E. Stallings, 'The Mother's Loathing of Balloons'

Go read.

P.S. Those of you who don't need poems to rhyme should also check out Armantrout, who is as delightful as ever.

Morning Post

2009-06-03T00:28:00.002-04:00

The paper arrives with its newsprint rain.

The world is sodden with happening. My throat is dry.

I scan the horoscopes, circle the futures I like.

Unfolded, the silence is as wide as my arms.

R.I.P. Kamala Das

2009-06-01T20:48:00.002-04:00

Just heard the news.

I must admit I've never much cared for Ms. Das - I've only read her poems, and they've always struck me as being predictable, turgid and overripe. The sort of poems you'd expect from Edna St. Vincent Millay [1].

Still, I did read them, and while I may not be particularly fond of Ms. Das's efforts, I cannot question the sincerity of those efforts, or the immeasurable importance of her having made them.

One mourns for her the way one mourns for an elderly relative: however out of date her conversation, however embarrassing her presence, her death is still a loss.

[1] I realize some people might consider this a compliment. It's not meant to be.

A fanatic

2009-05-31T17:03:00.002-04:00

is someone who cares more about ideology than about ideas.

The Apocalypse

2009-05-30T23:08:00.002-04:00

is never personal. It can no more happen to you than you can happen to a speck of cigarette ash.

It is not that the universe is incapable of malice. If it knew we existed it would despise us. Or pity us. But it's too busy to care.

I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares

The world is unfair, but impartial.

We are abandoned children. We seek conspiracy in the stars.

Betraying Chopin

2009-05-30T23:01:00.002-04:00

"Don't remember the music;
remember it as something obvious
that you are compelled, doomed, to obscure
and complicate. You erase it twice.
The first time
as you listened, unable
to have it,
the second time
as you were unable
to remember it."

- Arda Collins, 'Not for Chopin' from It Is Daylight (Yale University Press, 2009)

On Cowardice

2009-05-29T23:50:00.003-04:00

Cowards come back to a thousand lives.

The valiant stay dead.

Allegro Marcato

2009-05-28T22:35:00.004-04:00

The handpump of history creaks in the night.

Death is sealed and hollow.

The taste of iron leaks into the water, like the voices of the lost singing under the music.

A rusted day gushes from the dawn.

(inspired by Honegger's Symphony no. 3)

Heartbreak - 1

2009-05-28T01:05:00.004-04:00

The first time is easy. You gamble, you take the hit. You pretend that the pain is making you stronger. You wonder what you did wrong, though you secretly know the answer. You do not want to believe in inevitability. It all seems very romantic, a kind of validation, the comfort of knowing that what you lost was real. You tell yourself despair is a grown-up emotion. And you can't help feeling a little proud.

Hope

2009-05-26T22:27:00.002-04:00

He hasn't lost it.

He hasn't. It's here. Somewhere. Underneath all this mess. It has to be. He saw it the other day. It couldn't simply have vanished. He just has to find it. Just has to look more carefully. It's sure to turn up.

At least, he hopes so.

A blurring of lines

2009-05-24T22:08:00.003-04:00

This is what the whiskey helps with - not forgetting, but a blurring of lines.

Sip by slow sip the past comes back to him.

Everything glows. Sadness, like the light at sunset, touches all things golden.

If only there was something left to wait for.

After the fourth drink the old songs make sense to him. Lena Horne singing Stormy Weather. The sweetness of lost disturbances, of rooms through which no one moves.

He's had enough. He fumbles about for the bottle cap but cannot find it. He gives up, pours himself another.

His throat aches.

Dark outside now. He should turn on the light, draw the curtain. Instead he sits, watching the streetlight come through the window, the shadow of the wind chime on his bedroom wall.

Two wind-stirred figures, dancing delicately apart.

The search for transcendence

2009-05-22T23:36:00.000-04:00

or

trying to put one over.

Concentric Paths

2009-05-22T22:25:00.005-04:00

Thomas Ades Violin Concerto Op. 24

What, exactly, does time circle?

Scale after shimmering scale, the music a snake, feeding on itself.

The coin spinning to rest on the table has its own symmetry, its own precision.

An agitation building to silence.

The slower hand of the sunlight, the faster hand of the storm.

Stop.

If the machine has a soul it must be broken.

The bow runs across the strings like a knife across a thumbprint.