Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sociable Serviceable

Posted on March 31, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Australian writer, Gay Bilson, who in introducing a section of Plenty: Digressions on Food quotes Octavio Paz. Octavio Paz, in an essay in his collection Convergences, wrote about ‘seeing and using’. He suggested that craftsmanship ‘in its perpetual movement back … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Prosthetic Idols

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Martin Buber in Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, translated by Olga Marx (New York: Schocken Books, 1947) relays this story of and about the Baal Shem Tov. The Jug Once the Baal Shem said to his disciples: “Just … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Window

Posted on March 27, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Brenda Carr’s essay in Tessera Volume 9 is blessed with a typo. Marlatt and Warland’s Double Negative situates itself at the intersection of the possible meanings for the word ‘negative.’ making the term vitually reversible. “Vitually”, a term marked by … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Shaping pace

Posted on March 26, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Like garden work there are moments to cling to, to be taken up by, one such is from a 1909 winter: I too write in haste, just before dressing to go out. I will only add here I have blind … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Throes

Posted on March 24, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Paul Goodman somewhere observed: Since people’s personalities are very much their verbal patterns, communication feels like physical aggression or seduction. It is tempting to transcode this into the language of push and pull but that “or” is not exclusive. Ouch. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Read Carefully

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Rick Bebout in a passage from Promiscuous Affections about the passing of Michael Wade All the fear we have of the dying comes, I think, from the idea that we need arcane and mysterious skills when in fact we need … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

While waiting

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Francois Lachance

A friend now lives part of the year in Portugal and so on a whim I picked a small pocket bilingual dictionary. Opening the little book at random I found a word that set me adrift. In Portuguese godo means … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Trajectories and types

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Thanks to Anne Galloway (Purse Lips Square Jaw) I was brought to thinking about a drive to neologistic invention less as a competition between creators for the supremacy of their creations and more as a dizzying display of diversity. Equally … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Typologies and trajectories

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Francois Lachance

There are connected but different ways to approach discussing the effects of media, ways that make explicit as possible what media are: media as prop media as stage media as puppet Relays for fetish, space and mask. Note the order: … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Varying

Posted on March 16, 2007 by Francois Lachance

“Being Among Words” Interview with Denis Donoghue in The Pure Good of Theory Blackwell, 1992 p. 96 The only real justification for literature is that it provides us with ways of imagining what it would be like to be different. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment