Transit

Posted on February 16, 2008 by Francois Lachance

In the “On Water” chapter of Jennifer Bennett’s Our Gardens Ourselves: Reflections on an Ancient Art one finds a lovely meandering sentence that reminds one of a slowly trickling stream or of the tranquil disappearance of evaporation trails.

It is hidden in the air, in the soil and in countless puddles that do not look like puddles but take on fascinating, colourful multitude of unpuddlelike shapes — tree shapes, earthworm shapes, gardener shapes, tomato shapes, whatever — that hold the water, in transit, by means of relatively small amounts of substances other than water.

Such an antithesis to a great chain of being to place the human player between earthworm and vegetable. Such wonder that the vast hydraulics are powered by a few well-placed salts.

And so for day 430
16.02.2008

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The Way of Economy

Posted on February 15, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Anne McCaffrey Crystal Singer embeds an intriguing aphorism in a passage reflecting upon the awakening of the protagonist, Killashandra, to her chosen craft and profession.

That was ever the way of technology: to take the worthless and convert it into wealth.

The sentence is set at the end of a paragraph in a spot and with punctuation to invite meditation. The way of technology is not necessarily an easier way. It is not one without toil. And McCaffrey’s text makes this clear because the concluding sentence of the previous paragraph sets the tone

The two facets of singing crystal were linked: the good and bad, the difficult, the ecstatic.

Wicked play with parallelism where good is on an initial reading aligned with difficult and bad with ecstatic. But the alignment is perhaps chiasmic and the valuation is reversed: the bad ecstasy and the good difficulty. In any event the colon helps the reader focus upon the unasked question: how much wealth does it take for the way of technology to convert the worthless?

And so for day 429
15.02.2008

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inno’va-tion

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Signed “James Downey”, the introduction to inno’va-tion: Essays by Leading Canadian Researchers contains an apt description of the ingredients of the research process

While researchers may use highly sophisticated machines, they themselves are subject to the same vagaries of chance experience as the rest of us. Their discoveries are often a unique and unpredictable mix of curiosity, circumstance, skill, and personal reflection.

The celebration of chance is for me akin to the praise of imagination and its highly sophisticated machines. It is the attention to pattern and its manipulations that bring together in my mind the meditation on the work of the researcher with the play of the writer as suggested by Jane Yolen in Touch Magic

Literature, of course, is an unnatural act committed by two consenting individuals — writer and reader. […] Each — writer and reader — helps create the world. The pattern is the book. A fantasy novel is more than an adventure or a quest. Rather it is a series of image-repeating glasses, a hall of mirrors that brings past and future into focus and calls it the present. […] The fantasy novel presents a world of poetry, of dream-making and sometimes of dream-breaking.

To imagine the otherwise, to be aware of chance, to observe carefully: simple practices for complex machines be they of fiction or of the laboratory.

And so for day 428
14.02.2008

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The Ends of Names

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Mosquito by Gayl Jones ends with a signature that displays the names of the narrator protagonist: Sojourner Nadine Jane Nzingha Johnson.

The first chapter of The General in His Labyrinth by Gabreil Garcia Marquez translated by Edith Grossman ends with a paragraph that likewise rifts on names:

It was the end. General Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios was leaving forever.

I find it intriguing that the display of a full set of names is congruent with a sort of signing off.

And so for day 427
13.02.2008

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Soubise

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Any Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook has a recipe for “Baked Stuffed Onions” in which the tops of cooked onions are sliced off and the centres scooped out. The scooped-out onions are sauted and spooned over the stuffed onions. This reminds me of soubise.

And so I looked up Soubise in Len Deigthon’s Où est le garlic? in which soubise is described as the addition of cooked onions to béchamel. Oddly not what I recalled (a mixture of cooked rice and onions pureed).

I checked Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine where it is called “Sauce ou purée soubise”. No trace of a bechamel base.

All this cross-checking is assisted by good indices. And it generates an appetite. Time to head for the kitchen.

And so for day 426
12.02.2008

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Re-purposing

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Alan Fletcher in The Art of Looking Sideways reproduces Erotic Surrealist Handsigns. One discovers a clever juxtaposition of a chart of the handsigns from the deaf alphabet and associated with each of these letters a word. For example, “U” stands for “urticate”, “C” for “cunnilinguate”, “D” for “deflower”, etc.

Being set in a book of some thousand pages, the reproduction of the found art is itself a bit of a “trouvaille”.

And so for day 425
11.02.2008

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Hankering (summer haiku)

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Francois Lachance

In February, in this part of the world, the light has returned but the warmth remains remote. It is perhaps no wonder that the summer-themed haiku are written during the cold of winter. Gazing out the window upon the skeletal twigs, one leaps over buds and shoots of spring to the fullness of bloom and leaf. One holds in mind the gardener’s triumph. Later there will be satisfaction in the progressions; now is the time of the recollection of grand delight.

fence-clematis dots
found in formations
as sky-crisp as flocks

In the muffled muteness of the snow, it is difficult to hold true to the constant mutability. Difficult but not impossible especially with the help of words and images.

And so for day 424
10.02.2008

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Broken on Purpose

Posted on February 9, 2008 by Francois Lachance

The chapter on “Perfection” in David Weinberger Small Pieces Loosely Joined

No, we don’t think we’re perfect, but we think it’s just a matter of time before progress will protect us from every random misfortune to which our flesh is heir. Where once our imperfection defined who we were as creatures, now it merits a shrug of the shoulders followed by an uplifting thought and a comment to maintain our all-important “self-esteem.”

Now we come back to the Web. […] The Web is broken on purpose.

I like how the theme of the robustness of the organic is introduced and undercut. Shrugging off imperfection is in a sense belittling its being a sign of the power to meet contingencies. Weinberger doesn’t explicitly state the comparison of Web and human body. That is its charm, here.

And so for day 423
09.02.2008

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Delight and Contemplation

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Francois Lachance

Virginia Woolf’s biography of Roger Fry of course quotes the painter and critic himself.

“One thing I can say for myself,” he wrote. “There are no pangs of jealousy or envy when I see someone else doing good work. It gives me pure delight.” There perhaps lay the secret of his influence as a critic.

Earlier, Woolf quotes Fry on his own painting …

I shall never make anything that will give you or anyone else the gasp of delighted surprise at a revelation but I think I shall tempt people to a quiet contemplative kind of pleasure — the pleasure of recognising that one has spotted just this or that quality which has meaning tho’ mostly one passes it by.

This approach is consonant with a critical practice of returning again to the picture (not claiming that one has exhausted all there is to see). It is an intensely scientific and patient approach. Being in touch with the variable. And the constant.

And so for day 422
08.02.2008

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Rinse

Posted on February 7, 2008 by Francois Lachance

I have encountered this advice about flatulence avoidance in a number of places. Kim Williams’s is a simple and prosaic description of how to treat the cooking of beans. It is culled from the introduction to the recipe for “Savory Four-Bean Salad” found in her Cookbook & Commentary: A Seasonal Celebration of Good Food for Mind & Body.

With either method I drain off that soaking water, add fresh water, cook, covered, for one half hour, then drain again. Then I add fresh water and cook the beans until they are tender. This is the final cooking and the liquid stays with the beans.

Me, I discard the soaking liquid. Cook. Then discard the cooking liquid. And store with fresh water unless I am adding them immediately to a dish. Whatever the sequence of rinsing, a colander is a useful tool for cooking beans.

And so for day 421
07.02.2008

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