Jumping

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Francois Lachance

It’s about tumbling, tuck and roll. Dawdling actually, duck walking. A hugging of the ground downhill like a log on the loose. A piercing view of the sky from hanging upside down from a limb. And the spinning and the jumping and the skipping.

Twirling through positions like an everyday glass of water giving the voice a drenching. Refreshing vision with the panting of joy.

No teetotum take all. Never quenching run singing into flight.

Soar into childfest simplicity. Roar. Worm wiggle giggle.

And so for day 131
24.04.2007

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Fulcrum

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Tinder tender.

Warren Tallman essaying on Creeley

For if muttering is a way of counting, counting is a way of telling […] In the heat of the telling there is an expansion of the voice and that expansion leads to discovery so that more enters into voicing than was either in the telling or the things told.

Exit is a noun that exists.

And so for day 130
23.04.2007

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Fishing

Posted on April 22, 2007 by Francois Lachance

“cutlure”

first word in column three of page 7 of The Globe and Mail of Monday September 7, 1973 in an article with a Marshall McLuhan by-line entitled “Understanding McLuhan — and fie on any who don’t”

cut lure

for

culture

Compositor’s revenge?
Proofreader’s slight?

And so for day 129
22.04.2007

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Exemplifications

Posted on April 21, 2007 by Francois Lachance

H.D. in The Wise Sappho mentions the “tortured and torturing sea”. A befitting description of any writing encounter with language where the voice becomes shaped like driftwood that snags upon the mind.

And so for day 128
21.04.2007

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Yes to “No” when there is no “Yes”

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Francois Lachance

In Frogs into Princes: neurolinguistic programming TM Richard Bandler and John Grinder suggest that in certain practices a minimum of three options are necessary to operate out of choice. It is suggested that operating with only one way is robot like. Operating with two creates a dilemma. Three is the minimum for genuine choice.

Going meta: the choice to create options is sometimes a simple decision of counting to one and not beyond. Exercising choice is not simply reacting to an expansion of options. Controling the selection is not the same as selecting.

And so for day 127
20.04.2007

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Articles

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Georges Hugnet and Virgil Thomson find a fine way to translate a line from the portrait of Bernard Fay by Gertrude Stein.

An article is a and an and the.

is rendered

Un article est un et une et le.

Parsing is a Paris fashion. And syntax has its reversals.

Le, la, sont et l’est un article.

and further back translation

The the are and a is an article.

Thomson and Hugnet help show the sides of “is”.

And by some metamorphic shift we spot Donne poetizing on the mingled bloods in the body of the flea. Yoko Ono Fly.

And so for day 126
19.04.2007

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To Verb

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Hovering over lines from Rene Ricard from in an INANOUT Press publication patching over a passel of bad dreams with a phrase aptly broken

Every night. At the age of

Seven

I learned how to fly.

and pasting in the title here ++ what every young sissy knows about dreams ++

getting the noun phrase verbed: what does the dreaming is what every young sissy knows about

such magic in numbers!

And so for day 125
18.04.2007

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Revisiting

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Francois Lachance

A longish ramble from a journal entry dated July 26/05

I had been wanting to use a quotation from the preface to Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul but completion of the book and careful re-reading of the sentence have led me to problematize what he endorses in such heart felt fashion. I am quoting from memory. “Metamorphosis requires our artful participation.” It is the possessive pronoun “our” that makes it unravel for me. I was quite willing to entertain an analogy between multimedia and metamorphosis — at least of a psychological variety. “Artful participation” seemed a roomy concept able to accommodate modes of physical interaction and cognitive processing — in the manner of a constructivist intentionality. The passive [sic] pronoun tripped me up but alerted me to the vital question of whose metamorphosis. There is a thematics of ownership coupled to this celebration of agency. In very lively ways quite beyond copyright or intellectual property regimes issues of ownership crop up in the context of agency. A peculiar perhaps notion of ownership becomes accessible to theorizing. That which is owned is that which is in my control for a while. Aside: my copy of Edmund Gosse’s Aspects and Impressions is printed in such a fashion that the individual essays may be excised. That is they may be removed without affecting the integrity of the remaining essays because the printing does not have the next essay beginning on the verso page of the previous. The age of photocopiers has introduced a different book design practice. Who cares if a piece from before or after gets caught in a reproduction?

I like that turn of phrase “completion of the book” for reading end to end. And very much, the telling substitution of “passive” for “possessive”. And the aside brings home the point about reproduction and acquisition in an oblique meditation on white space.

And so for day 124
17.04.2007

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Framing

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Tony Peake in the biography of Derek Jarman on the filming of The Tempest

The lighting was kept as low as possible, the camera as static, so that not only would the action seem to emerge, dreamlike, from the shadows, it would also unfold within each shot ‘as within a proscenium arch’.

I am struck by the progression of/from film through dream to theatre.

And so for day 123
16.04.2007

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More on Diversity and Moral Character

Posted on April 15, 2007 by Francois Lachance

Norman Brosterman in Inventing Kindergarten

No two days in the kindergarten week were exactly the same. Gifts and occupations changed, music and games were varied, nature walks and gardening were included, and daily themes rotated — unity in diversity was the basis of Froebel’s system.

The intended result of this all-encompassing instruction was the creation of a sensitive, inquisitive child with an uninhibited curiosity and genuine respect for nature, family, and society; a reasoning and creative child who would later have few problems learning the three Rs or anything else, while gracefully incorporating all manner of diverse knowledge and experience into a unified and supply life. Equivalence and balance were kindergarten’s foundation, expressed in all things and at all times […] the ultimate lesson of kindergarten was straightforward: the world (nature), mathematics (knowledge), and art (beauty) were interchangeable, and their perceived borders were misleading, artificial constructs. A chair might become numbers, numbers act, and art either or both.

I remember being encouraged by my parents to count, recount and enchant.

And so for day 122
15.04.2007

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