Through the cackle crackle of screen or page came the reversal that turned to pur from rup. A sequence reversal but not a mirror projection: the letterforms stay intact (different places, same orientations). And now, and here, a palindrome-like but not quite with full tack, a reduplication twist stirs the air.
purr chirrup
Chasing a vertigo of symmetries as shimmering as “fish fur” mentioned in the universe of a Julian May novel are, briefly, cat and verb.
And so for day 111
04.04.2007
[Reprise with variation]
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
The child mumble-hummed the cadences of speech with a mouthful of wet crunch. The precision was admired by the adult. A closed mouth. Using one’s head to resonnate round food lumps. So precise an understanding that could distinguish talk from directed sound through the presumption of articulation.
“Nice control of the epiglottis.”
“What’s an epiglottis?”
A piece of cereal spilled out and clung to the lip. A hand raised to push it back in and wipe the spread of an impish grin as curiousity lept out.
“A trap that prevents choking.
And so for day 110
03.04.2007
Phyllis Webb in Sunday Water: Thirteen Anti Ghazals invites the reader to
Hear the atoms ambling, the genes a-tick
in grandfather’s clock, in the old bones of beach.
driftweed is perhaps what the beach washes up but wave upon rushing wave yields the homophony of beech, the tree, the grandfatherly tree, an appropriate chronometer planted for generations to ponder perhaps imagine the felled timber be lost at sea, driftwood to driftweed indeed.
And so for day 109
02.04.2007
Thich Nhat Hahn, Calming The Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism
At that retreat, I offered a nonsectarian version of the Three Refuges, the traditional Buddhist affirmation. I offer this version to you here.
I have great confidence in the capacity of all beings to attain great understanding, peace and love.
I have confidence in the practice, which helps us to walk on the path of great understanding, peace and love.
I have confidence in the community, which is committed to the practice of understanding, peace and love.
Elegant: the people, the way, the people of the way. Out again to the people.
Notice the subtle migration of the adjective “great”.
And so for day 108
01.04.2007
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 and forth between beauty and utility, pleasure and service … teaches us lessons in sociability’. He wrote of the ‘rationality’ of industrial design, the impersonal uniformity. The handmade bowl is, by his definition, already sociable. So too is food prepared with discrimination and offered at the domestic table.
Note that the origin of the object does not determine its being imbued with the sociable. Use does. Industry is quite capable of producing the mock-handmade.
And so for day 107
31.03.2007
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 as the strength of the root is in the leaf, so the strength of man is in every utensil he makes, and his character and behavior can be gauged from what he has made.” Just then his glance fell on a fine beer jug standing in front of him. He pointed to it and continued: “Can’t you see from this jug that the man who made it had no feet?”
When the Baal Shem had finished speaking, one of his disciples happened to pick up the jug to set it on the bench. But the moment it stood there it crumbled to bits.
The easy gloss is to read the tale as a reflection on the prosthetic thesis (our tools are projections of our bodies).
Another soon to be easier gloss is ecological in its outlook and hears the “every” and understands that given the proper attention the fate of one is wrapped in the fate of all. And the fate of all is the end.
And so for day 106
30.03.2007
Jean-Paul Daoust’s suite of prose poems Du dandysme contains a line sublime in its conveying of lassitude.
Le dandy est une diva dans l’opéra d’une vie inutile.
Easy enough to translate the beginning: “The Dandy is a diva” but the prepositions prove tricky and the temptation is is to resort to nouns posing as adjectives: “The Dandy is an opera diva” but how to approach the vowels of the end if not by recourse again to the noun as adjective: “The Dandy is a life opera diva” and so is almost reached that divine note of being condemned to no utilitarian purpose.
The Dandy is a purposeless life opera diva.
In the next line “Which seems essential” — either diva or life is meant: “Qui semble essentielle.” And so the close reading via translation finds me asking after appearances.
And so for day 105
29.03.2007
Perplexed by a passage in the Douglas Ainslie translation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly I look at the French Du Dandyism
Il resta, il est vrai, incorrect et Anglais dans notre langue, comme toutes ces bouches accoutumées à mâcher le caillou saxon et à parler au bord des mers
Ainslie:
It is true that he remained English and incorrect when speaking our language, like all those that are accustomed to chew the Saxon pebble and to speak on the sea shore
Revised to strengthen the allusion to Demosthenes and to carry over the synecdoche:
He remained, truly, unidiomatic and English in our language, as are all mouths filled with Saxon pebbles and used to addressing the waves
There is it seems a greater distance between “chewing” and “swallowing” in French. And chewing involves the tongue muscle to a degree that one would not risk chipping a tooth. Hence the need in English for the expression “to chew on”.
And so for day 104
28.03.2007
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 the possible, the virtual, and the vital, the alive and thriving. Vitrious victory.
And so for day 103
27.03.2007
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 faith in my power of making sentences presentable, so that I leave bald patches gaily, to furbish up next winter
Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf edited by Joanne Trautmann Banks (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1989) p. 51 Letter No. 471.
Faith in the power to make sentences presentable. And joy in that faith. The words will come to the appropriate spot at the appropriate time like garden work
And so for day 102
26.03.2007
