Snowdrops spotted in the back garden by DWR. And a composition in his honour:
tap drop running
bucket sap tipping
kettle thickening
bottlefuls and bottlefuls
of maple guile
It is like a little haiku that ran away on the wings of a memory of sipping delicious sugar maple sap and lapping more and more of the stuff.
And so for day 91
15.03.2007
Brillat-Savarin in the translation by M.F.K. Fisher pauses in the description of a turkey hunt to describe walking in the woods:
I wandered through it with delight, observing the benefits and the ravages of time, which both creates and destroys, and I amused myself by following every period in the life of an oak tree, from the moment it emerges two-leaved from the earth until that one when nothing is left of it but a long black smudge which is its heart’s dust.
I like how he begins slightly past the acorn and ends beyond the stump. Undercuts the utilitarian.
And so for day 90
14.03.2007
There is a game issued as “jobware” by Ryan Koopmans called Chrysanthemum (copyright 1993) for play under the classic macintosh system. Ikebana meets Tetris. I hope that Ryan’s talents were picked up by a worthy employer. The game has a sound track that can be turned on or off, the presence of which can affect the rhythm of play. And there are many other fine features to vary play throughout its twenty levels. You can pause play to admire the exquisite formations. Or you can race on.
And so for day 89
13.03.2007
Juxtaposing slips from bookmarkers with messages that seem like responses to unasked questions:
The index is a probe
Homeopathic method — constant but little doses
Almost as if the lapidary prose was meant to tesselate.
And so for day 88
12.03.2007
A notebook entry from 10/12/00 references some posting read on a discussion list:
Basically the old line that F2F [face-to-face] is better than online because [there are] more cues in the physical interaction that therefore can guide the social / pedagogical interaction. Of course information overload can occur with an abundance of cues. Tempted to retort that behind a desire to maintain the hegemony of F2F instruction is a “pedagogy of cruelty” — saturated semiosis . a desire for the cultivation of the heightened experience — a devouring [arrow pointing right] gives new meaning to the expression “carnal knowledge” [arrow pointing right] a devouring of the other — a demand that the moment of interpellation be matched by a moment of reciprocation [arrow pointing right] not all pedagogy, not all successful pedagogy depends upon a being there together — it’s not a religious right rite or a moment of ecstatic fusion (not all sex is reciprocal and not all sex is orgasm-centred, BTW)
redolence versus salience
This now reads as an oddly baroque plea for minimalism or at least a place for some little bit of minimalism …
And so for day 87
11.03.2007
An encyclopedia wolf entry pacified with passives:
And the motto of Wolf Cubs in Canada is “Do Your Best”, a prelude to the “Be Prepared” of Boy Scouts.
And so for day 86
10.03.2007
In the middle, straddling two columns of text, the editors chose one key attention grabbing sentence from a review by Michael Lynch of the film Beautiful Dreamers. Now further in time from 17.04.90 its Globe and Mail appearance it is a tribute to the author.
Audiences want to grapple with history, not be be lulled by it.
“Putting Whitman back in the closet” is the title of the piece.
And so for day 85
09.03.2007
In our household books move and arrive arrested in some interesting configurations: Susan Stewart’s On Longing underneath Wendell Berry’s Home Economics and both bearing well under the weight of the two volume C.K. Scott Moncrieff translations of Proust’s Recherche.
Sometimes the magic is comparative and relies less on the titles and associations. That sort of magic comes from finding the passages noted in one book providing an echo of passages in the other: the copy of Lewis White Beck’s translation of Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals has a slip drawing attention to the idea of happiness being an absolute and thus escaping the will of an empirical finite being to form a definite concept of happiness. And how the passage in question reads so very much like the “catastrophize” neologism encountered by the recovering protagonist of Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen.
A Beck-rendered sentence from Kant to explain the human predicament: “If he wills a long life, who guarantees that it will not be long misery?” alongside Jensen’s description of months-long “doomsday postulating”.
And just the day before yesterday one nice turn of phrase found in Bronwen Price’s “Verse, Voice, and Body: the retirement mode and women’s poetry 1680-1723” in Early Modern Literary Studies (January 2007) — “protean impulses of melancholy”.
As children, the appellation “spoil sport” conferred a certain sense of power. Often it meant saving imagination from deceivers, recognizing what is for what could be. Deceivers eager for one particular could be shut-down-possibilities. Knowing the end of a story does not preclude not knowing how to tell the story. Children as great melancholics? The sad child is a theatrical marvel.
And so for day 84
08.03.2007
I’ve experienced Tomatis effects by which I mean the contribution that earphones can make in civilizing computer use, that is allow for two or triple sound layers to sculpt the immersive experience. You are invited to test or demo for yourself with reference to this passage from Pierre Sollier from an article about Dr. Alfred Tomatis (copyright 2001-2005):
Sounds that reach the ear are modulated by the middle ear. Some sounds are amplified, some are muffled into the background. The ear acts like a “gate-keeper”. This gives us the ability to focus on what is important […] Sounds that are captured by the bones go directly into the inner-ear, without passing through the middle ear, the gate keeper. So, background noise and the voice of the teacher are as loud, making it impossible to really focus.
It may not be possible to focus but it is possible to concentrate. One’s own inner “silence” à la John Cage can be surrounded by an envelope of noise. Sound as barrier.
And so for day 83
07.03.2007
Thinking of Chris Bearchell who passed away last month at the age of 53. Having read the obituary pieces in the gay and alternative press, I turned to personal recollections of having been a frequent guest at the Walnut Street house and remembering our last exchange of email about our love of science fiction and the food we shared.
I had already come to the decision to attempt a year without buying books (more use of libraries and more nose in the unread volumes that have piled up) before I heard of Chris’s death. There’s a fair bit of science fiction in that pile up.
And it is from Chris that I learnt the trick of using cutting boards as plates. Certainly gave her kitchen an air of distinction.
And so for day 82
06.03.2007
