Little islands united in an archipelago
and the fields turn fallow in the absence of tractors.
Young men sun themselves
In summer’s groinIsolated, the image
Injures the present
Lines set as stanzas:
* from Economy of Winter
** from Lives of Empire
*** from Lives of Cloth
All from Rob Schlegel The Lesser Fields
And so for day 2700
05.05.2014
Stardust, the movie based on the Neil Gaiman novel.
Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare says to the rescued Tristan and Yvaine:
An ounce of bargaining,
a pinch of trickery,
a soupçon of intimidation,
et voila!The perfect recipe
for a towering reputation
without ever having to spill
one drop of blood.
It is the enumeration that appeals. And the minute quantities required.
And a wry comment on the actor’s art.
And so for day 2699
04.05.2014
Lisa Jardine
Tanner Lectures
https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/Jardine%20Lecture.pdf
Lecture II – Science and Government: C. P. SNOW and the Corridors of Power
In March 1945, as it became increasingly clear that the US government was inclining toward the use of the newly developed atomic bomb, Albert Einstein wrote a letter of introduction to President Roosevelt on behalf of the most senior scientist working on the secret development of the bomb, Leo Szilard.
[…]
Einstein’s letter states with particular urgency the matter Snow urges us all to consider. It is “the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing [the] work and those members of [the] Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy” that poses the greatest danger of the wrong policy decisions being made in matters with a considerable scientific content.
It is one of the tragedies of the twentieth century that President Roosevelt died only two weeks later, before he had met Szilard (though an appointment with his wife, Eleanor, had been made). From Snow’s perspective, President Truman’s decision to use the bomb—twice—on civilian populations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the following August, was the most powerful example that could be produced of the absolute necessity for permanently and irrevocably bridging the two-cultures divide.
If Szilard … If Roosevelt had not died …
Right science. Right time and place. Right decision.
Science literacy augments the chances.
And so for day 2698
03.05.2014
Saeed Jones
How We Fight for Our Lives
An arc of narrative thematizing mirrors & weapons:
But now, pressing myself into the bed’s many pillows, I felt my body and realized that my body could be a passport or a key, maybe even a weapon. A body like a brick thrown through a sleeping house’s window. I got hard then just thinking about all the things I would be able to do with myself.
[…]
None of this had any bearing, though, on how I felt when I was alone. Standing in front of the mirror, my reflection and I were like rival animals, just moments away from tearing each other limb from limb.
[…]
I stood in front of the mirror, sobbing, unable to stop myself.
Boys like us never really got away, it seemed. We just bought ourselves time. A few more gasps of air, a few more poems, a few more years. History hurt more than any weapon inflicted on us. It hit back harder than any weapon we could wield, any weapon we could turn ourselves into.
[…]
Retreating to the edge of the living room, I noticed then that she still had mirrors all over the walls. They broke up our bodies and handed them back to us piecemeal.
Concluding line of the memoir: Our mothers are why we are here.
That passage about mirrors all over the walls is a description of grandmother’s house. I struck me as a turning point where the weapons are deposed. It reflected for me the figure of Indra’s net (both son and mother are practicing Buddhists).
By way of explanation, I cull one example from Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment by Thich Nhat Hanh:
Suppose you build a hall made of mirrors. Then you enter and hold a candle in your hand. Looking into a mirror you can see the candle, and when you turn around you see you and a candle in that mirror, and you see you and the candle in another mirror reflected again. Not only does one mirror reflect another mirror, but it reflects all the other mirrors, because each mirror has you in it and the candle in it. You just need to look in one mirror and you see all the reflections of you and the candle to infinity. There are countless mirrors and countless candles and countless yous.
But in Saeed Jones’s memoir, at this point in the protagonist’s trajectory, it is not a multifaceted reflection – it is handed back piecemeal. This is no bright jewel moment. But it is real.
The piecemeal reflections are a beginning at understanding the interpenetration of all being and by the memoir’s end we as readers are able to see and sense that the concluding line is not only a declarative statement of the two travellers (both having lost mothers) at a specific time and place (Barcelona, September 2011) but also an invitation to accept a reflection on our connection with the past: Our mothers are why we are here.
And so for day 2697
02.05.2014
https://www.surfacemag.com/articles/rirkrit-tiravanija-talks-politics-cooking-ceramics/
Rirkrit Tiravanija and the Politics of Cooking – interview in Surface Magazine
On cycles
If we weren’t in the city, you could take the clay out of the ground and make everything literally from scratch. And it can also go the other way: You can use the object and return it to the ground. One of the things I’m interested in doing in the future is to make a project where you use the object and then you kind of return it—after you drink the tea, then you smash the cups.
On the repurposed
[W]hen I was a younger artist thinking about Duchamp’s urinal. What do you do after the readymade? After everything could be claimed as sculpture? My answer was to take the urinal, reinstall it, and piss in it. It’s the idea of reanimating an object, to put it back into use, to put the urinal back on the wall.
On pausing
I’m interested in slowing everything down so that you can look at the details. The reason I make the things that I do, and the way that I do, is just to give people space to stop and pause. To stop and pause at this point is a kind of transgression.
And so for day 2696
01.05.2014
Naoki Higashida
The Reason I Jump
Translated by KA Yoshida and David Mitchell
The book is organized as a set of questions and responses. These two are somehow connected for me. And I am grateful for their being side by side.
#23
What’s the worst thing about having autism?
[…]
We can put up with our own hardships okay, but the thought that our lives are the source of other people’s unhappiness, that’s plain unbearable.#24
Would you like to be “normal”?
[…]
To give the short version, I’ve learned that every human being, with or without disabilities, needs to strive to do their best, and by striving for happiness you will arrive at happiness. For us, you see, having autism is normal – so we can’t know for sure what your “normal” is even like. But so long as we can learn to love ourselves, I’m not sure how much it matters whether we’re normal or autistic.
And so for day 2695
30.04.2014
This sums up what reading the book is like:
He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
T.H. White
The Sword in the Stone
Perfect mise-en-abyme.
And so for day 2694
29.04.2014
Two quotations from Yona Friedman
Understanding something means misunderstanding it in one’s own way.
An architect does not create a city, only an accumulation of objects. It is the inhabitant who ‘invents’ the city; an uninhabited city, even if new, is only a ‘ruin’. (from Pro Domo, 2006)
Inhabiting a ruin…
as a means
of not ruining habitation
And so for day 2693
28.04.2014
The Breath of a Wok
Grace Young and Alan Richardson
The charming turns of this dedication to three people by Alan Richardson bring a smile to our lips.
In memory of my mother, who gave me a taste for good cooking; and my father, who told me to find myself a good cook. And to Larry, who makes a great gravy.
I like the subtle coming out.
The same cookbook informed me that the Cantonese distinguish gold garlic (stir fried) and silver garlic (steamed) — found in dish of three elements: luffa steamed with garlic that is finished with a drizzle of hot oil and fried garlic.
It sizzles.
And so for day 2692
27.04.2014
Ian Hamilton Finlay as remembered by Stephen Scobie
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dancers-inherit-party/
Marvelous piece – part obit part commentary
[H]e never ceased to show me things as rare, as beautiful, as whimsical, or as sublime as summer elephants.
[…]
[T]he rough track up to his garden at Stonypath bore the literal but profound admonition “The way up and the way down is one and the same”
An evening out…
Consider in this light, the story of the sundial with the inscription …
EVEN
– ING
WILL
COME
THEY
WILL
SEW
THE
BLUE
SAIL
It was first published as a long, vertical print, the words in delicate white lettering against a rich blue background. It also exists, however, as a working sundial, carved in wood, set in the grounds of Little Sparta. From Dunsyre, it faces west, towards a sea that it cannot see; but in the metaphorical interplay of elements, the sea is always present in Finlay’s inland garden. Facing west, it works as a sundial only in the even-ing hours, only when they sew the blue sail. Facing west, it also bears the full force of the Scottish weather — and, as the years have gone by, this sundial has weathered too. Moss grows on the wood; the carving of letters is worn and evened down. Marking the passage of time on a yearly as well as an hourly basis, the sundial too is a living thing that approaches its ending. For it too, as for its creator, the evening will come; they will sew the blue sail.
I first encounter the print-poem in the house at Douglas Chambers’s rural marvel, Stonyground. It hung by a window. I’m not sure of the direction it faced but would not be surprised if it was west.
And so for day 2691
26.04.2014
