Robert W. Pelton
Voodoo Charms and Talismans
First sentence:
The word “amulet” comes from the Arabian hamala which simply means to carry something on the person.
The book itself presents as a talisman:
1973 Edition
Along with its how-t0 advice, the little paperback has an impressive bibliography for historical research.
And so for day 3122
29.06.2015
Where did this came from, I have no recollection. I like how cardinals and ordinals mix in the reader’s mind …
Imperfect Ballad
There were four. Two went to the zoo.
Three, to sea. Four, out the door.
One is gone, gone, gone.
And so for day 3121
28.06.2015
Gene Youngblood
Secession from the Broadcast
Utopia is no longer understood as not possible because it’s too ideal, but as not permitted because it’s too radical.
And so for day 3120
27.06.2015
Sina Queyras
Rooms: women, writing, Woolf
I like how this sentence ripples:
Coping mechanisms are handed down, as well as literary strengths – they are not always the healthiest, but they often have beauty.
And so for day 3119
26.06.2015
Risking stupidity …
The essays in this volume work through examples. The writing tries not only to accept the risk of sprouting deviant, but also to invite it. Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises. That is the experimental aspect. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didn’t think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your wiring that it ceases at moments to be recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure. For with inattention comes risk: of silliness or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be willing to “affirm” even your own stupidity. Embracing one’s own stupidity is not the prevailing academic posture (at least not in the way I mean it here).
Brian Massumi Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation
Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises.
And so for day 3118
25.06.2015
Finnegans Wake was another intimidating work singled out by Caedmon. According to the album’s liner notes, speech acts as both “concert” and “crutch” in helping readers to appreciate Joyce’s linguistic sonority: “With a work like Finnegans Wake, it may well be the only way of arriving at an experience of the book. Joyce reduces language to pure music; and, hearing it, one slips into a kind of swoon, a not even listening for words, but only the ebb and flow of sound. The reading-aloud is not one more tool to help penetrate the jungle, but a part of the text.” (77)
(77) Liner notes, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, read by Cyril Cusack and Siobhan McKenna, dir. Howard O. Sackler, Caedmon TC1086 [1959], 1 LP record.
References and quotation from Matthew Rubery
The Untold Story of the Talking Book
And so for day 3117
24.06.2015
John Ota
“Gamble House Kitchen”
The Kitchen: A journey through history in search of the perfect design
Stacked underneath the end counters are wide drawers containing tablecloths rolled to prevent creasing. I make a note of this excellent tip.
And so for day 3116
23.06.2015
Antonella Anedda
Pindar Says the Poet Must Guard the Apples of the Muses
translated by Patrizio Ceccagnoli & Susan Stewart
Let’s get to work, I say to myself.
I throw the fish in the oil
and watching them fry I think of what the poet must do
as guardian of apples, about those Muses.
Clearly, the dragon is irrelevant,
if anything, we need a hen,
the creature that hatches the egg of verses:
white for the void, yellow for the words.
And so for day 3115
22.06.2015
Bahar Orang
Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty
To engage ethically with Sappho’s poems is to love fragments, to love in fragments, with no totalizing category, no interest in a lost whole, no disdain for flaws.
I like how a series of negations follows the valourization of fragments.
And so for day 3114
21.06.2015
Distinguish […] tiptoe from whisper
becoming a river again
Conyer Clayton
We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite
[p. 22] and [p. 91]
And so for day 3113
20.06.2015
