24 April 2009
The City
by C.P. Cavafy
You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind molder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.
"And if suddenly a moth lands on the edge of a pencil and flutters there like an ash-colored flame, look at it, I am looking at it, I am touching its tiny heart and I hear it, that moth reverberates in the pie dough of frozen glass, all is not lost. When the door opens and I lean over the stairwell, I'll know that the street begins down there; not the already accepted matrix, not the familiar houses, not the hotel across the street: the street, that busy wilderness which can tumble upon me like a magnolia any minute, where the faces will come to life when I look at them, when I go just a little bit further, when I smash minutely against the pie dough of the glass brick and stake my life while I press forward step by step to go pick up the newspaper at the corner." -Cortazar
You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind molder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally."
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.
"And if suddenly a moth lands on the edge of a pencil and flutters there like an ash-colored flame, look at it, I am looking at it, I am touching its tiny heart and I hear it, that moth reverberates in the pie dough of frozen glass, all is not lost. When the door opens and I lean over the stairwell, I'll know that the street begins down there; not the already accepted matrix, not the familiar houses, not the hotel across the street: the street, that busy wilderness which can tumble upon me like a magnolia any minute, where the faces will come to life when I look at them, when I go just a little bit further, when I smash minutely against the pie dough of the glass brick and stake my life while I press forward step by step to go pick up the newspaper at the corner." -Cortazar
The Instruction Manual
by John Ashbery
As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them—they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!
But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers,
Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),
And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.
The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.
First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow
Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat
And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.
His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.
Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,
And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.
But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one
I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.
Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk
Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.
He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.
But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.
Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,
And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.
But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.
Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,
Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl
Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying
But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.
She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.
She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.
Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;
His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,
I see there is an intermission in the concert.
The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws
(The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),
And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk
About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.
Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.
Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim
That are so popular here. Look—I told you!
It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.
An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.
She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.
“My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too
If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.
Look, here is a photograph of him.”
And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.
We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late
And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.
That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.
The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.
His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.
Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.
There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.
There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.
There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies
And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.
Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.
There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,
But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.
And there is the home of the little old lady—
She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.
How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!
We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.
We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.
What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.
And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my
gaze
Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.
As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them—they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!
But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers,
Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),
And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.
The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.
First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow
Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat
And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.
His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.
Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,
And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.
But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one
I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.
Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk
Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.
He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.
But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.
Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,
And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.
But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.
Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,
Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl
Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying
But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.
She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.
She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.
Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;
His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,
I see there is an intermission in the concert.
The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws
(The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),
And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk
About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.
Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.
Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim
That are so popular here. Look—I told you!
It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.
An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.
She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.
“My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too
If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.
Look, here is a photograph of him.”
And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.
We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late
And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.
That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.
The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.
His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.
Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.
There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.
There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.
There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies
And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.
Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.
There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,
But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.
And there is the home of the little old lady—
She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.
How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!
We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.
We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.
What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.
And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my
gaze
Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.
Letter to a Young Lady in Paris by Cortazar part 2
How hard it is to feel welcome in this world where so many structures are existing and sometimes/always existing against you.
To illustrate the difference between despair of creativity and absolute courage, I would like to compare two extremely different artists' works.
1. Monk by the Sea, 1809 by Caspar David Friedrich
To me, this work and Friedrich's other portraits hint at a haunting spiritual paralysis. The people face away from the audience across vast, inhospitable landscapes, motionless. In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
, the man is forever almost a suicide. How could he possibly produce? "Surely he never produces"
"it offends me to intrude on a compact order, built even to the finest nets of air,"
"How can I tell you about it, Andrea, the minute mishaps of this soundless and vegetal dawn, halfasleep on what staggered path picking up butt-ends of clover, individual leaves, white hunks of fur, falling against the furniture, crazy from lack of sleep, and I'm behind in my Gide, Troyat I haven't gotten to translating, and my reply to a distant young lady who will be asking herself already if . . . why go on with alI this, why go on with this letter I keep trying to write between telephone calIs and interviews."
2. Stills from Rhythm 0, 1974 by Marina Abramović
This artist's courage and power lie in her ability to fuse artist and audience, to create a free space where "I" and "you" both make and the possibility of destruction is the possibility of creation!
To illustrate the difference between despair of creativity and absolute courage, I would like to compare two extremely different artists' works.
1. Monk by the Sea, 1809 by Caspar David Friedrich
To me, this work and Friedrich's other portraits hint at a haunting spiritual paralysis. The people face away from the audience across vast, inhospitable landscapes, motionless. In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
, the man is forever almost a suicide. How could he possibly produce? "Surely he never produces"
"it offends me to intrude on a compact order, built even to the finest nets of air,"
"How can I tell you about it, Andrea, the minute mishaps of this soundless and vegetal dawn, halfasleep on what staggered path picking up butt-ends of clover, individual leaves, white hunks of fur, falling against the furniture, crazy from lack of sleep, and I'm behind in my Gide, Troyat I haven't gotten to translating, and my reply to a distant young lady who will be asking herself already if . . . why go on with alI this, why go on with this letter I keep trying to write between telephone calIs and interviews."
2. Stills from Rhythm 0, 1974 by Marina Abramović
This artist's courage and power lie in her ability to fuse artist and audience, to create a free space where "I" and "you" both make and the possibility of destruction is the possibility of creation!
09 April 2009
Simon and Garfunkel Bookends album lyrics v. Letter to a Young Lady in Paris by Cortazar
Bookends is Simon and Garfunkel's masterpiece and also happens to be their first self-produced album. They got to make the decisions about how they wanted their art to be without most of the record industry's dictatorship. A beautiful instance of when restraint is lifted: change being art being freedom. The title of the album refers to two old friends who occupy a park bench together toward the end of their lives. But the world is the bookends too. We are born between them. How do we make room to move? We find love, make mistakes, create, visit the fucking zoo, we fake it, we face winter--have fears and master them, take drugs, watch movies, eat cereal. Some kill themselves young (the album begins with a suicide story), some make it to old age and are happy in their slow-death aching bodies because they have all these beautiful memories of when they did all that beautiful shit (Garfunkel recorded old people talking in a nursing home). And how do we feel welcome in this world? Is it inhospitable or the best of all possible?
Letter to a Young Lady in Paris is a suicide note from a man who could not be in the world the way he wanted. What he created he found detestable because it also destroyed.
The question of how to feel welcome in the world that has existed before you and exists longer than you. How to make your place, your art, your history in an already working, structured place, art, history. Is it necessarily destructive to make the attempt anyway--do you have to in order to live? does it kill you also? yes also yes.
Cortazar: "With all that, I decided to kill the rabbit almost as soon as it was born. I was going to live at your place for four months: four, perhaps with luck three-tablespoonsful of alcohol down its throat. (Do you know pity permits you to kill a small rabbit instantly by giving it a tablespoon of alcohol to drink? Its flesh tastes better afterward, they say, however, I ... Three or four tablespoonsful of alcohol, then the bathroom or a package to put in the rubbish. )"
vs.
Simon: "And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
We'd like to know a little bit about your for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.
...
Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes.
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes.
It's a little secret just the Robinsons' affair.
Most of all you've got to hide it from the kids.
...
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Jotting Joe has left and gone away,
Hey hey hey."
18 February 2009
mad toy
etceteraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
04 February 2009
I hated
The Aleph.
I hated how pretentious it sounded talking about time and space.
I don't worship language. i barely respect it.
I am glad it was destroyed.
I hate trying to think about everything at once. I hated the paragraph where he tried to do it.
I absolutely hate the woman. I hate the man's fawning and what he remembers about her. the pictures of what she did. because i am scared of how i will live when i die.
Beatriz what a bitch.
though of course he rendered her subtly and beautifully, another dead woman. a naked dead woman in art. a naked dead woman sole obsession of a man who ages without her. i have a picture in my head. she is the aleph. she was once everything kaleidoscope telescope dream goddess. then she is a photograph. so she was never actually anything but a photograph. and when he stops going to look at the photograph, she was never even a photograph.
I hate to think about how cruel it is that memories morph and distort and disappear.
I also hate to think how wonderful it is.
There was never paradise.
the memories i have of you i can count on one hand. is that the extent to which you live?
masolino (aleph=tree of the knowledge of good and evil)
rothko (and i think he was closer to representing ALL)
I hated how pretentious it sounded talking about time and space.
I don't worship language. i barely respect it.
I am glad it was destroyed.
I hate trying to think about everything at once. I hated the paragraph where he tried to do it.
I absolutely hate the woman. I hate the man's fawning and what he remembers about her. the pictures of what she did. because i am scared of how i will live when i die.
Beatriz what a bitch.
though of course he rendered her subtly and beautifully, another dead woman. a naked dead woman in art. a naked dead woman sole obsession of a man who ages without her. i have a picture in my head. she is the aleph. she was once everything kaleidoscope telescope dream goddess. then she is a photograph. so she was never actually anything but a photograph. and when he stops going to look at the photograph, she was never even a photograph.
I hate to think about how cruel it is that memories morph and distort and disappear.
I also hate to think how wonderful it is.
There was never paradise.
the memories i have of you i can count on one hand. is that the extent to which you live?
masolino (aleph=tree of the knowledge of good and evil)
rothko (and i think he was closer to representing ALL)
02 February 2009
01 February 2009
death & the compass continued
on the myth of sisyphus (note: camus also wrote about kafka)
1.
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
what is meaning if (one can be both right & wrong)?
how can people be free?
i was wondering if lönrott committed suicide?
2.
To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.
symbolism - a group of poets who did not care about the rights of the reader.
the detective's, the reader's, the criminal's, the writer's identities becoming mixed up.
the cultural weight of borges' choice to portray judaism and jewish subject matter, how lönrott thinks everyone is searching for the name of g-d.
3.
a. If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?
b. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.
lönrott thinks everyone is searching for the name of g-d. he believes he is being super-rational, and that may be but he is also operating upon an absurd hypothesis, and his hope of success upholds him.
i was wondering if lönrott committed suicide? but he does not seem to become conscious of his role until scharlach tells him he will die.
4.
a. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.
b. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory.
how can people be free? spinoza asks this question in The Ethics. there he also explains that emotions are based on a scale of acting freely (affirmatively) v. reactively. joy is the ability to act more freely. we can arrange our affairs to produce joy rather than sadness.
lönrott's "absurd victory": he forgot his original desire>he only thinks of himself as Rational, as Reason>forgot world reality and body>he wants the name of G-D>reads himself wrong>wants to faithfully reproduce the text of the crime>scharlach's hyper-controlled rage produces/controls lönrott's joy at solving mystery>all is well because even after death, they will continue to play in and with their roles as criminal and detective> his skill will be his downfall> winning is losing>
but what is this absurd hope?
5.
a. There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
b. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
wants to faithfully reproduce the text of the crime>scharlach's hyper-controlled rage produces/controls lönrott's joy at solving mystery>all is well because even after death, they will continue to play in and with their roles as criminal and detective.
but what is this absurd hope?
scharlach's revenge is the marriage of desire and reason, allows him to make something new with the text he is given. his impulse is toward mastery.
6.
a. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing.
b. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
what is meaning if (one can be both right & wrong)?
the embrace of the absurd, embrace at all, action of self.
Fiona Apple Criminal Music via Noolmusic.com
20 January 2009
death & the compass
1. This is Escher's lithograph Ascending and Descending, 1960. 
2. Escher's lithograph Compass Rose (Order and Chaos II), 1955.
3. Relativity, 1953
Though they were created later in time than the story, these images stage an act of looking at art and help me imagine Villa Triste-le-Roy in Borges' Death and the Compass.
I see escher as striving for some impossibility. in borges' metafiction, there is also a fascination with the impossible. kafka and his precursors: borges plays with ideas which are impossible to verify other than through the context of his own didactically contrived literary schemata. he argues that kafka (as an author and through his characters) also dealt in impossibility.
but we still care about meaning. is this the impossible task? we were asked where does the limit of making meaning lie? in the author's or reader's identity? the historical context in which the piece was written?
meaning is infinite except where there is an agreement. yet even these rules are subject to rebellious thought, deconstruction, even abolition. it seems impossible that any order should emerge out of chaos; that anything is understood by more than one.
the beauty, the incredible artfulness of borges' work lies in his ability to produce two opposing outcomes. this is where the title of my blog comes from. "ALSO," implying that this is true and this is also true. lonnrot is the detective of death/compass but also! he is implicated in the crime. also criminal, also solver of crimes, also "adventurer, gambler," also "reasoning machine."
if the definite shape of the compass morphed into the line talked about at the end of the story, then identity becomes an infinite continuum. (ways of knowing) lose their measure of relevance or effectiveness because everything is also true and also false.
I see escher as striving for some impossibility. in borges' metafiction, there is also a fascination with the impossible. kafka and his precursors: borges plays with ideas which are impossible to verify other than through the context of his own didactically contrived literary schemata. he argues that kafka (as an author and through his characters) also dealt in impossibility.
but we still care about meaning. is this the impossible task? we were asked where does the limit of making meaning lie? in the author's or reader's identity? the historical context in which the piece was written?
meaning is infinite except where there is an agreement. yet even these rules are subject to rebellious thought, deconstruction, even abolition. it seems impossible that any order should emerge out of chaos; that anything is understood by more than one.
the beauty, the incredible artfulness of borges' work lies in his ability to produce two opposing outcomes. this is where the title of my blog comes from. "ALSO," implying that this is true and this is also true. lonnrot is the detective of death/compass but also! he is implicated in the crime. also criminal, also solver of crimes, also "adventurer, gambler," also "reasoning machine."
if the definite shape of the compass morphed into the line talked about at the end of the story, then identity becomes an infinite continuum. (ways of knowing) lose their measure of relevance or effectiveness because everything is also true and also false.
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