%20v1%20copy%202.jpg)
Watching
THE DEMON
[鬼畜]
Yoshitarô Nomura
Japan, 1978
%20v2%20copy%202.jpg)
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
%20copy%202.jpg)
DENISE LEVERTOV
"Aware"
When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.
%20copy%202.jpg)
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
W. S. MERWIN
"Conqueror"
When they start to wear your clothes
do their dreams become more like yours
who do they look like
when they start to use your language
do they say what you say
who are they in your words
when they start to use your money
do they need the same things you need
or do the things change
when they are converted to your gods
do you know who they are praying to
do you know who is praying
for you not to be there
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
For I am—or I was—one of those people who pride themselves in on their willpower, on their ability to make a decision and carry it through. This virtue, like most virtues, is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey’s bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not looking at myself, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion.
%20copy%202.jpg)
Monday, May 12, 2025
%20v1%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
JAMES BALDWIN
Giovanni's Room
“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"
"Well, I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."
"And when you have waited - has it made you sure?”
%20copy%202.jpg)
Sunday, May 11, 2025
%20v2%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of hunger must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates - died of malnutrition - because the food must rot if not sold at a profit. In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
%20copy%202.jpg)
Saturday, May 10, 2025
%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
Playing
Vivaldi and Telemann
OBOE SONATAS
Paul Goodwin
Nigel North, Susan Sheppard, John Toll
-
Antonio Vivaldi
Sonata for Oboe and Continuo in C minor, RV 53
Trio Sonata for 2 Oboes and Continuo in G minor, RV 81
Sonata for Oboe and Continuo in A Major, RV 59
Sonata for Violin, Oboe, Organ Obbligato in C Major, RV 779
Sonata for Oboe and Continuo in G minor, RV 58
Georg Philipp Telemann
Partita for Oboe No. 2 in G Major, TWV 41:G2
Trio for Oboe, Harpsichord, and Continuo in E-Flat Major, TWV42:Es3
Sonata for Oboe and Continuo in E minor, TWV 41:e6
Sonata for Oboe and Continuo A minor, TWV 41:a3]
Solo for Oboe and Continuo in B-Flat Major, TWV 41:B6
THOMAS BERNHARD
The Loser
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
%20copy%202.jpg)
Friday, May 9, 2025
%20v2%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
ALICE NOTLEY
"Four Sonnets"
1.
I dreamed of a clipper ship
Gold on blue THE CHASEY ALICE
Until he’d seen which Captain You said
He’d seen nothing, I woke bold
Chased you to get caught in the hold
Back to sleep 2 nightmares
Solid ones down not to be told
Woke not wanting to be in life
Wasn’t, outside warmed
To my blood clean cold quickened
On the way to town for food and
Back for you, though I was still
A little sulky & grim
So you fucked me back in
2.
Pink & white, chiffon & chenille, & cherubs
They frame oval mirror cracked across
No reflection of me it’s rented newly
My books on & under a vanity
Bamboo’s here too, Southamptonese, chair
A library’s dark desk, austere
I rearrange change them which change me
I’ll often forget to see
Pink & white to be lost after 90 days
Town’s as foreign-looking & mine
No town fits—not my image of one, but sense
That a town might make sense.
Clean cold-weather town, historical interest
Winter emptied, slickly plain downtown
3.
Hour less close to feeling bad & restless
Spent bath food & drink while you’ve been sleeping
Now reading I hear you walking past my door shut
& back to bed, no words none needed, how can
I think of what’s not done when there’s an easy doing
Always now? Between us. As we’re doing each
If we reach there are words too, & walks & books to-
Gether, tether we pull tighter, after
It turned surprising into the prize for staying
At it, see there are some sometimes, prizes, that aren’t
Lost when found out, & it isn’t even like winning
Which is what gets to be being over fast, it’s like
Being, & spreading, & air we’re breathing
4.
How long you can do nothing depends on what
You’re doing; breathing from the bottom examining
Shocking pink knee socks recalling legs
Numb blue slacked from coldly walking into
Midst of the day; glad going out’s still not next
Pink wheat nap rustles tipped tired shoes
Swallow… air hum ear ocean
This light chair’s held together by a safety pin
& bamboo shoots, some work. I’ll just put on
A dunce caprice if I close my eyes ride
Air waves “Wonder what the dead people are doing
Tonight” me too
Now doused with hands splashing up nothing
Dunk in blow out float in sit down in it
%20copy%202.jpeg)
Thursday, May 8, 2025
%20v1%20copy%202.jpg)
WILLIAM MORRIS
"Love's Gleaning Tide"
Draw not away thy hands, my love,
With wind alone the branches move,
And though the leaves be scant above
The Autumn shall not shame us.
Say; Let the world wax cold and drear,
What is the worst of all the year
But life, and what can hurt us, dear,
Or death, and who shall blame us?
Ah, when the summer comes again
How shall we say, we sowed in vain?
The root was joy, the stem was pain
The ear a nameless blending.
The root is dead and gone, my love,
The stem's a rod our truth to prove;
The ear is stored for nought to move
Till heaven and earth have ending.
%20copy%202.jpeg)
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
%20copy%202.jpg)
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.
%20copy%202.jpg)
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
%20copy%202.jpg)
SUZY EDDIE IZZARD
Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens
Despair is the fuel of terrorism, and hope is the fuel of civilization, so we have to put more hope into the world than despair. Hatred and separation and building walls is not the way to progress. Going backward is not the way to go forward.
-
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.
Monday, May 5, 2025
%20v2%20copy%202.jpg)
%20v1%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK
The Sublime Object of Ideology
A well-known joke - a fool who thought he was a grain of corn. After some time in a mental hospital he was cured; now he knew that he was not a grain, but a man. So they let him out; but soon after he came running back saying, "I met a hen and I was afraid she would try to eat me." The doctors tried to calm him down. "What are you afraid of? You know you are not a grain, but a man." The fool answered: "Yes of course I know that, but does the hen know?"
Sunday, May 4, 2025
%20v1%20copy%202.jpg)
%20copy%202.jpg)
It was the stupidest of times, it was the dumbest of times.
Also:
"In the Star Wars universe, the lightsaber is the signature weapon of the light-side-wielding Jedi Order and the dark-side-wielding Sith Order ...The Sith wield exclusively red-bladed sabers to distinguish themselves from the Jedi. The color of a lightsaber's blade is given by kyber crystals which have no color until approached by a Jedi. They then turn into a color determined by the wielder's connection to the Force."
%20copy%202.jpg)
BEN BURGIS
Excerpt for His Bio, 2010
Ben works as a Philosophy Professor at the University of Ulsan in South Korea, where he wears a necktie every day, tries to ignore the air raid siren drills, and is generally known as “that strange white man who plays his Flaming Lips and Of Montreal albums too loudly while he writes in his office.”
In Korean, you know, that’s all one word.
%20v2%20copy%202.jpg){kind=link}
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)