July 2012
13 posts
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“The comfortable room was oppressive with the roaring fire… Reuben smiled...”
– Sins of Omission, Fern Michaels, 1989
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Revolution! (An Electromagnetic Moment)
In the August of 1776 a storm raged in the skies over young America. In Flatbush, in what would later come to pass as the city/municipality/borough/twee roughhousing knockabout commune known as Brooklyn, families of all stripes spoke Dutch but held within their petticoat-frocked bosoms hearts that beat with the red blood of colonial America, land of the free, free to leave town as soon as the...
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“There was a big rock that was part of the island, and then a chain of smaller...”
– Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome, 1931
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From Coins to Kings
I met a woman on the way, dainty dress and parasol, a daisy totally unaware of my beginnings. In piggy banks, in dresser-top jars my beginnings, overturning the thousandth nickel to workaday Monticello, and the thousand and first: Monticello! That mouth-shaped mansion like the very sneer of reality, staid, invulnerable, terrible—and trounced in a flash at last by the mighty buffalo!
To hold that...
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““…You may need a great deal of patience before you succeed. This is an old...”
– Janey’s Fortune, Lavinia R. Davis, 1962
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The Soup
Archaic figure of fire. The world begins with thermodynamics. Love begins rutting among the bones of former loves. Nothing is chaste. God, what boredom in chastity. Let us instead birth new modernities. Circulation and reservoir— Like Serres, I don’t have time to explain. Priests explain. Scientists and executive producers act, With quarts of their own blood streaming back into the...
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“Today a scientist who wishes to study the blast-off of a rocket has only an...”
– From Coins to Kings, Daisy M. Jones and J. Louis Cooper, 1964
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“He pulled out another cork, which appeared to come with difficulty, and thumped...”
– The Story of a Country Town, E. W. Howe, 1927
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Any Hardy Boys Book Ever, By Comte De Lautréamont
Or, Let’s Say,— The Hardy Boys Series The Secret of Différance Exhausted by his chosen devoir, the hardy knight of the strange ink walks on alone through the rain. The fitness of dogs to bed in dirt mirrors his fitness here, his endurance of moments stolen back from society. No I will not give one damn, he shouts silently into the bluster of the late-spring wind. I am flattened up against the...
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“The real war is with the weather. (191)”
– The Last Convertible, Atton Myrer, 1978
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June 2012
29 posts
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“He ravaged the Caribbean for treasure! [front cover]
He wrote his name in...”
– Cutlass Empire, F. Van Wyck Mason, 1951
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On Our Own
Who will take up the challenge of the stories with me? Who is not withered by the cascade of titles? I sing out across keyboards, touchscreens, notepads, and chalkboards, but I cannot drown them. The titles live for their amusement, like demons grown bored even of pride. Be prideful for me, they say. Use my name; walk with ny puissance around your neck a while; be evil in my stead. I in the...
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“Fog drifted past the stained-glass windows at the end of the long, rectangular...”
– The Warriors, John Jakes, 1977
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“The man glanced at her, shrugged, and stepped aside.
“Ja, all right. But you...”
– The Seekers, John Jakes, 1975
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“Darkness spread quietly over the cane fields and wrapped the earth in velvet...”
– Flame of New Orleans, Frances Patton Statham, 1977
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Psycho-Cybernetics
Strange body-mind/governor-subject relationships abound. Heidegger predicted cybernetics would become some ur- or meta-science, prefiguring and/or controlling all other domains of knowledge. I suppose this is a little like Freud’s psychology (as opposed to William James’s), a big easy explanation of Why We Do Everything We Do. Combine the two and poof, the explanation is that the one governing...
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The Place Without Content
Museums operate, it seems, in the condensed time of poetry, and libraries, in the expanding future-time of factories, and we are always trying, ever bleeding to change that, to exchange sea for sky
because, we feel, they are already in syzygy: What if the factory produced knowledge, or love, or vision and the poem could be automated, and the worlds there...
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“At one time I would have thought this cop was a square redneck pig ready to gun...”
– ”Fifteen Big-Man Burgers,” A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins, 1979
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Love-Children
A SHORT MANIFESTO Base, base! Why are the love-children—the bastards—the base ones? They alone preserve the biological imperative: Mix and remix, mash-up, shuffle, cut-up, make pastiche, collage, bricolage, but never pur sang, never incestual purity. Our universe is wood, not marble! We are all bastards. And bastards, with luck, we shall remain. —Wythe Marschall, 4/26/2012 §
Inspired by:
...
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The Heights of Macchu Picchu
Grace painting the circle for the icon denoting the REFERENCE section of the library resembles mu, emptiness, the goal of chán, zen, the school of nothing, of learning from not being, from realizing there is no angst about what never was, what won’t ever be. Grace painting circles in the dim light. Downstairs, three-milk cake and more Keynote slides. The people all try to climb such great heights...
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“Is there anything that science can tell us about divination? For that matter, is...”
– Astrology and Foretelling the Future, Thomas G. Aylesworth, 1973
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Botany
1. Malpholgio the Count of Bressnus collected the bark of the exceedingly rare dragontip fir for two reasons: One, he enjoyed watching the deep red-brown curls disappear into heavy gray incense, so slowly it taxed the attention of even an old man (and he was an old man now) to watch it. He felt the game of it kept his mind sharp. Two, the fir’s incense preserved his lungs against the advancing...
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“And the imagination was bewildered at their charms, for indeed each of them was...”
– Arabian Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton
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Tristram Shandy
The clock worries itself to the bone. The meat of time falls off. The metaphor is crushed under the meat and decays. Meanwhile, everyone at the dinner party is laughing. It’s quite a riot, actually. Tristram, pass the cheddar scones, would you? Anyone who doesn’t fancy a cheddar scone is an imbecile or a Whig. Not that there’s a difference, I’m told. All in all, I’m told lots of things: I’m told...
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WatchThe Longest Story Ever at the Living Library’s official opening, Friday, May 4, 2012.
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“He uses rationalization. [He rationalizes.]
He uses the devices of...”
– The Complete Stylist, Sheridan Baker, 1972
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Final transmission of Lt. Ardin Breaksmore
aah im falling falling falling no wait no longer falling okay technically i was never falling what to read while open quotation falling close quotation shitty cheap novel ugly cover ugly huge bold serif font space seems apropos of my plight slash flight good thing i pack paperbacks in the back pocket of the space jammies space jammies exclamation point i slay me no seriously folks beat i...
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Born of the Sun
Down in the phosphate pits, on the Bone, the earliest miners for the pale Spanish hidalgos battled yellow fever by wetting blankets with gasoline. “The flies” disappeared and so did their septa. In time, their eyes yellowed, coming to resemble the sun that bore down upon their ancestors, day in, day out. They themselves grew pale in the mines. Their limbs became short and bunched like raw rubber,...
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“WHAT TO TAKE. Local shortages are common, and certain items may be hard for the...”
– Fodor’s Soviet Union, 1988
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The Tower Treasure
Possible treasures include:
The delicate taste of celery
The last vial of musty book-air actually breathed by Sylvia Scheer
The last cold of early spring
The last rain to fall on a mastodon
The “real” treasure in the book (dissimulation)
“Real” treasure such as doubloons, florins, ducats (fungible consumption)
Real treasure such as love, timeliness, comedy (care, sorge)
Counterfeit...
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Outdoor Visits
A child’s book about the out of doors, reimagined by H. P. Lovecraft Sally found the book. It was a big book. She had a cold and called it a boog. She called her cold a cowd. The book was about things from outside that come to visit. The book had a picture of a Mailman. Hello Mailman. The book had a picture of a Elephant. I wish a Elephant would come to visit Mommy. The book had a picture of a...
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“Was there no safety anywhere on the frontier? (69)
“Yes,” she agreed. Then she...”
– Fear in the Forest, Cateau De Leeuw, 1960
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The Shadow of the Lynx
is its disappearance. Where did the wild things…? Their shadows follow them into silence. What will be the last shadow glimpsed out there in Lynxland, across America and Eurasia, across snowy mountains, the high bogs where the big cat faces down abandoned mountain bikes and elderly gardeners. All stand in confusion, the confusion of a primitive love. The shadow of the lynx stretches across...
May 2012
29 posts
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““Dad made a piss-ant living raising goats…” (210)
“Look, Mazel,” said...”
– The Boxer Rebellion and Other Tales, Joel Goldman, D.V.M., 1988
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Sounds of a Young Hunter
Crunch. Crunch. BAM. “Heh.” Crunch. Yawn. Crunch. Snapple, tear, munch. Munch. Yawn. Swish, hrrm, “fuggin eight o’clock mang, no fuggin deer noplace—” Skitter. “Wha’ssat!?” Skitter, scamper, ssstop. Crrrunchhh, whisperleaf whisperleaf whisperleaf. Raaaaaise, aaaaaaaaaim… breath… Breath… In… Out.. Innn… PFFFTfffteeeuuuwwfft— “Awww, mang, what the FUG, damn beans...
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Adolesence
What could this book possibly offer its subject? It is like my book Cooking For Rocks And its sequel Deaf Yodelling Jam Masters. The tyranny of fun, the tyranny of discovery, That we must find meaning in each moment When all there is, is moment. We approach Each with a new mood—screw you, Mom! Adolescence loosens its grip so slowly Until WHAM you are nigh-thirty. You are old. I used to sleep...
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“I am as hungry as ever!”
“But, my boy, I have nothing more to give you!”...”
– Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
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Sir Gibbie
The Scottish knight, master of the cabbage patch school of sentiment, set out one day to find Don Quixote. He got a ring from a bloke in the States. Turns out Don Quixote was hiding in a museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Greeny-borough, verdant bough, home of the idyll and thick, coarse, hair-chested accent, same as home, thought Gibbie. He bought passage on the first trans-Pond liner he...
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“Q: What is your TRUE course?
A: My TRUE course is… degrees.”
– Handbook for Radio Operators, 1978 