cyclicality of social destruction (harrison)

An inner law of dissolution drives the system to order. This entropic drive becomes clear when we consider the correlates of Vico's axiom: "The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute" (CS 242). And in the same context: "Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next, attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance" (S 241).

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

on the failed flailing of tongues (harrison)

Human speech is in every case a confession of longing and finitude, no matter what it says or does not say or even cannot say.

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

gods and the end (harrison)

In retribution for his having violated the realm that lies behind the world of appearances, Artemis brings about Actaeon's change of appearance, while leaving his human essence intact.... In the process of external metamorphosis, he comes to realize that his own inner identity is superfluous in a realm governed by appearances. (25)

Tragic wisdom had given way to the triumphalistic claims of Socratic philosophy-- its love of an abstract nontragic wisdom that looked contemplation -- not Dionysian suffering-- for its fulfillment. [Turning against the vegetative and animal origins of life, Socrates idealized and formalized the essence of truth.] (38)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

alienation from our selves, manifest destiny (harrison)

We do not intrinsically belong to the natural order (if we did we would not need to discover the facts of life)... our destiny as excursioners on the earth.... Excursions into a world where we are at once estranged and alive, or better, alive in our estrangement.

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison, page 222

letters from the madhouse (clare, harrison)

March 8 1860

DEAR SIR

I am in a Madhouse and quite forget your Name or who you are. You must excuse me for I have nothing to communicate or tell of and why I am shut up I don't know I have nothing to say so I conclude.

Yours respectfully
JOHN CLARE

RPH's response: His response..., utterly lucid and utterly mad at once, reveals that only the name "John Clare" was left to communicate itself to the world. (His essence having left.)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison, pg 216

on belief and fullness (wordsworth)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God! I rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

- The World Is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth

harrison on irony

Irony is the trope of detachment. (108)

Irony is the innermost truth of a civilization that knows how to lie to itself about itself, or how to bury under deceptive veils a truth that would otherwise destroy it. (141)

As the trope of detachment, irony implies a critical relationship to the past. From an "enlightened" perspective, the ways of the past appear erroneous, self-deceived, and steeped in superstition. What tradition held to be true Enlightenment sees as false. (The sky was once believed to be an animate substance, but "we know better".) At the most fundamental level, then, irony demystifies the dogmas of faith and exposes their roots in falsehood. (114-115)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

various and sundry (harrison)

Religion, matrimony and burial of the dead embody the linear openness of time. Religion is born of the idea of providence. It implies an awareness of the future. Burial of the dead is grounded in reverence for the past, for the ancestral, in short for what we call tradition. Tradition comes to us from the domain of the dead. Both religion and burial, in turn, serve to consolidate the contract of matrimony, which maintains the genealogical line in the present. (8)

... Prior to its ability to think abstractly, the primitive mind was unable even to conceive of a distinction between truth and falsehood. So many centuries does it take even to become aware of such a dichotomy. (12)

Human vision is privative in nature; it does not see directly into the nature of things but see only the outward surface of phenomenal appearances. (25)

Until a substance emerges into the telos of its form we simply cannot talk about it. Logos begins with the phenomenon. (28)

[On the retroactive redemption of Zarathustra] Herein lies Zarathustra's dilemma on the bridge: redemption must somehow also redeem the past.... such retroactive redemption remains impossible, for when it confronts the past the human will is impotent.

Only an alienated nature seeks adventure. (66)

The forest reveals that desire has no virginity. It does not belong to itself, it belongs to everything that shares in the life impulse itself. Desire is a promiscuous sort of will that appropriates its object and expropriates its subject. The contract of personal consent sublimates this desire as love, but it does not alter its nature. (91)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

on being - everything and liminality (aragon)

Caught in the maze, the mind is dragged toward the denouement of its destiny, the labyrinth without a Minotaur where, transfigured like the Virgin, radium-fingered Error reappears, my singing mistress, my pathetic shadow.
...

The modern world is the only one which answers my mode of being. A great crisis is newly born, an immense disturbance coming into clear focus. The beautiful, the good, the just, the true, the real,…and a horde of other abstract words are, this very instant, losing credit. Their opposites, once preferred, will soon become synonyms. After the universal crucible has reduced everything to uniform mental matter, only ideal facts will survive. I am a lightning bolt passing through myself, and fleeing. I shall be able to overlook nothing, for I am the passage from darkness to light, I am simultaneously the West and the dawn. I am a limit, a line. Let everything mingle in the wind; all words cohabit in my mouth. And surrounding me is a wrinkle, a visible shiver curling upward like a wave.

- page 89, "The Passage de L'Opera," Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon

on growing up and growing stale (aragon)

Everything is fine until the age of twenty. After that, it’s finished: curiosity, mystery, temptation, rapture, adventure are done for, done for. They do exercises to stay slim, but would they exert themselves to keep the color fast in their lives and the itch in their days? None of that; after twenty they give no more thought to the gymnastics of love. They’ve learned their little parts. They’ve got a technique down pat and won’t let go of it: you clasp the woman in your arms and say to her… whereupon she falls on the sofa exclaiming, “Oh, Charles!” You have only to see what happens in the slick films. Do they ever by any chance show a woman, who, upon noticing some guy, walks straight up to him, without words but with flashing eyes, and suddenly places her hand on his crotch? A film like that would never succeed; it wouldn’t seem realistic enough, and what the public clamors for is realities, RE-AL-I-TIES:

REALITIES

A FABLE

Once upon a time

There was a reality

With its sheep of real wool

The king’s son happened by

The sheep bleat How pretty

Is re re reality

Once upon a time

It came to pass at night

A reality could not fall asleep

Its fairy godmother

Really took it by the hand

Re re reality

Once upon a time

An aged king was bored

His mantle slipped off

In the evening

So he was given a queen named

Re re reality

CODA: Ity, ity rea

ity ity reality

Rea rea

ty ty rea

ty ty rea

li

ty reality

Once upon a time there was REALITY

- page 43, "The Passage de L'Opera," Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon

blonde fixation (aragon)

Serpents, serpents, you are endlessly fascinating to me. One day in the Passage de l’Opera I was watching the slow, pure coils of a python of blondness, and suddenly, for the first time, it struck me that men have found but one simile for blond, blond like wheat, satisfied that they have thus put it in a nutshell. Wheat, wretches, but have you never looked at ferns? For a whole year I bit fern hair. I have known resin hair, topaz hair, hysteria hair. Blond like hysteria, blond like the sky, blond like fatigue, blond like a kiss. On the palette of blondnesses, I shall include the elegance of automobiles, the odor of sainfoin, the silence of mornings, the complexities of waiting, the ravages of another body grazing mine. How blond the noise of rain, how blond the song of mirrors! From the perfume of gloves to the screech of the barn-owl, from the beatings of the assassin’s heart to the flame-flower of laburnum, from the bite to the song, how many blondnesses, how many lids: the blondness of roofs, of wings, of tables, of palms, there are entire days of blondness, department stores of blond, arcades for desire, arsenals of orangeade powder. Blond as far as the eye can reach: I capitulate to this pitchpine of the senses, to this concept of blondness which is not the color itself but (as it were), a spirit of color inexplicably wed to the style of love. From white to red by the way of yellow, blond does not relinquish its mystery. Blond resembles the tongue-ties of excitement, the piracies of lips, the shivering of limpid waters. Blond escapes what defines it by following a meandering path on which I discover wildflowers and seashells. It is a kind of reflection of woman on stones, a paradoxical shadow of caresses in the air, a breath of reason’s collapse. Blond like the reign of hugs, the hair in this boutique on the passage dissolved while I let myself die for fifteen minutes and more. I felt that I could have spent my life near this swarm of wasps, the river of gleams. In this subaqueous realm, how can one not be reminded of cinema heroines who, searching for some lost ring, bundle the New World of their bodies into a diving suit? This uncoiled head of hair had the electric pallor of storms, the dew of breath condense on metal. A kind of lazy beast dozing in a car. Amazing that it made no more noise than bare feet on a rug. What is blonder than moss? I have often imagined seeing champagne on forest floors. And skirrets! Orange milk agaric! Scampering hares! The moon—sliver of cuticles! The heart of woods! Pink! The blood of plants! Doe eyes! Memory—memory is really blond. At its far reaches, where fact weds fancy, what pretty clusters of light!

- pages 30 - 31, "The Passage de L’Opera," Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon

on city planning and transcience (aragon)

The great American instinct, imported to our capital by a Second Empire prefect, has ruled the map of Paris into rectangles, making it impossible to maintain these human aquaria which, though already gutted of their original life, deserve a notice for the several modern myths they conceal—only now that the bulldozer threatens them have they become temples of a cult of the ephemeral, the ghostly landscape of forbidden pleasures and professions, incomprehensible yesterday and tomorrow gone.

- page 10, "Le Passage de L'Opera", Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon

dark mirrors (aragon)

Man caught in the snare of stars. He fancied himself a creature determined by twists of fate and by the passage of time. His senses, his mind, his chimeras: he paused for reflection only long enough to co-ordinate and pursue ideas he had had to begin with, cataloguing them, from A to Z, like a bird living in the palm of a hand. He expected his coherence, his conclusion, to emerge from himself. He organized himself around the sequences of his destiny. He confronted and followed himself: he was his own shadow, an hypothesis and its exposition.
- page 117, Le Paysan de Paris, Louis Aragon

on ownership and appreciation (barthelme)

The captured woman asks if I will take her picture. I shoot four rolls of 35 mm. and then go off very happily to the darkroom. . . I bring back the contacts and we go over them together. She circles half a dozen with a grease pencil -- pictures of herself staring. She does not circle pictures of herself smiling, although there are several very good ones. When I bring her back prints (still wet) she says they are not big enough. "Not big enough?" "Can you make enlargements?" "How big?" How big can you make them?" "The largest paper I have is twenty-four by thirty-six." "Good!" The very large prints are hung around her room with pushpins. "Make more." "For what?" "I want them in the other rooms too." "The staring ones?" "Whichever ones you wish." I make more prints using the smiling negatives. (I also shoot another half dozen rolls.) Soon the house is full of her portraits, she is everywhere. * M. calls to tell me that he has captured a woman too. "What kind?" "Thai. From Thailand." "Can she speak English?" "Beautifully. She's an English teacher back home, she says." "How tall?" "As tall as yours. Maybe a little taller." "What is she doing now?" "Polishing her rings. I gave her a lot of rings. Five rings." "Was she pleased?" "I think so. She's polishing like a house afire. Do you think that means she's tidy?" "Have to wait to see. Mine is throwing her football." "What?" "I gave her a football. She's sports-minded. She's throwing passes into a garbage can." "Doesn't that get the football dirty?" "Not the regular garbage can. I got her a special garbage can." "Is she good at it?" "She's good at everything." There was a pause. "Mine plays the flute," M. says. "She's asked for a flute." "Mine probably plays the flute too but I haven't asked her. The subject hasn't come up." "Poor Q.," M. says. "Oh, come now. No use pitying Q." "Q. hasn't got a chance in the world," M. says, and hangs up. * I say: "What will you write in the note?" "You may read it if you wish. I can't stop you. It's you after all who will put it in the mail." "Do you agree not to tell him where you are?" "This is going to be almost impossible to explain. You understand that." "Do you love him?" "I waited six years to have a baby." "What does that mean?" "I wasn't sure, I suppose." "Now you're sure?" "I was growing older." "How old are you now?" "Thirty-two last August." "You look younger." "No I don't." She is tall and has long dark hair which has, in truth, some gray in it already. She says: "You were drunk as a lord the first time I saw you." "Yes I was." When I first met her (in a perfectly ordinary social situation, a cocktail party) she clutched my wrists, tapping them then finally grabbing, in the wildest and most agitated way, meanwhile talking calmly about some movie or other. She's a wonderful woman, I think. * She wants to go to church! "What!" "It's Sunday." "I haven't seen the inside of a church in twenty years. Except in Europe. Cathedrals." "I want to go to church." "What kind?" "Presbyterian." "Are you a Presbyterian?" "I was once." I find a Presbyterian church in the Yellow Pages. We sit side by side in the pew for all the world like a married couple. She is wearing a beige linen suit which modulates her body into a nice safe Sunday quietude. The two ministers have high carved chairs on either side of the lectern. They take turns conducting the service. One is young, one is old. There is a choir behind us and a solo tenor so startlingly good that I turn my head to look at him. We stand and sit and sing with the others as the little mimeographed order-of-service dictates. The old minister, fragile, eagle beak, white close-cropped hair, stands at the lectern in a black cassock and white thin lacy surplice. "Sacrifice," the minister says. He stares into the choir loft for a moment and then repeats the thought: "Sacrifice." We are given a quite admirable sermon on Sacrifice which includes quotations from Euripides and A. E. Houseman. After the service we drive home and I tie her up again. * It is true that Q. will never get one. His way of proceeding is far too clumsy. He might as well be creeping about carrying a burlap sack. P. uses tranquilizing darts delivered by a device which resembles the Sunday New York Times. D. uses chess but of course this limits his field of operations somewhat. S. uses a spell inherited from his great-grandmother. F. uses his illness. T. uses a lasso. He can make a twenty-foot loop and keep it spinning while he jumps in and out of it in his handmade hundred-and-fifty-dollar boots -- a mesmerizing procedure. C. has been accused of jacklighting, against the law in this state in regard to deer. The law says nothing about women. X. uses the Dionysiac frenzy. L. is the master. He has four now, I believe. I use Jack Daniels. * I stand beside one of the "staring" portraits and consider whether I should attempt to steam open the note. Probably it is an entirely conventional appeal for rescue. I decide that I would rather not know what is inside, and put it in the mail along with the telephone bill and a small ($25) contribution to a lost but worthy cause. * Do we sleep together? Yes. What is to be said about this? It is the least strange aspect of our temporary life together. It is as ordinary as bread. She tells me what and how. I am sometimes inspired and in those moments need no instructions. Once, I made an X with masking tape at a place on the floor where we'd made love. She laughed when she saw it. That is, I am sometimes able to amuse her. What does she think? Of course, I don't know. Perhaps she regards this as a parenthesis in her "real" life, like a stay in the hospital or being a member of a jury sequestered in a Holiday Inn during a murder trial. I have criminally abducted her and am thus clearly in the wrong, a circumstance which enables her to regard me very kindly. She is a wonderful woman and knows herself to be wonderful -- she is (justifiably) a little vain. The rope is forty feet long (that is, she can move freely forty feet in any direction) and is in fact thread -- Belding mercerized cotton, shade 1443. What does she think of me? Yesterday she rushed at me and stabbed me three times viciously in the belly with a book, the Viking Portable Milton. Later I visited her in her room and was warmly received. She let me watch her doing her exercises. Each exercise has a name and by now I know all the names: Boomerang, Melon, Hip Bounce, Diamond, Whip, Hug, Headlights, Ups and Downs, Bridge, Flags, Sitting Twist, Swan, Bow and Arrow, Turtle, Pyramid, Bouncing Ball, Accordion. The movements are amazingly erotic. I knelt by her side and touched her lightly. She smiled and said, not now. I went to my room and watched television -- The Wide World of Sports, a soccer match in Sao Paulo. * The captured woman is smoking her pipe. It has a long graceful curving stem and a white porcelain bowl decorated with little red flowers. For dinner we had shad roe and buttered yellow beans. "He looks like he has five umbrellas stuck up his ass," she says suddenly. "Who?" "My husband. But he's a very decent man. But of course that's not uncommon. A great many people are very decent. Most people, I think. Even you." The fragrance of her special (ladies' mixture) tobacco hangs about us. "This is all rather like a movie. That's not a criticism. I like movies." I become a little irritated. All this effort and all she can think of is movies? "This is not a movie." "It is," she says. "It is it is it is." * M. calls in great agitation. "Mine is sick," he says. "What's the matter?" "I don't know. She's listless. Won't eat. Won't polish. Won't play her flute." M.'s is a no-ass woman of great style and not inconsiderable beauty. "She's languishing," I say. "Yes." "That's not good." "No." I pretend to think -- M. likes to have his predicaments taken seriously. "Speak to her. Say this: My soul is soused, imparadised, imprisoned in my lady." "Where's that from?" "It's a quotation. Very powerful." "I'll try it. Soused, imprisoned, imparadised." "No. Imparadised, imprisoned. It actually sounds better the way you said it, though. Imparadised last." "Okay. I'll say it that way. Thanks. I love mine more than you love yours." "No you don't." "Yes I do." I bit off my thumb, and bade him do as much. * The extremely slow mailman brings her an answer to her note. I watch as she opens the envelope. "That bastard," she says. "What does he say?" "That incredible bastard." "What?" "I offer him the chance top rescue me on a white horse -- one of the truly great moments this life affords -- and he natters on about how well he and the kid are doing together. How she hardly ever cries now. How calm the house is." "The bastard," I say happily. "I can see him sitting in the kitchen by the microwave oven and reading his Rolling Stone." "Does he read Rolling Stone?" "He thinks Rolling Stone is neat." "Well. . ." "He's not supposed to be reading Rolling Stone. It's not aimed at him. He's too old, the dumb fuck." "You're angry." "Damn right." "What are you going to do?" She thinks for a moment. "What happened to your hand?" she says, noticing at last. "Nothing," I say, placing the bandaged hand behind my back. (Obviously, I did not bite the thumb clean through but I did give it a very considerable gnaw.) "Take me to my room and tie me up," she says. "I'm going to hate him for a while." I return her to her room and go back to my own room and settle down with The Wide World of Sports -- international fencing trials in Belgrade. * This morning, at the breakfast table, a fierce attack from the captured woman. I am a shit, a vain preener, a watcher of television, a blatherer, a creephead, a monstrous coward who preys upon etc. etc. etc. and is not a man enough to etc. etc. etc. Also I drink too much. This is all absolutely true, I have often thought the same things myself, especially, for some reason, upon awakening. I have a little more Canadian bacon. "And a skulker," she says with relish. "One who --" I fix her in the viewfinder of my Pentax and shoot a whole new series, Fierce. The trouble with capturing one is that the original gesture is almost impossible to equal or improve upon. * She says: "He wants to get that kid away from me. He wants to keep that kid for himself. He has captured that kid." "She'll be there when you get back. Believe me." "When will that be?" "It's up to you. You decide." "Ugh." Why can't I marry one and live with her uneasily ever after? I've tried that. "Take my picture again." "I've taken enough pictures. I don't want to take any more pictures." "Then I'll go on Tuesday." "Tuesday. OK. That's tomorrow." "Tuesday is tomorrow?" "Right." "Oh." She grips the football and pretends to be about to throw it through the window. "Do you ever capture somebody again after you've captured them once?" "Almost unheard of." "Why not?" "It doesn't happen." "Why not?" "It just doesn't." "Tomorrow. Oh my." I go into the kitchen and begin washing the dishes -- the more scutwork you do, the kindlier the light in which you are regarded, I have learned. * I enter her room. L. is standing there. "What happened to your hand?" he asks. "Nothing," I say. Everyone looks at my bandaged hand for a moment -- not long enough. "Have you captured her?" I ask. L. is the master, the nonpareil, the O. J. Simpson of our aberration. "I have captured him," she says. "Wait a minute. That's not how it works." "I changed the rules," she says. "I will be happy to give you a copy of the new rules which I have written out here on this legal pad." L. is smirking like a mink, obviously very pleased to have been captured by such a fine woman. "But wait a minute," I say. "It's not Tuesday yet!" "I don't care," she says. She is smiling. At L. I go into the kitchen and begin scrubbing the oven with an Easy-Off. How original of her to change the rules! She is indeed a rare spirit. "French Russian Roquefort or oil-and-vinegar," she says sometimes, in her sleep -- I deduce that she has done some waitressing in her day. * The captured woman does a backward somersault from a standing position. I applaud madly. My thumb hurts. "Where is L.?" "I sent him away." "Why?" "He had no interesting problems. Also he did a sketch of me which I don't like." She shows me the charcoal sketch (L.'s facility is famous) and it is true that her beauty suffers just a bit, in this sketch. He must have been spooked a little by my photographs, which he did not surpass. "Poor L." The captured woman does another somersault. I applaud again. Is today Tuesday or Wednesday? I can't remember. "Wednesday," she says. "Wednesday the kid goes to dance after which she usually spends the night with her pal Regina because Regina lives close to dance. So there's really no point in my going back on a Wednesday." * A week later she is still with me. She is departing by degrees. If I tore her hair out, no one but me would love her. But she doesn't want me to tear her hair out. I wear different shirts for her: red, orange, silver. We hold hands through the night. - "The Captured Woman," Donald Barthelme, 1981

on appreciation (miller)

Nothing is bad when you look at it hungrily. (The first step in the art of appreciation.)

- pg 91 of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch

henry miller and thingness

Part One: The Oranges of the Millennium

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That is can be, and is, all these at one and the same time. (23)

Part Two: Peace and Solitude: A Potpourri

If you can’t give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! (56)

Light is the one thing we cannot steal, imitate, or even counterfeit. (95)

You can’t slash mountains to ribbons, nor cut the sky to pieces, nor flatten a wave with the broadest sword. (146)

- excerpts from "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch," Henry Miller

on beauty and bananas (bourgeois)

On “La Femme fiere d’elle meme,” 1946: She has a beautiful, fluffy dress and she has heels, high heels. If you have high heels, people will love you. If you want people to love you, you have to love yourself first. That’s what it means. (51)

On “Les Voleuses de grate ciel,” 1949: If you want to kill your rival in the eyes of a woman, you put a banana peel on the floor, so he is going to come and be very, very charming, and he will slip on the peel and be ridiculous, and the girl will laugh at him and you will have conquered the girl. (95)

- Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations – Louise Bourgeois w/ Lawrence Rinder

from: big sur and the oranges of hieronymous bosch (miller)

One fact stands out, however, and that is the inborn urge of the American to experiment, to try out the most crack-brained schemes having to do with social, economic, religious and even sex relations. Where sex and religion were dominant, the most amazing results were achieved. The Oneida Community (New York), for example, is destined to remain as memorable an experiment as Robert Owen’s in New Harmony (Indiana). As for the Mormons, nothing comparable to their efforts has ever been undertaken on this continent, and probably never will again.

In all these idealistic ventures, particularly those initiated by religious communities, the participants seemed to possess a keen sense of reality, a practical wisdom, which in no way conflicted (as it does in the case of ordinary Christians) with their religious views. They were honest, law-abiding, industrious, self-sustaining, self-sufficient citizens with character, individuality and integrity, somewhat corroded (to our present way of thinking) by a Puritan sobriety and austerity, but never lacking in faith, courage and independence.

- (16-17), Part Two: Peace and Solitude: a Potpourri, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, Henry Miller.

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka

The First Notebook
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

Fourth Notebook
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

From: The Blue Octavo Notebooks by Frank Kafka

Seventh Notebook
An Inviolable Dream. She was running along the highroad, I did not see her, I only noticed how she swung along as she ran, how her veil flew, how her feet lifted; I was sitting at the edge of the field, gazing into the water of the little stream. She ran through the villages; children standing in the doorways watched her coming and watched her going.

Third Notebook
They were given the choice of becoming kings of the kings’ messengers. As is the way with children, they all wanted to be messengers. That is why there are only messengers, racing through the world and, since there are no kings, calling out to each other the messages that have now become meaningless. They would gladly put an end to their miserable life, but they do not dare to do so because of their oath of loyalty.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

Adam’s first domestic pet after the expulsion from Paradise was the serpent.

storytime: barthelme and green women

Rebecca Lizard was trying to change her ugly, reptilian, thoroughly unacceptable last name.
"Lizard," said the judge. "Lizard, Lizard, Lizard, Lizard. There's nothing wrong with it if you say it enough times. You can't clutter up the court's calendar with trivial little minor irritations. And there have been far too many people changing their names lately. Changing your name countervails the best interest of the telephone comany, the electric company, and the United States goverment. Motion denied."
Lizard in tears.
Lizard led from the courtroom. A chrysanthemum of Kleenex held under her nose.
"Shaky lady," said a man, "are you a schoolteacher?"
Of course she's a schoolteacher, you idiot. Can't you see the poor woman's all upset? Why don't you leave her alone?
"Are you a homosexual lesbian? Is that why you never married?"
Christ, yes, she's a homosexual lesbian, as you put it. Would you please shut your face?
Rebecca went to the damned dermatologist (a new damned dermatologist), but he said the same thing the others had said. "Greenish," he said, "slight greenishness, genetic anomaly, nothing to be done, I'm afraid, Mrs. Lizard."
"Miss Lizard."
"Nothing to be done, Miss Lizard."
"Thank you, Doctor. Can I give you a little something for your trouble?"
"Fifty dollars."
When Rebecca got home the retroactive rent increase was waiting for her, coiled in her mailbox like a pupil about to strike.
Must get some more Kleenex. Or a Ph.D. No other way.
She thought about sticking her head in the oven. But it was an electric oven.
Rebecca's lover, Hilda, came home late.
"How'd it go?" Hilda asked, referring to the day.
"Lousy."
"Hmmm," Hilda said, and quietly mixed strong drinks of busthead for the two of them.
Hilda is a very good-looking woman. So is Rebecca. They love each other--an incredibly dangerous and delicate business, as we know. Hilda has long blond hair and is perhaps a shade the more beautiful. Of course Rebecca has a classic and sexual figure which attracts huge admiration from every beholder.
"You're late," Rebecca said. "Where were you?"
"I had a drink with Stephanie."
"Why did you have a drink with Stephanie?"
"She stopped by my office and said let's have a drink."
"Where did you go?"
"The Barclay."
"How is Stephanie?"
"She's fine."
"Why did you have to have a drink with Stephanie?"
"I was ready for a drink."
"Stephanie doesn't have a slight greenishness, is that it? Nice, pink Stephanie?"
Hilda rose and put an excellent C & W album on the record player. It was David Rogers's "Farewell to the Ryman," Atlantic SD 7283. It contains such favorites as "Blue Moon of Kentucky," "Great Peckled Bird," "I'm Movin' On," and "Walking the Floor Over You." Many great Nashville personnel appear on this record.
"Pinkness is not everything," Hilda said. "And Stephanie is a little bit boring. You know that."
"Not so boring that you don't go out for drinks with her."
"I am not interested in Stephanie."
"As I was leaving the courthouse," Rebecca said, "a man unzipped my zipper."
David Rogers was singing "Oh please release me, let me go."
"What were you wearing?"
"What I'm wearing now."
"So he had good taste," Hilda said, "for a creep." She hugged Rebecca, on the sofa. "I love you," she said.
"Screw that," Rebecca said plainly, and pushed Hilda away. "Go hang out with Stephanie Sasser."
"I am not interested in Stephanie Sasser," Hilda said for the second time.
Very often one "pushes away" the very thing that one most wants to grab, like a lover. This is a common, although distressing, psychological mechanism, having to do (in my opinion) with the fact that what is presented is not presented "purely," that there is a tiny little canker or grim place in it somewhere. However, worse things can happen.
"Rebecca," said Hilda, "I really don't like your slight greenishness."
The term "lizard" also includes geckos, iguanas, chameleons, slowworms, and monitors. Twenty existing families make up the order, according to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Animal Life, and four others are known only from fossils. There are about twenty-five hundred species, and they display adaptations for walking, running, climbing, creeping, or burrowing. Many have interesting names, such as the Bearded Lizard, the Collared Lizard, the Flap-Footed Lizard, the Frilled
Lizard, the Girdle-Tailed Lizard, and the Wall Lizard.
"I have been overlooking it for these several years, because I love you, but I really don't like
ti so much," Hilda said. "It's slightly--"
"Knew it," said Rebecca.
Rebecca went into the bedroom. The color television set was turned on, for some reason. In a greenish glow, a film called Green Hill was unfolding.
I'm ill, I'm ill.
I will become a farmer.
Our love, our sexual love, our ordinary love!
Hilda entered the bedroom and said, "Supper is ready."
"What is it?"
"Pork with red cabbage."
"I'm drunk," Rebecca said.
Too many of our citizens are drunk at times when they should be sober--suppertime, for example.
Drunkenness leads to forgetting where you have put your watch, keys, or money clip, and to a decreased sensitivity to the needs and desires and calm good health of others. The causes of overuse of alcohol are not as clear as the results. Psychiatrists feel in general that alcoholism is a serious problem but treatable, in some cases. AA is said to be both popular and effective. At base, the question is one of willpower.
"Get up," Hilda said. "I'm sorry I said that."
"You told the truth," said Rebecca.
"Yes, it was the truth," Hilda admitted.
"You didn't tell me the truth in the beginning. In the beginning, you said it was beautiful."
"I was telling you the truth, in the beginning. I did think it was beautiful. Then."
This "then," the ultimate word in Hilda's series of three brief sentences, is one of the most pain-inducing words in the human vocabulary, when used in this sense. Departed time! And the former conditions that went with it! How is human pain to be measured? But remember that Hilda, too... It is correct to feel for Rebecca in this situation, but, reader, neither can Hilda's position be considered an enviable one, for truth, as Bergson knew, is a hard apple, whether one
is throwing it or catching it.
"What remains?" Rebecca said stonily.
"I can love you in spite of--"
Do I want to be loved in spite of? Do you? Does anyone? But aren't we all, to some degree? Aren't there important parts of all of us which must be, so to say, gazed past? I turn a blind eye to that aspect of you, and you turn a blind eye to that aspect of me, and with these blind eyes eyeball-to-eyeball, to use an expression from the early 1960s, we continue our starched and fragrant lives. Of course it's also called "making the best of things," which I have always considered a rather soggy idea for an Americal ideal. But my criticisms of this idea must be tested against those of others--the late President McKinley, for example, who maintained that maintaining a good, in not necessarily sunny, disposition was the one valuable and proper course.
Hilda placed her hands on Rebecca's head.
"The snow is coming," she said. "Soon it will be snow time. Together then as in other snow times. Drinking the busthead 'round the fire. Truth is a locked room that we knock the lock off from time to time, and then board up again. Tomorrow you will hurt me, and I will inform you that you have done so, and so on and so on. To hell with it. Come, viridian friend, come and sup with me."
They sit down together. The pork with red cabbage steams before them. They speak quietly about the McKinley Administration, which is being revised by revisionist historians. The story ends. It was written or several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what it tattooed upon the warm tympanic page.
- "Rebecca," Donald Barthelme

storytime: barthelme and the postmodern zombie

In a high wind the leaves fall from the trees. The zombies are standing about talking. "Beautiful day!" "Certainly is!" The zombies have come to buy wives from the people of this village, the only village around that will sell wives to zombies. "Beautiful day!" "Certainly is!" The zombies have brought many cattle. The bride price to a zombie is exactly twice that asked of an ordinary man. The cattle are also zombies and the zombies are in terror lest the people of the village understand this.

These are good zombies. Gris Grue said so. They are painted white all over. Bad zombies are unpainted and weep with their noses, their nostrils spewing tears. The village chief calls the attention of the zombies to the fine brick buildings of the village, some of them one thousand bricks high -- daughters peering from the windows, green plants in some windows and, in others, daughters. "You must promise not to tell the Bishop," say the zombies, "promise not to tell the Bishop, beautiful day, certainly is."

The white-painted zombies chatter madly, in the village square, in an impersonation of gaiety. "Bought a new coat!" "You did!" "Yes, bought a new coat, this coat I'm wearing, I think it's very fine!" "Oh it is, it is, yes, I think so!" The cattle kick at the chain-link fence of the corral. The kiss of a dying animal, a dying horse or dog, transforms an ordinary man into a zombie. The owner of the ice-cream shop has two daughters. The crayfish farmer has five daughters, and the captain of the soccer team, whose parents are dead, has a sister. Gris Grue is not here. He is away in another country, seeking a specific for deadly nightshade. A zombie with a rectal thermometer is creeping around in the corral, under the bellies of the large, bluish-brown animals. Someone says the Bishop has been seen riding in his car at full speed toward the village.

If a bad zombie gets you, he will weep on you, or take away your whiskey, or hurt your daughter's bones. There are too many daughters in the square, in the windows of the buildings, and not enough husbands. If a bad zombie gets you, he will scratch your white paint with awls and scarifiers. The good zombies skitter and dance. "Did you see that lady? Would that lady marry me? I don't know! Oh what a pretty lady! Would that lady marry me? I don't know!" The beer distributor has set up a keg of beer in the square. The local singing teacher is singing. The zombies say: "Wonderful time! Beautiful day! Marvelous singing! Excellent beer! Would that lady marry me? I don't know!" In a high wind the leaves fall from the trees, from the trees.

The zombie hero Gris Grue said: "There are good zombies and bad zombies, as there are good and bad ordinary men." Gris Grue said that many of the zombies known to him were clearly zombies of the former kind and thus eminently fit, in his judgment, to engage in trade, lead important enterprises, hold posts in the government, and participate in the mysteries of Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Marriage, Penance, the Eucharist, and Extreme Unction. The Bishop said no. The zombies sent many head of cattle to the Bishop. The Bishop said, everything but Ordination. If a bad zombie gets you, he will create insult in your bladder. The bad zombies banged the Bishop's car with a dead cow, at night. In the morning the Bishop had to pull the dead zombie cow from the windshield of his car, and cut his hand. Gris Grue decides who is a good zombie and who is a bad zombie; when he is away, his wife's mother decides. A zombie advances toward a group of thin blooming daughters and describes, with many motions of his hands and arms, the breakfasts they may expect in a zombie home.

"Monday!" he says. "Sliced oranges boiled grits fried croakers potato croquettes radishes watercress broiled spring chicken batter cakes butter syrup and cafe au lait! Tuesday! Grapes hominy broiled tenderloin of tout steak French-fried potatoes celery fresh rolls butter and cafe au lait! Wednesday! Iced figs Wheatena porgies with sauce tartare potato chips broiled ham scrambled eggs French toast and cafe au lait! Thursday! Bananas with cream oatmeal broiled patassas fried liver with bacon poached eggs on toast waffles with syrup and cafe au lait! Friday! Strawberries with cream broiled oysters on toast celery fried perch lyonnaise potatoes cornbread with syrup and cafe au lait! Saturday! Muskmelon on ice grits stewed tripe herb omelette olives snipe on toast flannel cakes with syrup and cafe au lait!" The zombie draws a long breath. "Sunday!" he says. "Peaches and cream cracked wheat with milk broiled Spanish mackerel with sauce maitre d'hotel creamed chicken beaten biscuits broiled woodcock on English muffin rice cakes potatoes a la duchesse eggs Benedict oysters on the half shell broiled lamb chops pound cake with syrup and cafe au lait! And imported champagne!" The zombies look anxiously at the women to see if this prospect is pleasing.

A houngan (zombie-maker) grasps a man by the hair and forces his lips close to those of a dying cat. If you do heavy labor for a houngan for ten years, then you are free, but still a zombie. The Bishop's car is working well. No daughter of this village has had in human memory a true husband, or anything like it. The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not. The fathers of the village are tired of paying for their daughters' sewing machines, lowboys, and towels. A bald zombie says, "Oh what a pretty lady! I would be nice to her! Yes I would! I think so!" Bad zombies are leaning against the walls of the buildings, watching. Bad zombies are allowed, by law, to mate only with sheep ticks. The women do not want the zombies, but zombies are their portion. A woman says to another woman: "These guys are zombies!" "Yes," says the second woman, "I saw a handsome man, he had his picture in the paper, but he is not here." The zombie in the corral finds a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees.

The villagers are beating upon huge drums with mops. The Bishop arrives in his great car with white episcopal flags flying from the right and left fenders. "Forbidden, forbidden, forbidden!" he cries. Gris Grue appears on a silver sled and places his hands over the Bishop's eyes. At the moment of sunset the couples, two by two, are wed. The corral shudders as the cattle collapse. The new wives turn to their new husbands and say: "No matter. This is what we must do. We will paste photographs of the handsome man in the photograph on your faces, when it is time to go to bed. Now let us cut the cake." The good zombies say, "You're welcome! You're very welcome! I think so! Undoubtedly!" The bad zombies place sheep ticks in the Bishop's ear. If a bad zombie gets you, he will scarify your hide with chisels and rakes. If a bad zombie gets you, he will make you walk past a beautiful breast without even noticing.
- The Zombies, Donald Barthelme (1981)

storytime: carl sandburg and american charms

Blixie Bimber grew up looking for luck. If she found a horseshoe she took it home and put it on the wall of her room with a ribbon tied to it. She would look at the moon through her finger, under her arms, over her right shoulder but never—never over her left shoulder. She listened and picked up everything anybody said about the ground hog and whether the ground hog saw his shadow when he came out the second of February.

If she dreamed of onions she knew the next day she would find a silver spoon. If she dreamed of fishes she knew the next day she would meet a strange man who would call her by her first name. She grew up looking for luck.

She was sixteen years old and quite a girl, with her skirts down to her shoe tops, when something happened. She was going to the postoffice to see if there was a letter for her from Peter Potato Blossom Wishes, her best chum, or a letter from Jimmy the Flea, her best friend she kept stead company with.

Jimmy the Flea was a climber. He climbed skyscrapers and flagpoles and smokestacks and was a famous steeplejack. Blixie Bimber liked him because he was a steeplejack, a little, but more because he was a whistler.

Every time Blixie said to Jimmy, "I got the blues—whistle the blues out of me," Jimmy would just naturally whistle till the blues just naturally went away from Blixie.

On the way to the postoffice, Blixie found a gold buckskin whincher. There is lay in the middle of the sidewalk. How and why it came to be there she never knew and nobody ever told her. "It's luck," she said to herself as she picked it up quick.

And so—she took it home and fixed it on a little chain and wore it around her neck.

She did not know and nobody ever told her a gold buckskin whincher is different from just a plain common whincher. It has a power. And if a thing has a power over you then you just naturally can't help yourself.

So—around her neck fixed on a little chain Blixie Bimber wore the gold buckskin whincher and never knew it had a power and all the time the power was working.

"The first man you meet with an X in his name you must fall head over heels in love with him," said the silent power in the gold buckskin whincher.

And that was why Blixie Bimber stopped at the postoffice and went back again asking the clerk at the postoffice window if he was sure there wasn't a letter for her. The name of the clerk was Silas Baxby. For six weeks he kept steady company with Blixie Bimber. They went to dances, hayrack rides, picnics and high jinks together.

All the time the power in the gold buckskin whincher was working. It was hanging by a little chain around her neck and always working. It was saying, "The next man you meet with two X's in his name you must leave all and fall head over heels in love with him."

She met the high school principal. His name was Fritz Axenbax. Blixie dropped her eyes before him and threw smiles at him. And for six weeks he kept steady company with Blixie Bimber. They went to dances, hayrack rides, picnics and high jinks together.

"Why do you go with him for steady company?" her relatives asked.

"It's a power he's got," Blixie answered, "I just can't help it—it's a power."

"One of his feet is bigger than the other— how can you keep steady company with him?" they asked again.

All she would answer was, "It's a power."

All the time, of course, the gold buckskin whincher on the little chain around her neck was working. It was saying, "If she meets a man with three X's in his name she must fall head over heels in love with him."

At a band concert in the public square one night she met James Sixbixdix. There was no helping it. She dropped her eyes and threw her smiles at him. And for six weeks they kept steady company going to band concerts, dances, hayrack rides, picnics and high jinks together.

"Why do you keep steady company with him? He's a musical soup eater," her relatives said to her. And she answered, "It's a power—I can't help myself."

Leaning down with her head in a rain water cistern one day, listening to the echoes against the strange wooden walls of the cistern, the gold buckskin whincher on the little chain around her neck slipped off and fell down into the rain water.

"My luck is gone," said Blixie. Then she went into the house and made two telephone calls. One was to James Sixbixdix telling him she couldn't keep the date with him that night. The other was to Jimmy the Flea, the climber, the steeplejack.

"Come on over—I got the blues and I want you to whistle 'em away," was what she telephoned Jimmy the Flea.

And so—if you ever come across a gold buckskin whincher, be careful. It's got a power. It'll make you fall head over heels in love with the next man you meet with an X in his name. Or it will do other strange things because different whincher have different powers.

- The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the Gold Buckskin Whincher, Rootabaga Stories, Carl Sandburg

from the Blue Octavo Notebooks

PROMETHEUS

There are four legends about Prometheus. According to the first, because he had betrayed the gods to men he was chained to a rock in the Caucasus and the gods sent eagles that devoured his perpetually renewed liver.

According to the second, Prometheus in his agony, as the beaks hacked into him, pressed deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

According to the third, in the course of thousands of years his treachery was forgotten, the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of what had become meaningless. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

What remained was the inexplicable range of mountains. Legend tries to explain the inexplicable. Since it arises out of a foundation of truth, it must end in the realm of the inexplicable.

- Frank Kafka, Third Notebook

poetry: the spell of language (graves)

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

- "The Cool Web" by Robert Graves (1895-1985)

on going home (the impossibility of); bourgeois

Milan Kundera has said that when you leave your childhood, your relationship to what you have left becomes very important. You develop a certain attachment to it. To affirm your identity, you make the past—which in certain ways you hate—into a beautiful thing. But when you go back and see the actual scene of the crime—I’m joking now—the actual scene of your early years, you don’t recognize it. Either you have embellished it, or you have torn it apart, or you have murdered it, or you have made it into a pie-in-the-sky. Whatever you did, you don’t recognize it. (24-25 (Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations – Louise Bourgeois w/ Lawrence Rinder))

Quote: Andrew Wyeth in interview: on the American quality

You see, I just give no quarter to contemporary foreign art. When I say that America’s absolutely it, people always say, “But Cezanne, Picasso, Braque.” They’re saying, “Yes, but we’re children over here in painting.” I’m not talking about subject matter but a very American quality-- an indigenous thing you’re born with. I think Franz Kline had it very strongly, even though he’s Abstract. It’s the quality of the early weather vanes, the hinges on the doors. It’s very hard to pinpoint. The Patriot-- there's a certain awkward, primitive quality in that portrait I feel only could have been done by an American. It’s sort of dry, for one thing. Robert Frost’s best poetry has a dry quality.