Mr. Beefheart...

we salute you



(with an eggplant)

Now we know how they felt
when Marilyn died.

More from the Motel

Your last report was very nice. I think the skyline view of New York
is a photo of a photo on the wall. This draws in the travelers. They can't
get a straight answer from the management. I can hear the
argument already. Through the bullet proof glass. Someone says
"try and stop me," turns out the lights. And the overconfident,
overly optimistic dad trying to make the best of it. Maybe intentions
like those should be stomped out like an old cigarette.

In the cafe, Luc Sante hangs out and drinks coffee. Smokes.
He does his typing here.

Maybe there's a family down the hall.
They live in the motel full time, trying to be appropriately suburban.
They occupy a few rooms. Go through the usual hassles. It's 100%
precisely like lives like ours . . . but the setting adds a degree
of absurdity. Tips things over.

The group that plays cards; the man that moves in to
have his nightmares. . . he has figured out a way to
batch them. Another man comes to do all his drinking
for the year. They meet somehow and swap potions.

An inventor of strange instruments. A man chained to a dead man.

Someone composing a religion. Two German techno legends.

Etc.

26.

Suggested Topics for Holiday Phone Call

1. Current setting
2. Enemies (i.e., minor irritants)
3. Surprises
4. Non-monetary compensation
5. Parameters for Best-of List
6. The holy ghost, the ghostly holy
7. Handsomeness 2.0
8. Analogies that made us yawn, not smile
9. Becoming (the vs. a)
10. Bloomberg Business Week
11. That smell
12. The metaphysics of debt
13. Mustache strategy (bi-partisan if possible)
14. Expired diplomats
15. The launching of the tiny boats

Rod Stewart, Undercover Indie Rocker

Duchamp Game

I wrote the rules to this game on July 30, 2007. Not sure if I shared it with you then. Should this be launched in January?
_____________________

Today, I was forced out of my house by a thick arm of restlessness. It said GO!, pushing me solidly in the chest, so I went. All the way up Broadway until I saw a store that said BOOKS. In it, I found a first (only?) edition of the book published on the occasion of a Marcel Duchamp exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

I took it with me (for the negligible sum of 15 dollars) to a coffee shop further uptown. Along the way I saw a man with a rash covering his entire face, a man in an army jacket digging around in garbage cans, eleven children (aged 6 months to 3 years) and several elderly couples: signs of the dawdling hour, late in the morning, well before lunch, when most people are at work. In the coffee shop, I flipped through my new book and found

Favored humor and chance as decisive tools in art and life
Raised dust, then found a way to preserve it
Distrusted language
Published a book of puns
Quit making public art and played chess instead
Called self a “chess maniac”
Even wrote a book about chess
Worked on a secret work – The Glass???????? – for 20 years.
Lived in a variety of apartments in New York City.

This last point stopped me, especially when I learned that I was a mere 20 blocks from one. I decided to go there immediately and see what I could discover. When inside, nearing the staircase, I was quickly asked to leave by the doorman, even after I showed him my book, but I hung around outside and wrote down a few ideas. Walking around with Duchamp in one’s head is like being in a bird's body!

On to the point of the letter. While sitting on Duchamp’s stoop, or what’s left of it, I thought of a game and 3 possible players. After sketching out the rules of the game, I decided that I would immediately return home, contact the 3 players, and ask them to generate a list of 3 additional players. Those 3 would generate a further list. You received this letter because your name was on this list. The rules are simple, and enclosed.

You were selected because one of the original 3 thought you would (a) be willing to go through with this and (b) thought your results might be interesting.

What’s in it for you? A few things, none tangible or guaranteed. Possible publication. If enough people respond, a book may emerge. So, in a way, you are writing for a literary magazine that does not exist. Also, and more profoundly, you will have the opportunity to have your life altered by chance.

This does not happen everyday.

This does not even happen every third day.

(c), you will be involved in a kind of network, secret of course (you will never know who else is doing this).

Giving up even part of your day to chance allows you to step onto a plateau where everything that happens is charged with the magic of chance.

If you choose to participate, skip ahead, explore the rules, ask no questions, and, when you are done, drop the completed game in the self addressed, stamped envelope. The game ends one year from today.

Sincerely,

Claude Cephalus
West 14th Street, NYC

Rules

1. When you find yourself at the brink of a small decision (i.e., should I go shopping or get a cup of coffee, should I eat fish or steak, should I call Glen or Glenda), flip a coin. Let the coin decide for you.
2. Keep track of the decision, the outcome, and the result. In other words, write down the two things on which you are deciding, the result of the coin toss, and the result of your decision. The “result” can be short or much more expansive. It can be text-based or you can draw a picture. Anything goes. Also, write down the date. (See example below)
3. Keep this information in the brown notebook—complete with coin—included.
4. When the notebook is full, put it in the envelope and mail it.
5. If enough of these notebooks come back, they will be shaped into some kind of further art work; you will be notified at that point about the result.


Typical Entry Would Look Like So:

7/30

Should I start the Duchamp Coin Flip Game?

Heads – Yes
Tails – No

The coin said YES. So I begin. I’m not sure what this will yield, but I know it will cost me roughly 27 quarters and the cost of 27 notebooks. Already the world seems charged and different. Knowing that 27 people will be allowing chance to govern at least a small part of their days. But will they play the game?

The Babblers

">

Beck: Mellow Gold

I totally missed it when it plashed, plunked,
and sputtered into fourth place.

Now it sounds like everything I didn't
miss back then,

o back then

when I was bedheaded
and worming my way through some
nightshift of my own making.

Thanks boss, I did
get paid
after all.

Simple Update

I'm about to see Nick Cave in Nashville.
But also saw in a honky-tonk bar
written in Magik Marker

"Herbert Hearts Gloria Ashlock".
Cheers: from the 7th floor of

Indigo Hotel. I'll let you know
what it's like to be the line

connecting the dots between
the two.

True or false, then?

Noia is plainly an evil: to suffer it is to suffer utter unhappiness. So what is noia? Not a specific sorrow or pain (noia, the idea and nature of it, excludes the presence of any particular sorrow or pain) but simply ordinary life fully felt, lived in, known: it's everywhere, it saturates an individual."

~Giacomo Leopardi

Thought Skipped Over Rooftops

I think, partially,
our ability to quickly grasp
stories, sweet stories,
may undo us.

How many times
these days
do we glimpse or whiff
something and say,
"yeah, I got it,
I understand everything
about your life."

Thanks for the photo,
I am catching a bus,
leaves are falling,
it is fall --

what a cliche.

The Copy Editor Watches the Traffic

The post below...

makes me think of a series of films called "Arrivals" or (ironically) "Departures." In the second film (the first one's below), a man prepares himself meticulously for his day at work. Pressed pants and shirt, perfect jacket, cuff links. He's respectable as hell--even buffs his shoes and nails before leaving. He flosses for Christ's sake. We see his room, his perfect room. The book called _The Organization Man_ is in his bookshelf.

He makes his way outside, lives outside of New York, begins his commute into the city. We know this guy, he's got his briefcase, his blackberry. He reads a bit on the bus. An old, beat up, well used book with a brown cover. He mouths some of the words. Ultimately, he arrives in New York City and heads downtown on the train. He arrives at the 42nd street stop and winds his way into one of those long, hot, connective tunnels. He's walking with the crowd now. Walking with the crowd until he just stops. Takes his position along a wall. Yup, he's in his office now. He takes out that book, the old, beat up, well used book. And just starts screaming a sermon. All hellfire and damnation. Sweating. Stomping. Scrapping. He does this until the crowd thins out. Then he sits down on a crate, wipes his brow, and the film ends.

Treading some old ground here

and yet, the work seems to justify it:

http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/article3.html

______________

I love everything about Mr. Satie

the same way I love a cup of coffee, a window, a tiny pencil, a scrap of paper

Or the paper boats I make, and float, with my son.
They are so bold and yet
so frail. They could never
catch fire.

How I love almost every kind of weather,
certain tree stumps,
and black and white movies with the sound off.

I thought once I would make a very quiet
black and white movie
about Satie. I pitched it to the right guy,
but we got busy with something else.
Anyway, it was a simple story. A man
who looks like he's from another century
meets a woman in a grocery store. The woman,
in fact, works in the grocery store. She
runs a register, it's Friday night. Nothing much
of a Friday night. He asks her on a date
(in silent subtitles, this is to be a mostly
silent film), she says yes. She spends
a ridiculous amount of time getting ready --
if the film is 25 minutes, she gets ready for
at least 12 minutes, we see all the
careful calculations, it's wonderful and sad,
she tries on different dresses, earrings, she
throws herself on the bed in agony and then
at the last second, finds an outfit, a necklace,
she is utterly transformed. She looks
gorgeous. The man picks her up and they are
awkward together, his car's a wreck, but they're
getting there. They get there. To a motel.
She's uncertain, worried, he walks her down
the ugly hallway, past the charmless lights,
into a simple room. He lives there, apparently.
He sits her down at a table that he's prepared
for the evening. A bottle of wine, two wine glasses,
"the wine's been breathing," he says
(subtitles), and then he disappears, says,
"just a second," and we're left to wait for
a really long time, she looks nervous, upset,
gets up to leave, and he appears. He's carrying
an old record player. He plugs it in. He opens
the curtains. Traffic's going by. He pulls out a record,
puts it on, sits near her, and for the first time,
we hear music. Satie's music. We sit and listen to it
with them. Nothing happens, except for
the traffic.

Book of Dreams

So Yoga you've written (no, published) the kind of book I've dreamed a few times.

The dream went like this: I publish a book that can only be read once. Once, and with an expiration date. So, as you're reading it, you try to take it in. You try to remember everything you like about it.

But

*sometimes you are rushed, so you read quickly because you know it will disappear

*sometimes, while actually reading slowly and trying to remember it, you realize that reading in that way -- with a net aimed to trap -- is somehow impure. You're missing something central about the experience. So you stop trying to remember. You enjoy the process of words passing through you. Eventually, even, you enjoy the fact that you will never have to analyze or connect. Like a series of touches, the words caress, push, poke, knead, punch, play, tussle your hair.

*sometimes you start and then rush off and come back to find that the chapter you were reading is gone, so you fill in the blanks even if you don't really want to (and even if you do really want to)

*sometimes you start to copy the words, but you quickly erase them, this feels like hoarding a smile or a shooting star

Ultimately, this book is more "of a piece" with your own mind than most books because you make so much of it in your own mind. And you can't go back to something stable. You just have the static-y storage device of short term memory.

It's a voice in my head the way the announcer of old Celtics games is a voice in my head. The way my father's voice, coaching me around a track near dark, is a voice in my head. Or that woman hollering in the street back in 1991, some part of her all aflame with a wonder not made

but gifted

and then gone: a holy hole God leapt from.

This is a poem for William Byrd and an essay for you, tireless friend.
Honor us and all we've made and unmade
by never reading it again.

Phone Call, Phone Bill, Cooking, Eating

the simple things
crowd out the simple things --
they make bombs from the parts

I listen to old masses late at night
and this doesn't do a thing for a thing --
come morning we ache up

best to make like
Solomon Burke --
bury em, get buried by em.

It Looks Like

The phone call didn't happen.
Not for want of wanting.

Got caught up in the usual
stuff of life and then: what,

it's already Monday?

If I did call, I would've
said, Hey,

did you hear this place
is 500 pounds and one

big voice lighter?
Solomon Burke died.

You have to love that.
A soul singer who was also

a mortician. Lifting us up
while lowering us

down. What else was
religion made for?

Not For Solo Piano

But since this "classical music" thing

has its claws in your mood,

I can think of a few you might

like. Have you heard of Lou Harrison?

He spent his whole life creating soundtracks

for falling leaves. Or Gyorgi Ligeti. A little

more disturbed, a little more Hungarian.

Stockhausen's "Stimmung"... Kaija Saariaho.

Or Meredith Monk's "Mercy" and "Dolmen Music".

But the music that seems the most fall

and winter to me, that tracks the

unmundane repetitions of it--

snowfakes unspooling from way up

in a fractal fall, ice stitching its jagged

quilts in a puddle--is Philip Glass.

"Music in 12 Parts", "Einstein on the Beach".

The breaths of thousands on those windows.

Am listening

to Dollar Brand's African Piano.

My recording's probably not nearly as nice, I acknowledge,
as the record
you hear it from
in a certain company, chopping onions maybe,
or washing dishes drinking coffee

with the kind of attention
and relation
you've worked so hard
to sculpt . . .

Regardless, my goodness!

It makes me crazy
with joy
all the things I do not know.

***

On an Overgrown Path

Peter Dickinson asked,
"Do you mean more attuned to somebody's spiritual development?"

John Cage replied "All
of that - more possible to live affirmatively if you find
the sound of the environment beautiful.

***

Irish musicians had a contest of heroes and the question was,

'What is the most beautiful sound?'

The one who won the contest said the most beautiful sound
is the sound of what happens"

***

and I would add
"to be shared."

Dear Friday night,

Bring out the stars
that need polishing.

Music for Solo Piano

The place I found out about

Gordon Mumma,

that beautiful album cover,

is called On an Overgrown Path.

That came from somewhere

else, something sparked

something. Pretty nice, this trace.

Anyway, some of what I've read there,

On the Overgrown Path, seems to bring us

full circle: craving "classical" music and some of the

writing about "classical" music. I think, now,

this is just a time of the season,

just a weather pattern I'll look forward to,

forget, and then smile into when it's about.

I should add "some classical music,"

I'm craving some classical music,

some writing about some classical music.

It all has to be just so, just right.

Still can't listen too much to Cage, for example,

but find almost anything written by him

for books

or about him in books (even and maybe especially critical

essays about him in books) irresistible -- I read such sentences

in bed, if you don't mind

my saying so. That's a confession that contains

maybe the entire history

of my happiness. That

and the music of Mr. Satie, garlic,

a cold beer, coffee. Do you remember the time

I started buying up Satie books

in used bookstores all over New York City?

The best source was on 79th street. You could

almost taste the Westside Highway from there,

such an odd little resting place for a bookstore.

I've written to you about it before,

about the record player

and couch, the almost godly softness

of the music, the curmudgeon

who works there,

his soul rusted by perfect sound.

You probably don't remember the books,

most certainly don't remember the voyages

to get the books. I was alone when I found them. You

merely saw them, maybe thumbed through them

on one of your visits, laughed at me once

because one of them was all in French.

I think I crave all this --

the music, the talk about the music --

because it maps a

geography less cruel

than the one we've got. Or maybe just

because it's finally nearly October and soon

will be. Music for Solo Piano.

Motivations

Maybe F. sends some goons to his daughter's house (as a way to ensure that his son plays along).

Maybe it's the same goons who start the film . . . so we know they are dangerous.

F.'s move can be revealed later, when F. shows his hand, and can also be a reason that F.'s daughter ultimately turns him in.

It's his game, but she wins . . . and, as a result, someone gets a girl and a life.

Chess, checkers, poker. The threat of real loss foreshadowed.

Or it could be something simpler like: as F. weighs his options, he is attacked by creditors.

Or he flips a coin, something whimsical.

Gets bedbugs. Flees.

Nearly abducted by horror movie film production unit--
it moves into the hotel
he calls home. He doesn't like horror,
as a genre, on principle,
so he flees that movie and ends up in ours.

Cicada's predicted; he's allergic.

A giant cockroach moves in. Won't leave.

A baseball card. Very rare. Lost and then found.

Something he loved as a child. Lost then found.

A giant cockroach moves out. Won't come back.

His grandmother's meatball recipe: salvaged.

The blueprints for his childhood home, long since demolished: salvaged.

Recordings of his mother telling stories or singing.

The images stay,
then fall apart without . . .

Wait, I wanted to,
I wasn't dancing

in the back room.
Someone is stabbing a grapefruit.

Handle the bleeders,

kid's stuff. That's
the best stuff.

I've been busy in a way that shouldn't even be moral.

Perhaps it isn't moral.

Hmmm.

I Paid

that tax collector and the other guy.
The electric and gas at 39 Cherry are cut off
and the mail all forwarded,
even the junk. You would think . . .
but why bother muttering
too soon. This is just getting good.

We have what couldn't be better --
new windows, new household music.
Each day our boy stalks the halls
of a new school, dancing
when he wants to, becoming known
on his own, his very own
whims and refusals scattering
like a story that will be told
by a good or bad teacher one day
to another good or bad teacher
until he wants to forget his homework
just to remind them
to forget him.

As we get wiser, we get older. I think I'd rather be
dumber and younger
always. Let's drink more wine. Some of this
is just so rich
it pummels. Wake
from an afternoon nap
having forgotten your own name
and you know what I'm talking about:
Where you are, breath, where you aren't.
What you have, breath, where it's going.

"The biography of a poet is found in what happens to those who read him." --Babette Deutsch

Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed

Record Club: Yanni "Acroyali/Standing In Motion" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

In my dreams, I'm running from

the fuzz, laughing and knocking down fruit stands.

This song is playing:



I am not an entirely happy criminal,
but only because I am winning.

Thanks for including that post below.

I just heard this on the radio and will throw it into our crowd:

Thoreau, ahem,

Just so hollow and ineffectual, for the most part, is our ordinary conversation. Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while. (LWP)

White Man

"Behold, a Rooftop Drinker."

Blue Man

"Sometimes a Rooftop Drinker Gets Hungry."

Stashing on the Mustache Pile

I have egg on my face.

I actually looked this up.

Dubus'

Meditiations from a Moving Chair

is BEATING my heart

back into shape--

How it got out of shape

could fill ten books, twenty.

I'm going to try to put it into one

and call it The Baseball Wars

and try to walk easy again

in the scented summer air.

One Beaut from Lee Bontecou

MT: What do you want them to take away?

LB: Their own thoughts, I guess, and their own feelings about it. Out in LA they were seeing something in themselves and they thanked me for maybe helping them to see something. It was the best. Not "How did you do this?" or "How did you do that?" but just something they had gleaned from themselves. Everybody has a different take on everything. I've had people come and say, "I didn't see that as foreboding. I saw it as something really funny." That was their view. Something inside their life--I don't know what it was, but it was good.

Me, I was a victim of the ice cream truck wars.

You, you should know that.

Two Beauts from _The Friends of Eddie Coyle_

“Now the only grand jury I know about is the DA’s, and that’s about the Polack hit and they got that other fellow there, I hear, Stradniki, Stradnowski?”

“Stravinki,” Waters said, “Jimmy the Whale.”

“The Polack,” Foley said, “yeah, him. They got the other Polack.”

_____________________

“He didn’t show up,” Foley said. “I sit there for about half an hour, and I have a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. Jesus, I forgot how bad a thing a chesse sandwich is to eat. It’s just like eating a piece of linoleum, you know?”

“You got to put mayonnaise on it,” Waters said. “It’s never going to have any flavor at all unless you put some mayonnaise on the bread before you put the cheese on.”

“I never heard of that,” Foley said. “You put it on the outside, do you?”

“Nah,” Waters said, “you put it on the inside. You still put the butter on the outside and all. But when the cheese melts, there, it’s the mayonnaise that gives it the flavor. You got to use real mayonnaise, though, the stuff with eggs in it. You can use the other stuff that most people use when they say they’re using mayonnaise, that salad dressing stuff, you can use it. But it isn’t going to taste the same. I think the other stuff scalds or something. It doesn’t taste right, anyway.”

“They don’t go for those refinements in the Rexall’s anyway,” Foley said. “What the hell, you go in there and order a cheese sandwich, they got a whole stack of them, already made up, probably since last Wednesday, and they take out one of them goddamned things, big fat piece of this orange cheese in it, and throw on some grease, they pretend it’s butter but I sure don’t believe that, and then they go and they fuse it all together with a hot press there. My stomach’s still trying to break that thing down into something I can live on, just like a big piece, two big pieces, of bathroom tile with some mastic in between. Served hot. I get sick, you’re gonna have to give me a pension.”

Hey guy. Nick Cave, is it? I wonder--have
you caught wind of his third album

Kicking Against the Pricks? Chock load
full of ballads and gospel. There's
a
ballad,
sixth song on
"Henry's Dream",

"When I First Came to Town" I think it's called,
that ranks high for me.

I've been meaning to
text back when I hear
from you that way, but
the texts have this knack of
popping up right when I'm
1) concentrating while reviewing racing programs
2) placing bets
3) cooking dinner with my lady friend.

An I-Pod is too weak
of a thing
to off you as a poet.

As for me, I'm going well--busy
as much as can be allowed.

Will be flying to Reno in a week to
hike the Sierra Nevadas.

Then am moving into a new apartment
with my girlfriend Marie and her three cats.

No poems in me now. But tonight I
plumb the depths of a Jack and Ginger
to see what's happening down there.

A few lines and stars, maybe.

Who knew?

Where should I go next with Nick Cave?

I'm digging the ballady, singer-songwriter stuff
and want to continue in that direction for a while.

But one at a time, one at a time
dear friend.

And how are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWhxCB0ndJE

Secret Kudzu

Frederic Prokosch
Juniciro Tanizaki
B.S. Johnson
Varlam Shalamov
Richard Crashaw
Jim Chandler
Brigid Brophy
John Berger

(pt. 1)

4th of July, Asbury Park (research)

Sandy, a link:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_of_July,_Asbury_Park_(Sandy)

What All the Fuss Is

About:



Hmmmmmmmm.

Tell me...

What do you know about this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Up_With_It

Vidal on Edmund Wilson

He was perfect proof of the proposition that the more the mind is used and fed the less apt it is to devour itself. When he died, at seventy-seven, he was busy stuffing his head with irregular Hungarian verbs. Plainly, he had a brain to match his liver.

Vidal Quoting Calvino:

"he was, of course, a true realist, who believed 'that only a certain prosaic solidity can give birth to creativity: fantasy is like jam; you have to spread it on a solid slice of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing, like jam, out of which you can't make anything.'"

Quotes from Hammett's _Red Harvest_

"A soiled dove, as the fellow says."

"Dinah told me you were a pretty good guy, except kind of Scotch with the roll."

"That's why he's a pork and beaner when he's as good as the best."

"Plans are all right sometimes . . . And sometimes just stirring things up is all right--if you're tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you'll see what you want when it comes to the top."

"Let's listen to the rest of it, I like details and things."

"There's no sense in a man picking out the worst name he can find for everything."

"You're making a fine pair of clowns of us. Be still while I get up or I'll make an opening in your head for brains to leak in."

"Jerry had another try at me. The girl spoiled it by heaving the corpse at him."

"I'm getting sick of this killing."

"I'm sick of this butchering."

"Let's get the rest of the kicks squared."

"I was in a good spot if I played my hand right, and in a terrible one if I didn't."

"We could tell better maybe who's entitled to beef if you'd give us what you got first."

"This damned burg's getting to me. If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives."

"With the gin in me I returned to the dining room, switched on the lights, and looked at the dead girl."

"Why should I stoop to conceal the fact that there are those who feel justified in preferring to substitute the definite article for the indefinite?"

"I spent the evening in my room, drinking unpleasant whiskey, thinking unpleasant thoughts, and waiting for reports that didn't come."

"I was making one of my favorite complaints--that newspapers were good for nothing except to hash things up so nobody could unhash them--when I heard a boy chanting my name."

"Here's the proposish:"

"I don't want him to get any ideas that I'm dodging a rumpus with him or any other guy."

"I'd have given him the big umpchay twice for the straight dope."

"crack the hoosegow"

"This is the bunk."

"I haven't laughed so much over anything since the hogs ate my kid brother."

"Find another wet nurse."

"Seems it was a juicy row while it lasted--no duck soup for the coppers at that."

"I got no more belly left than Peter Collins."

In the words of middleweight Sugar Ray Seales, 1972 Olympic Gold Medalist, a veteran of more than four hundred amateur and professional fights who went blind as a consequence of ring injuries: "I went into the wilderness, and fought the animals there, and when I came back I was blind."

Mailer on Ali:

Now it was as if Ali carried the idea to some advanced place where he could assimilate punches faster than other fighters, could literally transmit the shock through more parts of his body, or direct it to the best path, as if ideally he were working toward the ability to receive that five-punch combination (or six or seven!) yet be so ready to ship the impact out to each arm, each organ and each leg, that the punishment might be digested, and the mind remain clear. It was a study to watch Ali take punches.

Sugar Ray Robinson:

Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart, and that's in rhythm or you're in trouble.

American Death Poems

Alice Mae Johnson, housewife, Call’s Junction, Mississippi; December 2, 1976:

This god damned kudzu
Crawled all the way from Japan
They tell me, climbing
Every green thumb that said “Wait”




Linda Crick, beauty queen, Fort Lauderdale, FL; August 6, 1988:

All you beautiful
People, the other side of
This face, here it is:
One less chance to look at me




Michael Jarvice, investor, New York, N.Y.; March 12, 2009:

Millions gone millions
Know: I’m poor while the rest are
Penniless. A jump
From this height: on top again




Bernard “Bernie” Madoff, broker, Federal Correctional Institution Butner Medium, Butner, N.C.; October 4, 2012:

I’m sorry the way
God is sorry, believed in
Just one big Ponzi
This shiv in my neck says it



Officer Wade Limonchik, police officer, Newark, NJ; September 30, 1991:

Crackheads’re good shots
When aiming for a hit they
Like. So why’d this guy
Off me if he can’t smoke me




Maurice Free, day care attendee, Andrilla Falls, S.D.; April 2, 1967:

Fingers in my mouth
Ten toes on my feet. Do green
Eggs and ham come from
Green pigs and chickens, mommy




Benny Archman, nudist, Gray Springs, NY; May 22, 1987:

Nudity is the
Oldest sport. Everyone’s a
Winner. In the dark
At least, we’re all undressing




August Rickart, philosopher, New Haven, CT; September 20, 1934:

In the bathroom and
There’s Spinoza, grinding glass
Sunshades for shadows
Blind to spelunk Plato’s cave




David Foster Wallace, novelist, Ponoma, CA; September 12, 2008:

This is water, said
The fish to the page. Fingers
Pressed to my neck’s gills
Goodbye trout, salmon, David

Denis Johnson

"Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything. In fact, for sanity's sake, those two ideas have to be banished: the idea of getting somewhere and the idea of accomplishing something. Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes. So eat, drink, sleep. Everything is arranged."

Foreva

"The first time I went to Darmstadt,
[American composer] La Monte Young was pulling a chair
and table
around the room. It was called Furniture Music
and just blew me away,"

said sound artist Annea Lockwood
in the Australian newspaper
claiming to be that nation's
heart.

Dear Yoga,

The Christmas you have sent
is second only
to your company.

I collect my thoughts,
the poems disappear.

Like Christmas.

It's a little like walking
from the tip of Manhattan
to the bottom
only to be shot through a bridge,
a wobbly and wonderful
(because olden and real)
bridge.

One of us
had a tape recorder,
we transcribed a bit,
laughed and inhaled
the best words, best order
we could muster,
but the real beauty of the walk

stayed put.

No, these are home movies.
They unmap the heart, they
map the heart. Huge
as a carnival. I snagged
three balloons.

Lucky

me.

Fill In The Blank

Better to be Polish in _______ than ______ in the arms of a German.

Fill in the Blank

God walks backwards through the heart, taking time's _______________ along, sulkily and gleefuly. A sweet, spiritual equivocation bids us human holes and hollers. The good stuff, best stuff, amen.

Fill in the Blank

A man's relationship with endurance is more __________ than sobbing.

True or False:

Anyone so invested in winking hardly has time for eyes.

True or False:

Bread and water are clean dreamers.

True of False

All problems in the world are caused by too much or too little bourbon.

Camus 3

"Naturalness is not a virtue that one has: it is acquired."

"Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable."

"The acceptance of what is--a sign of strength? No, this is where servitude resides. But the acceptance of what has been. In the present, the struggle."

They have to grow out of your mind naturally, like grass out of the ground:

cadillacs, creation, immortality,

the way Welles builds a set and lets the wild world dance,

encounters in a Kafka, the pure ranges,

and, sometimes, scent.

It Takes a Plague to Raise a Village

Lately considering all the moments from Camus' The Plague where the description of a character or event becomes so perfectly clear that it seems to be hacked away from the rest of the narrative and just standing there gleaming in a good, clean light.

For example, just starting out, within the first hundred words or so, before he has even an ounce of our trust, the narrator asks us to conjure up a town without pigeons. And I am steady, steadier, than fiction.

He says things like "what is needed is imagination," not "order."

"Her father," meanwhile, "was a railroadman. When off duty, he spent most of his time seated in a corner beside the window gazing meditatively at the passers-by, his enormous hands splayed out on his thighs."

That's exactly it, I think to myself. That's not my father or my friend but this particular man.

If we could see life like that, as a series of impressions stacked up clean, not to be judged but maybe just . . .

If we could cultivate a kind of . . . to see each passing thing without encumbrance, without horror or passion. Without pessimism or the "what's it to me" that sucks blood and pounds breath.

I will stay with this book a long time, practicing the kind of slow reading that returns books to their truest place: risk, the risk of unsettling, the risk of taking it all too seriously. Changing life.

I can't remember anymore if this is a good thing, a terrible thing.

"These were the people, no doubt, whom one often saw wandering forlornly in the dusty town at all hours of the day, silently invoking nightfalls known to them alone and the daysprings of their happier land."

Charles Bukowski's Kick On Inspiration

Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.

Cesare Pavese:

"To know the world, one must construct it."

Spotted here, in between the two photos

Where's Dennis Quaid Coming From? He Likes Talking To Blondes, That's All I Know

Page from Harold Gruber via Google Books

Source

I find it beautiful, I found it late (among Billy Wilder dialog and Chinese food)

califone - funeral singers from Califone on Vimeo.

Reversed, Commercialized

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3776594.htm

All of My Friends

I didn't
record this song about a half decade ago in Pittsburgh.
Should have, could have.
Then we would have sat on the porch and
had a beer and waited for Alexei to come home.
(Dry throats dry throats oh that feels just right.)
When he would have, he would have
just mumbled something about a wall. So we would have
eaten the rest of the anchovies
with crusty bread and talked about not fishing.

about a half decade ago
Pittsburgh
on the porch
had a beer and waited
for Alexei

he just mumbled something about a wall.

So we ate the rest of the anchovies with crusty bread
and talked

(those days are tucked away like
good records
behind my favorite books, I remember
everything about every room
I ever heard them in)

True or False:

Passive minds are best equipped to be God.

True of False

True of False

Love has two doors—to the present and the ever-changing present. You must use both of them.

True or False:

The joy of being alive is rarely famous.

True or False:

Though beauty is conditional, Marie's face isn't (the unconditional leaves its wake as beauty).

True or False:

For the sake of symmetry some are pitiless in their judgments.

True or False:

Enjoyment of beauty is invention of disparity.

Enjoying

the true and false.

This evening, jet lagged, most seem true.

I'll tune in again tomorrow, searching for the ones

the ones that bend

toward the middle.

Man oh man it would be good

to walk Manhattan with you.

Keep breathing

gold. Phew.

WCW awaits,

and all the others.

Coffees and the goodsnort

of morning, belly rub, fists

in eyes, headlines. I want to wash

all the shadows, all the cornerstalkers

off. All the off

off. Anything Blake

would hate, my 22 year old self

would hate. But love

got me here and

will get me there,

true or false?

Benjamin

Rising.

True or False:

For the ones who reach adulthood cold, analytical skepticism is consolation.

True or False:

Relinquishment of power is love establishing its capacity.

True or False:

Power and self-regard are consolations.

True or False:

Sleeves did not preexist hearts.

True or False:

Your surprise at success is tied to others' desire for you to fail.

True or False:

Inside you is all the challenge.

True or False:

Other people create your wasted life.

True or False:

Thoughtfulness is a rare divide.

True or False:

Backbiters barf wings.

True or False:

At the end of this, shipped wrecks are reassembled.

True or False:

Slugs want salt.

True or False:

Attentional golems decide the celebrities.

True or False:

Hunger creates nobility.

True or False:

Distance is built into unassailable confidence.

True or False:

All the cutest women are home-grown from nature.

True or False:

There was blood already on the snow as it was falling.

I saw something worth mentioning yesterday. I was walking along Fourth Street, on the way back to the office from my lunchtime walk, when I came on a homeless man urinating on a cigarette. When I think back on it, I remember seeing him hunch over as if all the breath had left him. Then he dropped the cigarette half smoked. And then, with faintly bent knees, like someone with a bad back crouching to expel their bowels, fiddled with his fly. A thin leap of piss struck the sidewalk and began wandering its aim to dribble on the mark. A woman who happened to be standing outside the Fuller Building across the street crossed her arms and turned her back. I walked right past. When I looked over my left shoulder, though, he was leaning with one hand pressed to the building, as if the strain had left him half-conscious. He cocked his head my way, as if he could hear eyesight. It was a strange, but subtle enough exchange I almost forgot it.

Tiredness says I'm sweet,

finally,

to the ones I pledged my life to. Cheese
after cheese,

I know,

but seeing the person before you
with the right set of eyes,
activating the right use of body,
conditioning the right silences, the just right
silences

is the only holy god damn thing
we need to do--

Sweetness says I'm tired.

A day the length of a roughed up body.

Useless work is hard work.

Tonight I'm going to blink bourbon and grow olives.

Each olive will be blue and have a pit.

It will be a genuine pit.

It will go round and round between the holding fingers.

It will go down and down like the place they put bodies.

But down at the bottom, the magic is, they're still alive.

And one of them is me looking up and knowing this.

Imagine these are lucky ones,
echoing things--things?--

swathed in unfolding, in confounding when
all other floating

heretofore
is giving, not collecting,
launching or living or
best, the private blind-side that always

comes clean
without prompting.

For a guy like you
sweetness follows

and then tags along
the ankles like, yup,
a pup. We know
what is
by what was
a little longer:
the act, the scene, the gesture
before
they rise, rise, rise
to salute the better shadow.

I imagine there are some lucky ones who
find the thing--the thing!--

sweet in its unfolding, in its combining with
all the other floating data,

away from
recollection, form, languaging, or,
worst, the private build-up that all but guarantees
flat soda.

Come clean.
Okay.

For a guy like me,
what's sweet must surprise

and then run
quickly
away. What was that,

I wonder, that
scent of wildest

. . . ? Let me not
know

a little longer,
god, keeper, author of this tiny
human
applause.
I want to be a better man.

It was

what I imagine
the Titanic of monologues
would be...

so I've been reading all about
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

and watching
said film.

Cassavetes always
makes me feel better, which
means

more human.

Oh my it was just terrible.

Uncle Benjamin,

Who played the clown, I wonder? Did everyone in attendance, audience and auteurs, wear red noses? Probably. Surely. And the monologue shuffled through the aisles and spoke like a hobo from the 30's, dispensing wisdom like tobacco saliva in a spittoon. The last few breaths of that introduction don't sound like an accident, though. They sound like some definitive statement on behalf of the invisible creative mind at play in the long-gone and currently shrugging and soon-to-be-at-bat masses. The fact that this guy was cut from the film strangely makes him the star of the thing. And that's how it is with everyone. That's what he's saying, I think, when he takes his bow and his bowler hat rolls off his head right into our laps. Like the guillotined head of some oppressive king.

The Executioner of the Important
Sows Smaller Heads
On Larger Bodies,

The Headshrinker A Heart-Enlarger,

but then again
decapitation*
is only an excuse(an
invitation)
for resurrection

On Tuesday, This is Happening

Motel Americana, a movie made by my Uncle Benjamin and some of his cronies, is playing in New York City. The promo poster looks like this:



But this is also happening: An old character actor is going to launch the film by interrupting an announcement about the star of the movie and then performing this monologue:

Gabe is introduced by the theater manager. We know in advance that he is not there. This gives the Clown Manager his opening . . .

He ain’t here. Primmadonna. (Stands) I tell him, here’s your shot, your chance to meet some new clients, here’s a little grapevine to famesville. Nope. Says he’s got a date or something. After all I’ve done for this guy. (Shows head shot or blown up picture.) Dope.

But I’ll admit. To a room fulla strangers I’ll admit. Only because he’s not here. He’s like a son this guy. (Regarding the photograph) I been mentoring him since he was fifteen. I’m proud of him, you know. Maybe not tonight, but I’m proud of him. You can’t go near the Catskills these days without bumping into a piece of his act. Maybe a balloon he tied up to look like a tuba. Or . . . just the look on some kid’s face who had a really nice party.

Shenaningans. (Sigh) Shenanigans the Clown. Prominent fixture in this here motel movie you’re about to—uh--enjoy.

Here . . . take some of his cards . . . you won’t be sorry. Once you see him you’ll wanna see him again.

(He passes out clown cards to whoever's sitting in his vicinity. Walks up front.)

Really he's an excellent performer but he's too much of an artist. Insists that clowning, la comedia he calls it, transcends language barriers. Repeat business, I tell him! No one's gonna rehire a clown only speaks grease ball. I'm sorry. No offense to you grease balls in the audience.

So I told Joe when he announced that the movie was gonna be showing here tonight . . . Joe you realize that movie's gonna get half the audience cheering and half the audience booing? Joe mulls it over a bit—he’s a muller, a brooder—then says to me, "It's a little film-we had no budget. Less than a thousand dollars. And half of that went to coffee and beer. So half an audience cheering... well, that's not half bad. I’ll take them odds."

So I says to him, I says, "Joe, you realize the half that's cheering will be cheering the half that's booing, don't you?"

Seriously folks, when I auditioned for this movie, I told Joe and the guys, “Forget the crucifixion, remember the Renaissance. There were no brooders then . . ." I got cast in an offscreen roll. They didn’t listen.

That was their first good move. What do I know about making movies? I know about managing clowns, entertainers, a little bankers and brokers Sunday afternoon . . . it’s a living. But these guys knew . . . they knew something. They knew the difference between a German lens and a Jap adaptor, if you catch my drift.

I was on set one day when my client, Shenanigans, was shooting his bit. He’s supposed to march into the hotel, led by his clown shoes, trailed by his clown suitcase. The light’s really disappearing fast, and the meter’s running on the room. They’ve got to get this shot or they might never make it back. At one point, Joe rushes out from behind his camera to straighten something on the set. Or, that’s normally what he would be doing. Not so this time. Instead, he grabs the clown’s suitcase, rips it open, pulls out a toy, and hands it off to a young girl who, at that precise moment, is walking through the set and into the impending evening. Lesson # 1 of the low budget film, the low budget life: Sometimes you make the myth, and sometimes the myth makes you.

And that’s the point! The film got made. Made! Which is more than I can say for most of the fantasies we carry around like delicate songbirds. (pauses and then fairly shouts) “Better a live bird in the jungle of the body than two stuffed birds on a library table!” That’s what my nanna used to say, god rest her soul.

I’m here to support these knuckleheads, to support all knuckleheads, because, in my heart, I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms . . . and for the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft roots . . . the bigger the unit you dial with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed.

(He takes his teeth out. No big deal.)

So I am against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, underdogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.

A motel film. With motel people. Made by a buncha bastards who knew enough to leave me out of the final cut.

Enjoy the show. And, as we say in showbusiness, watch that last step . . . it’s a doozy.

Sunday morning: pancakes, bacon (covered in maple
syrup and baked for 20 minutes), coffee ground fresh from

oily-dark beans, juice, an early Will
Oldham album, and family--that is, four

very different energies (5 if you count
Will, 6 if you count

neighbor noise, the way, maybe
John Cage would, 7 if you count

John Cage, his imperatives, 8 . . . 9). When we are
all the good things we might be, my loves,

I hear an ancient harmony that doesn't mean
anything but sound, perfect sound.

It lasts a short while, the shortest while,
and then we forget it and chase it, forget it.

The finest thing that could
be said about love
is that it's

paradoxical, and shamelessly so --

that we earn it
by losing it.

I think the stuff
must be as

irrepressible as the grass
I'll one day be
buried under.

This one gal brought me this far
and changed me, just so
this other could

find me and recognize me.
Tell me more about the honey,
I think it has plans for us.

further proof
when all that's needed
is a nod or a look, a small touch grace
like we used to be used to:

all the women I've known
are falling in love with babies,
my god they are falling so deeply in love
with babies.

Each morning, as my tea leaves steep,
and I pour a thick stream of honey
into the glass I cleaned by hand
and set out, the night before,
I think of the ways I have used the word love
poorly, foolishly, and even
well. Love. There it is
again.

my nose is the brain of her smell

and I'm trying to place it--

is it ten kinds of soft powder,

or is it bedsheets freshly fooled from a dryer?

"But in the end, I'd rather eat a strawberry, smell my daughter's hair, or read a book that, against all postmodern odds, conjures up the intense experience of human life." says Hemon

who, this paused moment,
plays the brain of my nose

And thinks: honeysuckle
honeysuckle
vanilla

Milosz - n. A state of mind with a cool drink in its hand

"[The] science of life depends on the gradual discovery of fundamental truths."

"I am always aware that what I want is impossible to achieve. I would need the ability to communicate my full amazement at 'being here' in an unattainable sentence which would simultaneously transmit the smell and texture of my skin, everything stored in my memory, and all I now assent to, dissent from."

"There are, however, times when somehow we divest ourselves of the shame and begin to speak openly about all the things we do not understand."

~from "My Intention"

#6 of Geoff Dyer's Rules:

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

Number 10 From Jonathan Franzen's Rules For Writing Fiction

You have to love before you can be relentless.

Been Sick

It's funny . . . since I started to contemplate sweetness, its many forms and expressions, I have been coming down with a head cold that could probably make a horse fall over and just lay in the grass. It's like an anti-sweetness, poisoning the world because, as Blake well knew, [the lack of] energy is eternal [non]delight. You can tell by now how much I am losing with each breath.

On Saturday, said cold took my voice. I have never been without it (since I found it). So off I went to do my rounds. I had no problem at the hardware store where any grunt will do. Buying fresh coffee beans was harder--I just pointed and pointed and then threw a half banana loaf on my tab as a kind of apology. After that, though, things got dicey. A haircut with a new barber . . . and no voice. I thought about drawing the guy a picture to show him what I wanted, but I can really only draw two kinds of haircuts: mullets and mohawks. (Hey, if we ever get really rich, let's buy a barbershop in some rough part of Kentucky and call it "Mullets and Mohawks." That idea alone, by the way, is like a giant middle finger thanking the hell out of this cold.) So I kind of waved my hair around and tried to sculpt it into something he could match in his cutting, but every effort at miming a haircut failed . . . so I threw up my hands and he tore through my hair like a wildfire.

And so, I'll have to owe you some sweetness. I assure you, I have pondered it late at night when, awakened by coughing, I wonder where I am. I'm on the couch so I won't wake my dear family, all sprawled out, arms and limbs akimbo, looking like a haircut described by a temporary mute, dreaming.

Sweetness Is The Saving Aberration

Not to roll around in penitential salt,
But often I see voices and so
......don’t hear them, rising above
The problem level we’re all down in.

So many of them, it seems, while well-intentioned

.........are nasty with solicitous
..virtue-mongering.
When did basking in the pleasure of superior knowledge

Ever win anyone into the good life?

One survives very distinct impressions of them.
That if one were to learn from them,

That would serve as a counterweight

For their own right appraisal. But
........most folks
Want something they can feel, and not just
Understand—and that is the faculty

They vanish to strengthen and meld with,

A kindness made rational, lit by
An uninitiated lack of self made perishable.

Clichés take root here. Render unto water

The finest kings and queens,
...so they might sleeve
Past the waste-reach of old judgment,

And down they go, solving the labyrinth.

Leaves are the natural invention of this.

I admire leaves because they all look alike
And assert no amount of courage
....doing so.
But even moreso, the geniuses of disposition
...who spy death
and resemble them.

Stone Cold Masterpieces

St. Vincent:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12985-actor/

Just listen to "Save Me From What I Want" or "Marrow".

_______________

Aesop Rock:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_(Aesop_Rock_album)

"Attention Span", "Skip Town", "Commencement at the Obedience Academy"

______________

Sleigh Bells:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&source=hp&q=%22sleigh+bells%22+crown+on+the+ground&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=DPN7S6a4A5TINczRxa0F&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBAQqwQwAA#

"Crown on the Ground"

Comedy as Corrective

The world thanks you.

He, your co-conspirator,

was deeply considering

a Photo 1 (honors) style

assault on the history

of the non-moving

image.

That, oh that's America...

That, oh that's America . . .

Occupation: Father

My son finds occupation
in almost nothing, in everything:
my soapy penitential toothpaste,
his mother's loosened hair
orts, containers, useless things;
watches as I pee
as at Victoria Falls,
once pushed his head between my knees
to risk some sort of baptism.

Before his birth I thought
I had room for no more love:
now when he (say) hurts himself
love, consideration, care
(copies from the originals)
as if burst inside me.

Undoggedly I interest myself
in his uninteresting concerns,
grow backward to him,
more than hoping to find
a forward interest for myself.

The pee of a frog is ice-cold. I was so surprised that I opened my hands and let it hop away. Thus I stood there, deeply moved, above me the wind passing through the treetops, and my hand cold from the pee of a frog.

We begin again. We never give up.

Fear the Bling

Themselves--"Rapping4Money"

all weekend, washing dishes and killing chores to these beats

google dat, Cloudy

Koestler

There's a new biography (only biography) out on the man.

Will you read it?

Carl Rogers' Seven Point Description of 'The Good Life'

1.A growing openness to experience – they move away from defensiveness and have no need for subception (a perceptual defense that involves unconsciously applying strategies to prevent a troubling stimulus from entering consciousness).

2.An increasingly existential lifestyle – living each moment fully – not distorting the moment to fit personality or self concept but allowing personality and self concept to emanate from the experience. This results in excitement, daring, adaptability, tolerance, spontaneity, and a lack of rigidity and suggests a foundation of trust. "To open one's spirit to what is going on now, and discover in that present process whatever structure it appears to have" (Rogers 1961)[9]

3.Increasing organismic trust – they trust their own judgment and their ability to choose behaviour that is appropriate for each moment. They do not rely on existing codes and social norms but trust that as they are open to experiences they will be able to trust their own sense of right and wrong.

4.Freedom of choice – not being shackled by the restrictions that influence an incongruent individual, they are able to make a wider range of choices more fluently. They believe that they play a role in determining their own behaviour and so feel responsible for their own behaviour.

5.Creativity – it follows that they will feel more free to be creative. They will also be more creative in the way they adapt to their own circumstances without feeling a need to conform.

6.Reliability and constructiveness – they can be trusted to act constructively. An individual who is open to all their needs will be able to maintain a balance between them. Even aggressive needs will be matched and balanced by intrinsic goodness in congruent individuals.

7.A rich full life – he describes the life of the fully functioning individual as rich, full and exciting and suggests that they experience joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely. Rogers' description of the good life:

“ This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. (Rogers 1961)[9]

By the way, what

was that photo of

you texted the other day.

Couldn't make it out...

Been

This is why we do.

Mist over everything

better, a soft absurd

odd are numbered

and nights. Dreams even

which means writing days

writing mornings again

which means writing days

and nights. Dreams even

odd are numbered

better, a soft absurd

mist over everything.

This is why we do.

I am changing your nickname to . . .

"Barbecue."

As you love your own body, so regard everyone as equal to your own body... Call it a bird, an insect, an animal or a man, call it by any name you please, one serves one's own Self in every one of them.

“Mix a powerful imagination with a logic in absurdum,” Dr. Karl Gierow of the Swedish Academy said, on the occasion of Beckett’s enNobelling in 1969—sans Sam, who hid out in Tunisia until the flap was over—“and the result will be either a paradox or an Irishman. If it is an Irishman, you will get the paradox into the bargain.”

"How did it leave us--the old, safe, slow way people used to know of learning how one another feels, and the privilege that went with it of shying away if it seemed best? People in love like me, I suppose, give away the short cuts to everybody's secrets."

A little bit a duchamp

http://runningfromcamera.blogspot.com/

Abra Josh Heschel

"The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time. Spritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time."

_The Sabbath_

Lars Gustafson:

A rabbi once told me that when God spoke to Moses in that bush, it wasn't in a thundering voice; it was in a very weak voice. You have to listen carefully for that voice. You have to be very sharp.