Sunday, September 28, 2008
You have been upgraded to hurricane status
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080927/kyle_canada_080927/20080927?hub=CTVNewsAt11
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Out Of Month But In Season
A house in Helena, Arkansas, two gingkos straddle the yard, and where it clumps alive as the street is slow
the tug of a frontwalk leash, a porch, with glider, three humans harmonize wide disfiguring yawns.
Townfolk have been stopping through the afternoon to watch them. Mass incendiary haloes. Mellow supernovae that shock
eyes from a block's length distance. But as you get closer with visual charisma, the otherworldly
charm punishes a left hook: downwind updrafts of rancid, post-coital swelter.
The Comptons, the Spader children; Mrs. Freeling and her out-of-state Church friend Millie
are standing, in
compromised awe, each with a writerly hand lifted, to pinch their noses. One assumes they breathe through
the mouth. Sparkling, but sluggishly. In bodily attitudes of discomfort obstructing gratitude.
Only after arriving weeks before the schoolyear had we slowly, intuitively adjusted, like the chill of sea
outside a wetsuit, maybe or just not a person that was a certain unmeasurable swath of skin inside, plus the
predetermined webworks of nerves, the obscure heart, confiding without disclosure a brain's hidden, confused
potency, to the town, and its rhythms--that where there was a motionless nexus there was a Delta, Mississippi, and no amount of romanticism in roast of some Horrific, Fertile South
could counteract that.
Such was Arkansas. And those pedestrians, in solvent late light, what would you call them? Onlookers, voyeurs
gone public? Of course and then again, not. More an alien naturalism of cutout harmless darkness. Across the grass,
dry as arid. With exhalations as creative as sound. Arkansasans.
the tug of a frontwalk leash, a porch, with glider, three humans harmonize wide disfiguring yawns.
Townfolk have been stopping through the afternoon to watch them. Mass incendiary haloes. Mellow supernovae that shock
eyes from a block's length distance. But as you get closer with visual charisma, the otherworldly
charm punishes a left hook: downwind updrafts of rancid, post-coital swelter.
The Comptons, the Spader children; Mrs. Freeling and her out-of-state Church friend Millie
are standing, in
compromised awe, each with a writerly hand lifted, to pinch their noses. One assumes they breathe through
the mouth. Sparkling, but sluggishly. In bodily attitudes of discomfort obstructing gratitude.
Only after arriving weeks before the schoolyear had we slowly, intuitively adjusted, like the chill of sea
outside a wetsuit, maybe or just not a person that was a certain unmeasurable swath of skin inside, plus the
predetermined webworks of nerves, the obscure heart, confiding without disclosure a brain's hidden, confused
potency, to the town, and its rhythms--that where there was a motionless nexus there was a Delta, Mississippi, and no amount of romanticism in roast of some Horrific, Fertile South
could counteract that.
Such was Arkansas. And those pedestrians, in solvent late light, what would you call them? Onlookers, voyeurs
gone public? Of course and then again, not. More an alien naturalism of cutout harmless darkness. Across the grass,
dry as arid. With exhalations as creative as sound. Arkansasans.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Two Dancing in Laws
1.
"[We] are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideas to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all."
2.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
"[We] are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideas to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all."
2.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The History of Modernism, as Ignored By Augustus John; or: Saying Goodnight Through a Cellphone, To The Future and Other Such Loved Ones
When nearer to each imaginary fact, as it is, laid bare, sensitive and unconscious, the chances, meeting where
they came from, increase their edges, for the cut.
What I mean is, I'm remembering, but also, I'm mellow, floating in a careful grade of happy.
The man, I even read his essay. Free time, and I became of it--Augustus John. A painter. Of portraits. And
look at me, I am too, one, in the studio of an exposed ear: in there, I've fit Nicole's chore-voice as it shifts registers.
Bathwater slogs in the background. Nieem ambience. Earlier he'd shuffled the living room around
surprising teal pantyhose she'd worn in a row, two days. Through the receiver and digital pulse, down from
satellite mediation heaven, a boy yells spiderman over the body-shaped exhaustion of his mother. A portrait.
Just with a touch John could turn a woman into a wishbone. Not even with a hand or sometimes minus
cold joy of whatever he chose, to exclude from his art. Different but equally forever. I watch from a windowseat
and wonder. Victorianism. Then Vorticism. Which is to say--people hardly change, it's not their habit, even though
style stirs the color of what they stave.
Happiness? Who wouldn't rather have people? The portrait receives transmissions. When I'm so involved I'm
not aware, but emanate like smiles and sudden drops, the chewing of lips and nails. I return from myself as
them, if only for as long as they're there. It's called love. And if not, or more complicated--at least the rarest
of someone.
they came from, increase their edges, for the cut.
What I mean is, I'm remembering, but also, I'm mellow, floating in a careful grade of happy.
The man, I even read his essay. Free time, and I became of it--Augustus John. A painter. Of portraits. And
look at me, I am too, one, in the studio of an exposed ear: in there, I've fit Nicole's chore-voice as it shifts registers.
Bathwater slogs in the background. Nieem ambience. Earlier he'd shuffled the living room around
surprising teal pantyhose she'd worn in a row, two days. Through the receiver and digital pulse, down from
satellite mediation heaven, a boy yells spiderman over the body-shaped exhaustion of his mother. A portrait.
Just with a touch John could turn a woman into a wishbone. Not even with a hand or sometimes minus
cold joy of whatever he chose, to exclude from his art. Different but equally forever. I watch from a windowseat
and wonder. Victorianism. Then Vorticism. Which is to say--people hardly change, it's not their habit, even though
style stirs the color of what they stave.
Happiness? Who wouldn't rather have people? The portrait receives transmissions. When I'm so involved I'm
not aware, but emanate like smiles and sudden drops, the chewing of lips and nails. I return from myself as
them, if only for as long as they're there. It's called love. And if not, or more complicated--at least the rarest
of someone.
M
It's not as if truth were extractable from behavior, Jordan was explaining, but tents of humor regarded from afar
resemble goosebumps. What makes a faithful partner, anyway? If you have a man in your mind for longer
than a minute, you can be sure he'll stray. But mind you, there are different flavors. To grasp one in his
travels, from photon, dissolution, electrical spasms on the retinal screen; from optic nerve to laces crossed
and quavering in private three dimensions, so even with closed eyes he can see, can be--a saint
or mistake will, if he's with, have to be your honesty.
resemble goosebumps. What makes a faithful partner, anyway? If you have a man in your mind for longer
than a minute, you can be sure he'll stray. But mind you, there are different flavors. To grasp one in his
travels, from photon, dissolution, electrical spasms on the retinal screen; from optic nerve to laces crossed
and quavering in private three dimensions, so even with closed eyes he can see, can be--a saint
or mistake will, if he's with, have to be your honesty.
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