The Ordinary Openness to the Not Ordinary

Mary Pratt
obituary by Leah Sandals
[concluding paragraph]

"I think with my work, even things that are are ordinary are not ordinary," Ms. Pratt said in 2015. "Because I don't really believe that anything is ordinary — I think everything is complex and worthy of conjecture and worthy of a close look." She concluded: "I really believe that you could imagine the secrets of the universe by looking a pile of grapes."

Cluster. Luster.

And so for day 2292
23.03.2013

Ways of Observing

Julia Kristeva in the novel The Samurai has a character, Olga, describe in a commentary on the novel, Exodus, of another character, Sinteuil. I like how the simple tricolon is made to house an abundance.

Sinteuil saw a letter as a plastic image; a syllable as a symphony, and meaning as a torrent of sexual, political, and moral allusions.

Barbara Bray's translation is felicitous. A lot hangs on the simple verb to see.


And so for day 224
26.07.2007