Dance Partners

The General in His Labyrinth by Gabreil Garcia Marquez translated by Edith Grossman supplies this delightful anecdote that relates a swipe at snobbery.

One was different from the rest: Jose Laurencio Silva was the son of a midwife from the town of El Tinaco, on Los Llanos, and a fisherman on the river. Through his father and his mother he was a dark-skinned member of the lower class of pardo half-breeds, but the General had married him to Felicia, another of his nieces. During his career he had risen from a sixteen-year-old volunteer in the liberating army to a field general at the age of fifty-eight, and he had suffered more than fifteen serious wounds and numerous minor ones, inflicted by a variety of weapons, in fifty-two battles in almost all the campaigns for independence. The only difficulty he encountered as a pardo was his rejection by a lady of the social aristocracy during a gala ball. The General then requested that they repeat the waltz, and he danced it with Silva himself.

And so for day 444
01.03.2008

Hope

It has travelled on a torn piece of yellow sticky whose glue is no longer effective. It was found tucked under a paper clip in a gathering of similar short sequences that might be suitable to incorporate into some longer poem. It is composed of an invented compound word followed on a separate line by the name of a game . . .

handtouch
hopscotch

. . . in a retroactive sense the game informs the nature of the touching: it's not an even smooth caress but more like a hop, skip and a jump: the exploratory prelude to a smooth glide over skin (or being swotted away).

I juxtapose here thoughts on "H". It has struck me that the fascination with the letter "H" in the poetry of bp Nichol may be connected to his use of the MacIntosh computer (his machine is now housed at Simon Fraser University) for on that machine in the classic simple text application Command+H triggers the voice synthesis that produces a reading of the text.

and touch
op scotch

:)

And so for day 443
29.02.2008

The Art of Dying

Somtow Sucharitkul. Starship & Haiku.

This isn't how it should be! she thought. Each death should be a moment of supreme individuality, a moment before the dew drop joins the ocean

Notwithstanding the odd notion of a dew drop directly wending its way to the ocean without either evaporating and falling as rain or seeping into groundwater and into a stream or river, I am touched by this character bemoaning the machinery of a post-apocalyptic amusement park that carries the masses to cookie-cutter suicides.


Come to think of it, condensation can accumulate on the hull of a vessel so there must be cases where dew joins the ocean. The novel can be read not so much as a condemnation of the dying as a rebuke to the witnesses. To observe truly is to practice a ritual which is not simply to repeat a form. To observe is to be open to the uniqueness of the moment. And yet when faced with quantities of unique moments what is left is the sameness of their passing. And yet again the passing happens in a host of unique ways however minute the uniqueness.

The character's "should be" can evolve into the reader's "necessarily is".


And so for day 442
28.02.2008

Courteous memory and friendship

One theme that pervades Anne McCaffrey's Killashandra is the occupational hazard of forgetfulness.

It is directly linked to politeness.

"[...] I can't help it if singers lose their memories . . . and every shred of common courtesy."
"I'll program eternal courtesy to you on my personal tape, Bajorn."
"I'd appreciate it. Only do it now, would you, Killashandra, before you forget?"

And directly to friendship...

Antonia shrugged. "One establishes a friendship by sharing events and opinions. They remember nothing and consequently have nothing to share. And less to talk about."

And thus indirectly are courtesy and friendship linked.

I am reminded of David K. Reynolds's description of Naikan therapy as a practice that "leads to a deep sense of gratitude for the concrete and specific ways in which we are supported by our world" (Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters: Japanese Psychotherapies, Morita and Naikan). Via Reynolds we come to understand ourselves as creatures of care.

The recognition of this [parental] care provides a template for viewing the specific ongoing care our surroundings (including other humans around us) provide in the present. This recognition, in turn, prompts us to evaluate the actual ways we return these favors and cause trouble to those who provide them. [...] Attempts to begin to repay our debts are beneficial, although we accumulate debts to the world faster than we can ever expect to repay them.

It is a type of accounting that is similar to that traced by the narrative arc in McCaffrey's novel. And if I credit myself for the juxtaposition, I am but vaguely aware of all the various circumstances that contributed to having the two books cross my awareness in a time and place that permit me to remember to make a record of their similarities.

And so for day 441
27.02.2008

UHF

A prolonged meditation on various psychic states is what marks the short story by Brian Vickers entitled "The Coded Sun Game" and published in Quark 3 edited by Samuel Delany and Marilyn Hacker. The piece reads in part like a cross between Burroughs and Joyce. For example:

0: Zero or Omega / the auto-wrecking lot has auto-wrecked itself — "It's high time" — A neon sky contains his blue jeans and broken teeth, but I laugh: my shirt has unique red symbols painted by the priestess, not the son — He who gets hurt — My walls shake with seismic withdrawal thunder, Ultra-Hysteric Freakuency [...]

What I find intriguing are the changes in pronoun that refocus the reader's distance from the speaker or narrator — one is never quite sure if the first person will hold, indeed, one attempts to ride the channel surfing anticipating the next shift.

And so for day 440
26.02.2008

Text Tiles

This poem began as a ghazal and morphed into this

Life Fabrics


the threadbare crotch
the bruized leather
wrench destiny


I have travelled too far
to write epic
even my homo heroes and their heroes
cannot tapestry fill


Not enough
scraps
shredded to rag pulp


I have bolts of cloth not yet turned
to tatters by moth boy eyes

I like spelling "bruise" with a "z" — it captures the hurt. I also like how the poem implies there is a long way to go to reach the necessary nakedness to undertake a great undertaking.

And so for day 439
25.02.2008

Audible Colour

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen in the Dave Brandstetter mystery series exhibits like the other novels in the series a knack for the characterization of space. The descriptions of setting are remarkable for how they concisely capture activities.

For instance this pet shop is vividly memorable because of a slight crossing of the avian and the botanical

Birds surrounded her in shiny cages. Canaries, parakeets, finches. Noisy flowers.

The turn of phrase would be merely a nice touch in passing if it were not for a subtle reprise about a page later:

They went into the shop again. Hard, bright surfaces under glaring fluorescents. Bouquets of loud plastic flowers. A bubbling green fish tank.

It is almost as if the textual reprise invites the reader to turn down the volume and heighten the colour.

And so for day 438
24.02.2008

Time Re-manipulated

Thud! by Terry Pratchett is a humourous romp which swings with verve into aphorisms that strike one as allusions to Proustian themes.

How the sense of smell serves memory:

She prowled onwards in a world of color; smells overlaid one another, drifting and persisting. The nose was also the only organ that can see backwards in time.

And the use of stimulants reminds one of moments in Proust's biography that describe the use of stimulants to improve breathing and resulting in insomnia:

Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self.

It is fun to find these nuggets embedded in an engaging story. Even if they are not labelled as Proustian, they make us pause and admire the finesse with which perception intercepts memory.

And so for day 437
23.02.2008

Re-entranced

As an afterwards to Alice A. Parker's remarks on translation to the effect that "Translation, like writing, opens up a quantum field of inquiry [...]" I place this passage from Li Tongxuan Entry into the Realm of Reality as translated by Thomas Cleary

Once Sudhana had entered the building, the door then reclosed. Opening means the disappearance of delusion and the appearance of knowledge. Reclosing means that in knowledge there is no inside or outside, no exiting or entering, no delusion or enlightenment. This means wholly returning to the source.

I quote this not to suggest that there exists a mystical guide for doing the work of translation. Rather I cite the passage as an antidote to the common misapprehension that translation is solely the carrying over of a meaning from on situation to another. Translation can be viewed as building another route to a source. It is a way back to an after before or a now.

The building is forever in a state of being built even as it crumbles into ruin. Entering into the building is like tracing a translation: being there on the way to being there.

And so for day 436
22.02.2008

Entranced

Alice A. Parker in the entry on Nicole Brossard in The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader's Companion to the Writers and their Works from Antiquity to the Present edited by Claude J. Summers writes

Translation, like writing, opens up a quantum field of inquiry into words, syntax, grammar, and the production of meaning.

I like to think of the translating text and the translated text as the givens in actuality and the translation as that which hovers between them in virtuality. It's a dimension accessible only through comparison, constant comparison, of target and source. To translate is to read bilingually.

It is reading that I associate with opening up a field. Writing for me is a task in the service of materializing a selection. Writing is a kind of closure. For some people writing is a form of reading. To translate, to write, to read. Different modalities of a play with form in the service of what matters? Not surprising when one considers that the opening of a field is connected to the setting of boundaries, a type of n-closure.

And so for day 435
21.02.2008