In which we declare an overnight recess

I'm sorry to do this

on a Saturday night.

 James, having forgotten 

 his clarinet again, 

 rather moots the point 

 of our Quintet practice 

 for this evening. Of

 course you are free to

 practice on your own.

 And, James. You might

 go over the sheet music

 when you get a chance.

    

Saturday commute lv: the interval at the matinée

 Two very lively and very real 
 young persons love each other 
 and are about to marry. But 
 the boy is struck by the sight 
 of a mysterious stranger, the  beautiful Coppélia, who sits 
 on a balcony. Naturally, his 
 first girl is vexed and hurt. 
 That night the mysterious 
 Coppélia turns out to be only 
 a mechanical doll.













      The flesh-and-blood girl 
      breaks the doll, she harries 
      the old dollmaker, she even 
      rescues the boy, whom the 
      dollmaker has drugged with 
      a sinister intent.

The boy acknowledges his fault, 
and the next day there is a 
celebration at which the local 
duke pays for everything, the 
boys and girls all get married 
and get money, and everybody 
watches dancing and dances 
happily, too.

Critics have claimed that the celebration scene added nothing and could as well have been omitted. It cannot, because you haven't until then seen the boy and girl dance together and exhibit all their virtuosity, their combined dance power at its highest pitch. When you have seen their motions and physical proportions beautifully balanced, when you see them harmoniously overcoming impossible difficulties, you have seen a convincing image of what would make two young lovers happy in marriage.

      

    As you watch the dance you notice 

    how the more perturbing the emotion 

    becomes, the purer becomes the move-

    ment of dancing and the more open 

    and free the dancer's bearing. You 

    see the magic of the heart's sincer-

    ity, its most urgent necessity, trans-

    form a village girl into a grand and 

    gracious ballerina. And what a solace 

    the transformation is!

    

   

Edwin Denby
Coppélia tells the facts of life
  New York Herald Tribune
  September 24, 1944
Dance Writings & Poetry
Robert Cornfield, editor
Yale University Press, 1998©

Suppose it were Friday lv: then how shall you measure all things?

All those armchair hours with

Liebling and Root, Fisher and

David, Olney and Lulu, Keller

and Boulud .. until, as is al-

ways the case, your last sweet-

heart supposes a Viking is all

you need, to bring you out -

and surprises you, Christmas

morning, with your very own

equivalent of a Bentley Con-

tinental for the kitchen. Yet,

still, all you've really done,

is boil water in your Alessi

kettle, missing now its whist-
ling fuchsia wings in flight.

And so, Gérard, the grand reck-

oning is not about the morning's

reconnoitre of the strand, it's

about that gratin, that daube 

from A Room with a View, which 

fell to the cutting room floor 

because cinema couldn't hunger
for more than one thing at a
time. Even former sweethearts

can be right: there is tragedy
in abandoning hunger, and more
in being satisfied.

The coquilles St Jacques, from

your college days in Witherspoon

Street, are simply not done any-

more, and you've been wondering,

why not. Investigate. Invente,

découvre .. enivrez-vous, Le Cor-

busier calls, from your litho of

his Modulor. Find, revise, reform,

re-father, reconfigure, reclaim. 
The system of alimentation is al-

ready perfection, incarnate. But 
it does seek birth. Doesn't it, 
Gérard?

"Is there any coffee here?"

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret,
Le Corbusier
Lithograph, ca 1950

The AKC operates on a principle called, the breed standard

It has to.

             

 You'd think it would be 

 a virtue of Fashion Week, 

 to celebrate the good news: 

 we don't.

 Maybe 

 some day.

i, ii  Mathias Lauridsen

iii    Jeremy Young

vi    Chad White
vii   thanks to Derek

The cakes that were served

All across Europe a partial eclipse

is checking in: Unsudden surprise

and its sister, weary impatience,

mark the flow once the sluices

have been opened a little. Then it just goes,

an impromptu horizon clipped to it.

                                       Therefore,

I ask what is special about this helix, if

indeed anything is. Can you see it, 

its difference, distinguish among halftones,

fugitive tints, measure the rising level

even as it suffocates us? Time was

it all seemed like a party, even work

before the workers were expelled for the day.

Dreams were positive heaven then, not just

framed pictures for the sleeper's instruction

and, yes, delight.

                  So if the mercury plummets

again, as it's supposed to tonight, what shred

of blanket will you deem sufficient for the occasion,

dread or ecstasy, or just wanting to be covered?

A low-grade fever installs itself.

These were dancers once, with faces

and senses of humor. Which of course wasn't

too much to ask, and so she came through smiling,

good-natured to the end. The cakes that were served - 

is there a record of those? Or leaves collected

in the hollow of a stump, something one

would wish to have included in the reckoning

even if it was never going to be reckoned,

or small sail breasting the apparent tide,

on and out of the forever harbor, just this once?

John Ashbery
  A Worldly Country
  Autumn Tea Leaves
Harper Collins, 2007




iii  Photo Laurent
        Russian sailor below decks, San Francisco
        Leica M-6, 50mm Summicron, 1/30 sec.

Permission to dream

     a valentine

Thrashing out our tempest

  

This posting is encouraged

by the warmth of two sweet

people in France and is

dedicated with great love

to the memory of two friends 

from the stage with whom I 

stayed up late in this play.

All four deserve better.

The late Tony Tanner reminds 

us, this play was inspired by 

writings of the first Dickie

Hakluyt, Diverse Voyages 

touching the Discovery of

America, 1582. Plus que ça

change ..

I have known more men 

who were young when 

they were trained by 

business or commerce 

schools in batches, 

as meat to be browned 

for a stew, than I have 

known men who struggled 

with Prospero, though

they were young, as 

they lay dying.

Those liberal Arts being all my study,

The government I cast upon my brother

And to my state grew stranger,

being transported

And rapt in secret studies.

I never thought to buy a ticket 

to Mitt Romney's education. I 

put my study where my heart was, 

and never did look back. But now 

I'm offered a stew much reduced 

in its ingredients' concentration 

by a simmering I disdained, and 

I'm not the first or only one.

I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

To closeness and the bettering of my mind

With that which, but by being so retired,

O'erprized all popular rate, in my false brother

Awakened an evil nature, and my trust,

Like a good parent, did beget of him

A falsehood in its contrary as great As my trust was ..

.. He .. like one

Who having unto truth, by telling of it, 

Made such a sinner of his memory

To credit his own lie, he did believe

He was indeed the duke, out o' the substitution

And executing the outward face of royalty

With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing - 

Dost thou hear?

To have no screen between this part he played

And him he played it for, he needs will be

Absolute Milan.

     We all were sea-swallowed, though some cast again,

     And, by that destiny, to perform an act

     Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come,

     In yours and my discharge.

  

William Shakespeare

The Tempest

  I, ii, 74-77; 89-96;

          97-109, excerpt

  II, i, 246-249

The Arden Shakespeare

Frank Kermode, editor

op. cit.

Tony Tanner

Prefaces to Shakespeare

op. cit.

Anxiety, taste, discretion, and the fugitive caesura in blogging

More or less, everything

that can be done to dis-

sipate the mass and gloss

of the invasive cistern

seems to have been ex-

ecuted with poise. I'm

not so sure that the rem-

edy hasn't more than un-

derscored the anxiety to

achieve that end. I won-

der how impractical it

would have been to en-

fold the chilly intruder

in rustic materials, and

restore the fertile mig-

ration of shadows to an

alcove, respected.

..

For the beauty of the al-

cove is not the work of

some clever device ..

though we know perfectly

well it is mere shadow,

we are overcome with the

feeling that in this

small corner of the at-

mosphere there reigns

complete and utter si-

lence, that here in the

darkness immutable tran-

quillity holds sway.

I wish a text, even a

scrolling one such as a

blog, could exploit the

gainful amenities of jap-

onesque architecture, as

nourishing hiatuses. Beth

Nelson has gone the fur-

thest, in my observation,

in exploiting picture ed-

iting and layout to this

positive advantage, and

this spiritual refuge of

composition is profound

in photographers cited

in Context. 

The communication of the

peace of adding nothing

is past remarking in music;

anyone who revisited Va,

pensiero here the other

day, will have seen that.

In an epistolary blog, the

challenge is considerable

to be able to say, almost

if not completely unliter-

ally, draw peace from this

space. Adjustments acquire

an aura of mood swings, in-

congruous pleadings; a sus-

picious advertisement.

I agree with Tanizaki and

with Terestchenko, who has

written of this as well as

exhibiting it in his work,

that the well-framed mys-

tery is no mere void. It

is an irony of the argu-

mentative mode, that this

can be achieved one of two

ways - discoursing to the

adoptive, or adapting the

essay to the sonata form,

so that in place of the

caesura's expressive si-

lence there can have been 

a beginning, middle, and 

end of some formal resolu- 

tion. But that remains, 

audible, space-occupying: 

a restaurant.  

That compromise, the promise

of the essay form, is still the

most rational where the writer

and the reader may be crossing

paths, but not necessarily, pur-

poses. A visitor is likelier in-

terested in the stimulation of

light; his host may be trying

to turn away from the fray where

it emerges. This is why I do

respect argument, not to turn

away from light or implore its

remission, but to savour its 

lenity in the end.

Tanizaki Junichiro

In praise of shadows

Thomas J. Harper and

Edward G. Seidensticker

  translation

Leete's Island Books, 1977©