Saturday, November 30, 2013

Saturday commute xcv: To the Ostsächsische Sparkasse, Diver






  Intrigued by this subtle
  modification of the Stan-
  ford University logotype
  I followed it, as far as
  Dresden, where I suppose
  Leni Riefenstahl had vis-
  ited before me. I marvel
  how a thrift institution
  could distract me such a
  distance from my chores;
  but then, it isn't every
  day I see any bank of so
  much spirit of adventure.

  I hasten to offer the u-
  sual disclaimers. I have
  not the slightest inter-
  ests in this unspeakably
  chic sparkasse, and must
  note for the record, you
  can't be sorrier than I.



  












Güntzplatz 5
01307 Dresden


Friday, November 29, 2013

Suppose it were Friday lxxviii: possibly one had to be there





     
   and as for distant
   and forbidding, on
   the contrary. But,
   you also were a
   little the worse,
   or the better, for
   wine, and there are
   rules about that.























James Stewart, P'32
The Philadelphia Story
Donald Ogden Stewart
  screenplay
George Cukor
  director
Warner Brothers, 1940©


Thursday, November 28, 2013

Less clomp, more romp





  Thorny and I awoke today
  to the frivolous bright-
  ness of a cheeky gluteal
  moon, splashing past the
  unguarded clerestory, of
  our exactly axial dwell-
  ing. There was no sense,
  in repressing his retort
  on this occasion; an Eng-
  lish Cocker's synapse is
  irreversible, on the wis-
  dom of going out to run.







          




I have never believed that it makes much sense, objecting to a pretty moon of youthful consti-tution, and if I were a superstitious man I would have to credit the stars with arranging, for our quiet countryside, a mer-rily urbane tuck in their resolute trajectory. But now of course, you were about to say, the sky is on its way to California.






















Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

We had our A7 chip






When all one can do is, read,
the rapport with texts resem-
bles a kind of cold war of mu-
tually assured destruction in
unstable equilibrium, the rap-
port never having been intend-
ed for polarity so nakedly un-
enriched. 

          I remember favoring
Sea Island cotton, but with a
tennis collar. It was then, I
happened to discover slavery,
from its genealogy in luxury.
(Who knew it were bilateral)?

Horace looming. Oak ostensib-
ly opaque, taking one by one.
Inside, within that grasp was
seaman, his balsam harvester.

These were guys who knew how

to end a book. So much easi-
er than slavery. I got email
from Apple, about their one-
day sale on luxury. Suppose,
as they say, it were Friday.
One could read Benito Cereno
in a glossy pleasure-screen.

Timing is everything. I met
this text by curricular co-
incidence, in the year that
Styron's Confessions of Nat
Turner came out. A ferment,
in the planet, percolating,
in the pulse, made personal
the feeling for a language,
rising. Timing, come again.

























Herman Melville
Billy Budd and
  The Piazza Tales
Doubleday & Company
Dolphin Books, 1961©





Monday, November 25, 2013

A fork at our feast






Before the "dark side" revision of modes in warmaking by the United States, Topic A in our commando training, now only too infamously unsecret, might have been lifted out of the Iliad.

What did we inculcate in ourselves, as policy, even before gastronomy?

Possibly, who writes the war, writes the training, is not so far from who wills the end, wills the means.



Who knows, the war to mean well might be no better than the usual kind, and possibly our soccer moms are right: better to destroy before any risk of danger. 

Such are the new American Studies, the droning undertones that reinscribe Ernest Hemingway's constant, bullying, murderous, slovenly crime of war as chaste precipitations of fastidious machines. 

Once, even survival psychology 
knew its place, not one generation distant from thanksgiving's table, 
in deference to its honour.






     
























Thibault Oberlin
Records of a U.S. Naval Officer, 1968
Santorini caldera
Tines


Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929©
Hemingway Library Edition
Scribner, 2012©