Saturday, January 17, 2015

Saturday commute c: settling into something fresh


When one considers how keenly London,
like all large cities, resents physic-
al exercise, unless taken with some 
practical and immediately utilitarian
object in view, this young man's calm,
as he did this peculiar thing, was a-
mazing.. The whole thing affords a re-
markable object lesson of what a young
man can achieve with patience and per-
severance.



  And so it was, that again
  I found myself outside in
  plain view, so to speak,
  in taking on a new bit of
  reading in which I knew I
  should be unable to inter-
  est a soul. This is from
  the opening paragraphs of
  a text I opened last night,
  published a hundred years
  ago. London has grown more
  tolerant of public calis-
  thenics, if rather less of
  unutilitarian, much less
  escapist research in print.
  
  Yet I predict the same even-
  ing of the score, that comes
  with cashmere sweats, for a
  reader who's willing to com-
  mute his Saturday sentence
  to 100 refreshing reps.
   



Even the little children who infested
the [square] forbore to scoff, and the
customary cat rubbing itself against
the railings rubbed on without a glance.








































P.G. Wodehouse
Something Fresh
1915
Overlook Press, 2005©






Thursday, January 15, 2015

Acuity






    If I owe nothing else to 
    Richard Diebenkorn, I'm
    in no position to deny
    that he destroyed all in-
    terest in optical accura-
    cy, by showing what it is.

    One is grateful to discov-
    er the fault line of the
    senses - eventually - and
    every single mentor is re-
    called, beyond the shock.

    And to think, that house-
    hold chores are what are
    thought to inculcate the 
    moral sense. 









































Richard Diebenkorn
Horizon Ocean View
1959










Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Then there was the time I found Farrow & Ball



  Out of the corner of my eye
  at one of our newspaper sites
  today, I noticed a reference
  to a time the President stum-
  bled in upon his valet enter-
  taining someone in bed. I for-
  bore to read on. Who hasn't
  encountered the odd limb as-
  kew here and there, in the
  mildest of inquiries? This
  would be nothing, anyway, to
  that afternoon some years a-
  go, I wandered into a room-
  ful of painters, slathering

  What draws the edge, join-
  ing jamais and déjà vu?






































Richard Serra
Corner in teal
undated

Georges Seurat
Man on a parapet
1882







Sunday, January 11, 2015

Sunday in the park with testosterone






   This is beautiful country around here.
   What is it all, anyway?

   Oh, part of our place.






























George Cukor
  director
Donald Ogden Stewart
  screenplay
James Stewart '32
Katharine Hepburn
The Philadelphia Story
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1940©







La souplesse


In the time that it takes
to break in a pair of jeans,
it's virtually certain that
the sweater one planned for
it will portray its limits.
To see this as a betrayal of
the sweater, is paranoiac.
To see a natural fit as in-
decent, is dogmatic. I do
not think the French will
lose their genius for sup-
pleness, their discipline.












  If like so many others
  I had been a miscreant,
  I should be happy as
  they are!





























François Marie Arouet
  Voltaire
Zadig, ou la destinée
1747
Ben Ray Redman
  editor and translator
The Portable Voltaire
Viking Penguin, 1949©

Louis Gaillot