James Guida's MARBLES

MARBLES

Every day he renewed the belief that people understood
his full nature from the sight of his face alone.

~ ~ ~

I wake, rub my eyes, get out of bed, and head for the shower.
Then the struggle with matter.

~ ~ ~

“Cunning, an attribute of intelligence, is very often used
to compensate for a lack of real intelligence and
to defeat the greater intellectual powers of others.”
This extraordinary observation of Leopardi’s
might be complemented by noting that enthusiasm,
while not essential to intelligence,
is often a catalyst for it, through sheer
persistence and the lessons of self-awareness.

~ ~ ~

There are no edges or grooves on the man’s face,
nothing at all on which to hook a gaze.

~ ~ ~

There’s a ladder of social esteem
which we begin as non-entities and
end by actually winning people’s indifference.

~ ~ ~

When the news came—that from the Sublime,
Ridiculousness might be reachedby a single step
—an assembly was called, and it soon reached a decision.
A great wall was to be built in front of the Sublime.
Ahead of the wall, in turn, would be a sharp ditch.
A flag would mark the boundary.

~ ~ ~

A man sometimes seems annoyed when another man
sits down beside him on the train.
The thought seems to be: “I was saving that
for an unknown beautiful woman!”

~ ~ ~

The whole affair threatened to make adults of us all.

~ ~ ~

In binding and gagging a platitude, people sometimes
wrench the life out of the actual thing connected to it.
I can weary of remarking on the weather too, but
I wouldn’t for a second pretend that it’s boring in reality.

~ ~ ~

The man is at once a slug
and the salt that will set himself writhing.

~ ~ ~

She has that wonderful exasperation,
impervious to any fact or argument,
that comes purely from a love of being exasperated.

~ ~ ~

Awkwardness is collaborative.

~ ~ ~

Then the stewardess, adopting an almost poetic air,
made an announcement.
“We will now be turning off the lights”
—here she paused as if withholding some extremely
appetizing news from us—“standard practice
while flying through the hours of darkness.”

~ ~ ~

Nothing less interesting
than the conversation meant to be overheard.

~ ~ ~

There is a quiet willfulness some people have,
a kind of graceful readiness.
Their energy passes out of them like tissues from a box,
each act drawing a successor,
giving the impression of serene limitlessness.

~ ~ ~

Sending an email can be like letting go of an animal.

~ ~ ~

Often the book I like turns out to be a jack-in-the-box,
the head being a strange self-portrait of the author.

~ ~ ~

It’s a staple of skateboard videos to include a segment
devoted wholly to the blunders and accidents of the
riders. A strange combination of the comical and the
devastating, a slam section records the falls and terrible
persistence that preceded the flawless execution of tricks
in the rest of the video, the separate feats which,
accomplished, compiled, and edited, finally helped
to create the illusion of mastery in each rider.
Imagine an analogous procedure with regard to books
—not an early draft, but a compact anthology of the author’s
most spectacular lapses, all the intellectual cuts, scrapes,
and bruises. In the videos these mishaps can be as
compelling as the tricks themselves.

~ ~ ~

Rarely do I make the same mistake twice.
I make it a little differently each time.

~ ~ ~

Forgive me, it was the turn of phrase that made me do it.

______________________________________________________________

[Thanks to kind permission from the author to post “Marbles” on my blog. The above excerpt originally appeared in AGNI 67 (2008)]. [For the purposes of presentation here, I've tweaked the formatting by centering what was initially published in standard, flush-left margins.]

About the author: James Guida is an Australian currently living in Brooklyn. The musings here are excerpted from a longer collection of aphorisms, also called Marbles, that Turtle Point Press will release in the Fall.

_______________________________________________________________

If you want to see more of James Guida's writings, check out his essay re: Heinrich Heine's Travel Pictures in More Intelligent Life (Aug 15, 2008) where he takes a look at Heine's “four sketches based on trips taken between 1826 and 1831, to Germany’s Harz region, the Italian town of Lucca and the island of Nordeney in the North Sea.”

Guida's Review of James Wood’s How Fiction Works in The Kenyon Review is also well worth reading.

Am looking forward to seeing more from this author.

Positively loved your aphorisms, James!

Begone Ye

Begone ye
from her garden
with your heavy shoes
and careless step.
'Tis sacred ground
for baby sprouts
and resting place
for homeless cats.
Thus spake
the weathered carving,
protecteur de sa terre,
ever vigilant,
on the sill.

-- Annie Wyndham

[Photo taken by awyn, Summer 2008, Cap-de-la Madeleine, Quebec]

London

THE ARMCHAIR GLOBETROTTER

Tell me what it’s like, she said.
When you go to London, take some pictures,
write down your impressions,
let me see what you are seeing…

But of course, everyone does not see the same thing,
nor find a visit to a museum or the theatre
especially compelling,
or is interested in a city’s history.

Hello hello from London, I’m in a pub,
it’s raining, my wallet got stolen!
Am on my way by train to Paris,
sorry, no time to write, see you in 3 weeks,
Love, J.
P.S. Can you send money?

Must one actually have to go somewhere
to absorb the atmosphere of a place?
Can’t it be vicariously, by way of random photos,
or someone’s stories, that one can see the streets
of London, bridges of Prague, the markets of Bombay;
or snow-capped mountains, silent desert, balmy seashore;
ancestors' graveyard, teeming ghetto or screaming war zone?

And why just places? Why not time periods:
times past, times ongoing, times possible,
that allow immersion with life beyond
the confines of our paltry physical limitations;
through words and images that jar a memory
or unspoken wish, to open a floodgate
of curiosity and aspiration.

Being where you are doesn’t mean you can’t, sometimes,
be There, too, at the same time.

Hello, London.

-- Annie Wyndham




Thanks to Luis L. Tijerina of Burlington, Vermont for permission to post these three photos taken during his trip to London last year.
Luis has made a 2009 calendar of his London photos, of which there are about 10 copies left.

If you would like one, you can email him at andropov@verizon.net
The cost is $12.95 plus postage.

Thank you, Luis, for allowing me,
through your magnificent photographs, to visit a city I will probably never get to see.




[If you look carefully at the photo up on the right, you can see the photographer reflected in the storefront window.]

Thursday

Things that jumped out at me from the Internet this morning:

-- According to the documentary, Flow, 1.1 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and over 5 million people die annually from water-related illnesses.

-- The amount of grain it takes to fill an average gas tank with ethanol would be enough to feed a person for a year. [1]

-- Apropos Israel's bombardment of Gaza this week, and the four small children found next to their dead mothers in one of the bombed houses[2], I was recalling Gordon Gihuly's take on war and children, in A Measured Response.

-- The Minimalist is telling me I should throw out my packaged bread crumbs, dried parsley and basil (“They’re worthless!”).

-- And across the pond in London, it seems the atheists have been granted permission to put their messages on 800 British buses.

Meanwhile, outside on my street, the sky has dumped another half foot of snow. I counted four snowblowers already chugging away (and 5 shovelers!)in just my neighborhood by 8 AM.
Here's my mate out shoveling at 7 AM. The little twiggy thingies sticking out of the snowbank at the left (you will need a magnifying glass)is our baby tree, Maurice (age 3); he seems to come through okay every year after being buried in the snow for 5 months, and is over 5 feet tall now.

Ah, l'hiver. Ya gotta love it.

Woodhawk, transplanted

Piece of driftwood
found on the beach
at Lake Champlain,
in Burlington, Vermont, 1998.

[Photo taken by awyn in Trois-Rivieres, QC, at Woodhawk's new home]

Enemies of Wallace Stevens, Unite!

I stumbled upon a website this morning selling a coffee mug depicting a caricature of the poet Wallace Stevens, with his cane, walking (the other side of the cup contains a quotation from his poem, "Anecdote of the Jar"), whose links led me to one of the funniest critiques of a poet's writing that I've ever read, on the site of the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens.

Now, I happen to love the poetry of Wallace Stevens. But ... I read somewhere that he was not very nice to his wife, Elsie, who was, according to one biographer, "not his intellectual equal," and who "grew sullen, reserved and eccentric as their life together went on." In the following footnote, the reviewer chides this biographer for dwelling too much on the unhappiness of Wallace's wife. --> [1]

The Enemies of Wallace Stevens in Hartford openly declare that "There were more than a few people who knew Stevens and couldn't stand him." Hmmmm. And then there's this letter from a disgruntled employee, Evan Daugherty, at Hartford Insurance (Stevens was his boss), written in 1947, alledging that:

His attitude was always one of indifference...

Mr. Stevens has not been an easy man to work for. He has a great
contempt for his fellow man...

If one talks back, he runs the risk of his lasting dislike
and enmity.[2]

Well now, how about them apples? Perhaps Stevens saw poor Mr. Daugherty as a sniveling whiner, grumpy because he didn't get the raise he believed he deserved. Perhaps Mr. Daugherty DID deserve one and Stevens, for whatever reason, simply couldn't tolerate the man and therefore refused to recommend him. Who really knows.


This matter of loving a person's work, but disliking the writer (for whatever reason) is what today's blog entry is really all about, though. How many times have you read a poem or book that so resonated with you, so impressed you, so moved you, that you scrambled to find out everything there was to know about its author--only to discover that he/she was vain, egotistical, perhaps utterly repugnant, a fool or a monster?

It may have been the reason I've stopped reading biographies of people whose work I admire--and especially, their autobiographies. Because the disconnect is sometimes very large--between the magnificent creative product, and their sometimes ridiculous, often abysmal, erratic, foppish, or vindictive, self-destructive, personal behavior.

So poets are human, just like the rest of us; surprise, surprise. Except they have an extraordinary gift for words that takes us beyond the ordinary that opens up a world so incredible we forget where we are. They appear to understand exactly how to reach us. We feel a kinship with such writers. They've somehow connected to us. Or, I did with Wallace Stevens, at any rate, until the rumors about his Grand Indifference kept surfacing.

I have a particular aversion to people who wear indifference as their basic wardrobe through life. Indifference stuns. It can even maim. It brings out the worst in the objects of its dispersal.

So what do we do, then--resign ourselves to the "Love-the-Poem, Hate-the-Poet" conundrum? My resolution (initially) was to separate the two, play with the idea that one's words, one's artistic creations (and this applies to art as well as writing), one's "gift", as it were, comes from somewhere else--sort of like a lucky gene not everyone gets to inherit. But I'm leaning more toward the idea that it really emanates from some gigantic cosmic repository from which we can all subconsciously feed, some being called to do so more than others.

What we DO with what we find there is where the creative part comes in--the uniquely individual elements that manifest when a true connection is made. Call it whatever you want, it doesn't affect its Thereness. (Label away, if that makes it more comprehensible. I myself have problems always having to define the origins of something or paste a label on things that just "are".)

Anyway, in case you want to read this hilarious essay from a so-called member of this little Enemies of Wallace Stevens group, click here.

Some sample quotes:

I am begging you, fellow patriots, do not attend the Wallace Stevens birthday bash. Be warned all ye who enter there. If you go, you will come out a few hours later, talking about, as one Stevens scholar put it, "the vulgar personal life of the world that interferes with a clear and simple confrontation between imagination and reality."

His best poem, as enemies of Wallace Stevens know only too well, was "The Ultimate Poem is abstract." I won't bother quoting from it. You wouldn't understand. No one does. It's too, you know, abstract.

He knew the truth about himself. In his "Of the Surface of Things," he wrote: "In my room, the world is beyond my understanding." Yeah, we know. And your poetry is beyond our understanding.

Do you want to sound like that? Do you want to be responsible for tricking unsuspecting friends and family into actually trying to read a Wallace Stevens poem? I think not.

Ha ha ha. Thank you, though, Laurence Cohen (columnist and author of the above article), for showing me the absurdity of poet idolization (and conversely, the unnerving predilection for incessant, nitpicky, poet bashing, especially re: those whose poetry we simply don't understand or find the least bit interesting. Just don't read it, is all!).

I was going to say something cute and snarky here about coffee mugs with poets' images plastered on the front (I don't know that I could face staring at anybody's face looking at me from a mug as I sip my morning coffee), including pilgrimages where "fans" walk the exact same footpath once trod by a famous writer -- but then I remembered that I once swam in Walden Pond and later circled the reconstructed replica of Thoreau's little house in the woods, peering into the windows with fascination and awe; and last year made my poor son take me to Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, RI to find the grave of H. P. Lovecraft. So I'm afraid I'm inadvertently one of the very group I was about to parody. Ouch, ha ha.

I didn't know before that Hemingway once knocked Stevens kersplat down into a rain puddle.[3] What could have provoked such an action, I wonder.

The story is confirmed by Stevens's biographer Joan Richardson, who reports that Stevens returned home to his wife and daughter in Hartford that March with a still-puffy eye and broken hand, and that Stevens himself told versions of the story throughout his life ...

Hemingway: “I think he is really one of those mirror fighters who swells his muscles and practices lethal punches in the bathroom while he hates his betters.” ...

Stevens was in his late 50s when this occurred; Hemingway in his 30s.

[Hemingway's story is from a letter to Sara Murphy, printed in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961, ed. Carlos Baker.]

This is Wallace Stevens walking, swinging
his cane. -------------------------------------------------------->

He looks like a happy chap, not at all afflicted with the dreaded mantle of Indifference. Perhaps this is the image he would prefer, from his grave, that we remember—not his having been pushed into a puddle by Ernest Hemingway.

**********************

This has turned out to be an extraordinarily long posting today. My apologies.

But about the reports of Wallace Stevens's Indifference – he himself says … in the excerpt from his poem “Table Talk”, that: “One likes what one happens to like.” Maybe we should just leave it at that.

In sum, I think we should stop worshipping (or denigrating) poets for how they choose to live or behave, or how they happened to manage or screw up their lives, and concentrate more on their actual WORDS. (Two annoying little chirpies just whispered in my ear: "Actions speak louder than words!" ... followed by.... "Do as I SAY, not as I do!" ) ha ha.

I still tune into Wallace Stevens's words, and take his poems along on long bus trips, jammed in between the peanut butter sandwiches and Walkman and apple juice. It's his words, man. It's his WORDS.

TABLE TALK

Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.
And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Gray grass and green-gray sky?
What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:
Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.
It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.

-- Wallace Stevens.

Yes!

Stranger in My Bed

Tenderly he rocks me in his shell-shocked arms,
humming the melody of a song
whose words he no longer remembers.
The week he left for war, I wore his shirts around the house
as if that warm, familiar scent cemented something,
implied continuance.

They gave him a medal (two, actually) and sent him home,
broken, patched for mending--until the next call up.
There’s a different smell about him now—-it’s one of Fear,
echoed in the hardened eyes which glare out, uncomprehending,
as if waiting for someone to explain.

We share a pillow because I want to be there
when the nightmares start,
when his restless breathing turns into a shrieking
howl, like an animal being slaughtered.
Sometimes, at the sink, when doing dishes, I pull out a memory
to make everything as it was again.
Only it isn’t,
is it.

Tenderly I rock him, in my arms,
wondering how this came to be--
how going to war could make him disappear,
leaving me this stranger
in my bed.

--Annie Wyndham

[First published in Burlington Poetry Journal, Vol. I, 2008. Photo by awyn, taken in October, 2008, of a white birch tree at Moulin Seigneurial du Pointe-du-Lac, Quebec.]

Goodbye to 2008

[Photo by Awyn, taken in my back yard, January 5, 2005].

Goodbye, 2008.
Hello, 2009.

As I was traveling and out of the country during the holidays, I didn’t post anything. It was only after Christmas that I stumbled upon this Christmas poem and contacted the author to get permission to post it on my blog. (Scroll down about 6 paragraphs to view.)

William Michaelian's website contains a link (in the Collected Poems section) to one of his poems translated by Louise Kiffer-Sarian, whose blog lists about a dozen or so Armenian contes translated into French. It reminds me that I missed the Festival de Contes here in Trois-Rivieres last Fall. There is something so wonderful about a people's "stories", those short, traditional, well-loved recountings of who they are and what they think and feel and love and fear and laugh about.

Louise's blog also provided links to a site displaying the Armenian alphabet. Now what does that have to do with Christmas? (which has now passed, by the way). Well, simply that congenital curiosity causes one to stumble upon some very interesting things—-things that resonate, that fill in gaps in one's knowledge, that lead you to explore other worlds, that remind you of how much there still is to learn.

One snowy afternoon last week while down in Boston we drove past the Armenian Library and Museum in Watertown, which holds the largest and most diverse collection of Armenian cultural artifacts outside Armenia (they house over 20,000 artifacts, 5,000 coins, 3,000 textiles, and more than 27,000 books). I lived in Boston for over 20 years and Watertown is but a short bus ride from Harvard Square, yet I have never visited this place. But I was always intrigued by the Armenian alphabet, in words above a local bakery shop.

And now thanks to links via William and Louise, I found Omniglot. Now I can say "I don’t understand" in about 40 languages! (Greek; Russian; Japanese and even Klingon!)

But I digress. Plot for a short story: A person stops to google a particular piece of information and ends up, thirteen hours later, still at the computer, stiff as a board and wild-eyed, having traversed a multitude of links, resulting in copious note taking-- filling marginless pads of paper, the back of a calendar, the inside of a teabag wrapper--with endless bits of information, ideas, examples, that may or may not prove useful. It stays downloaded there, like a huge, unassembled repository, in the writer's brain, to draw upon, say, five years from now, as it emerges when you would least expect it: just that one word, that one compelling image, or connection will manifest, and prove of use … or bring unexpected remembrance and delight.

It’s not a conscious thing … nor even an obsession … it’s just the way some people are. And I don’t know how you get that way, but there it is.

Enough already! Here’s William Michaelian’s Christmas poem:

A Christmas Wish

What do I want for Christmas?
Nothing to buy, nothing to sell.
Family gatherings. Laughter. Music.
Multitudes of happy children, warm and fed.
An end to the current war, and to all wars.
Water in the well, food on the table.
Companionship for the lonely.
Solitude for those in search of calm.
Understanding for the prisoner.
Compassion for those who judge.
Strength for the belittled.
Comfort for the torn.

I want what everyone wants,
But believes can never happen.
Truth instead of lies.
Generosity instead of greed.
Knowledge instead of fear.
Modesty instead of arrogance.
An open heart, an open mind.
To follow Life where it leads,
With gratitude for hard times
And what they teach,
And, when good times come,
To pass them on for others to enjoy.

But if these things are too much to ask,
If I am silly or have somehow missed the point,
There is still one thing I would like to see.
A giant teddy bear for the wide-eyed world.

Here’s another (same poet)-- more apropos because it’s now January and not December:

What December Said to January

Let the record
show I did
not go willingly.

Nor am I impressed
by the ruse you
call “The First,”
which you use
to hide the fact
I passed this way.

I am offended,
not ended.

Do not forget,
I have frozen ponds
and cast blood-red berries
to the ground; I have
blotted out the sun.

You have crocuses,
I’ll grant you that;
but I have summoned them;
the rest you leave for
spring to solve.

My advice to you?

Take pride in what you do
and never follow suit;
your days are numbered;
be true to them.

________________________________________
Poems, Slightly Used, a growing collection of work first published in William Michaelian's blog, Recently Banned Literature, can be found here. (Reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.)
________________________________________

Note to self: I must remember to post more frequently to this blog because not doing so means having to catch up, rusulting in waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy too much material. No one wants to read that much in one sitting. (Not that anyone reads these postings anyway, but it’s a reminder to me to de-verbositify myself. )

New Year’s Resolution No. 4: Nix the verbosity.


ཧ་གོ་མ་སོང་ ["I don't understand" ... in Tibetan]

Where is Jestina Mukoko?

Mukoko was forcibly taken from her home in Norton, west of Harare, Zimbabwe earlier this month by 15 armed men in civilian clothes in umarked cars and has not been seen since.
[Photo taken by Peter Bischoff].

She had been collecting evidence on human rights violations in Zimbabwe, and has documented that from January to September, 2008, there have been:

463 kidnappings and abductions
202 murders
41 rapes
3,942 assaults .[1]

According to fellow campaigners, Mukoko had established a network of hundreds of monitors -- mostly church people, teachers and ordinary township dwellers -- who had provided handwritten testimonies of the campaigns of brutality carried out by Mugabe's government. The testimony could have been used in any future investigation of human rights abuses by the Mugabe regime. 'She had catalogued thousands of incidents of murder, assault, torture, arson, and who the perpetrators are. The work was so meticulous it could stand up in any court,' said one associate. [2]

This is the second serious kidnapping in over a month, after a suspected government hit squad seized 14 MDC activists – as well as the two year-old daughter of one of them – from the town of Banket 100 km north of Harare. Witnesses saw them being taken by police officers who have been identified. [3]

Human rights workers have gone into hiding across Zimbabwe. At least 20 political activists have disappeared in the last six weeks.

Friends and supporters fear that Jestina is dead. No one knows where she is. Meanwhile, a cholera epidemic ravages the country, leaving more than 500 dead.

'Tis the season of joy and peace, or so we hope, and thuggery, greed and genocide show no signs of abating. So in addition to cheery greetings of Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, we still feel compelled to ask:

Where did they take Jestina and what has become of her?

Why is Mynmar jailing bloggers for simply expressing an opinion?

When is Aung San Suu Kyi going to be given her freedom? A Nobel Peace Prize recipient in her thirteenth year under house arrest, for advocating democracy.

Why did the Chinese arrest and torture Jigme Guri, a Tibetan Buddhist monk from Labrang Monastery for talking to the foreign media?

To the brutes and thugs of the world who think you'll eventually win: You WON'T. For every 10 you kidnap, torture and kill, another 20 will emerge to take their place.

Peace on earth from my window in Quebec this freezing winter morning. My deepest wish for this holiday season: that the world will one day heal itself and true peace might actually, one day, happen.

I don't know who you are anymore.

The Fear in Lhasa

A hurried farewell to Lhasa,
Where the fear is in your breathing, in the beating of your heart,
In the silence when you want to speak but don’t,
In the catch in your throat....

countless police with their guns ...
plainclothesmen beyond counting ...

Dreadful footsteps reverberate all round,
but in daylight you won’t glimpse even their shadow;
They are like demons invisible by day, but the horror is worse,
it could drive you mad...

A few times I have passed them and the cold weapons in their hands...

All those cameras,
Taking it all in,
Swiveling from the outer world to peer inside your mind...

They’re watching us ...

A hurried farewell to Lhasa:
The fear in Lhasa breaks my heart. Got to write it down.

(The above are just fragments of a poem by Woeser. Complete poem, at Ragged Banner Press.)

This Tibetan writer, who lives in Beijing, risks being arrested for what she writes. Her work is banned in China because she's investigating the March 2008 uprising in Tibet, because she "articulates the repression that many Tibetans feel," because she flouts the official line that Tibetans are okay with Chinese rule. [1]

Woeser's poem Remembering a Battered Buddha:
-- Text
-- Audio [Recited in English by A. E. Clark].

You have the guns.

I have the pen.

--- Woeser.

Yes.

Burma Crisis Update

At least 14 democracy activists, including three Generation 88 student leaders, who participated in the 2007 protests were sentenced to 65-year prison terms.

A young blogger, who was responsible for getting the truth out to the world during the uprising, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

No one should go to prison for advocating democracy in their own country, no one should go to prison for practicing free speech on the Internet -- not even for one year, not even for one moment. The cruel sentences meted out to these brave dissidents prove that the Burmese thugocracy has no intention whatsoever of loosening its grip or changing its ways. [Excerpted from Words of Power blog].

Imagine: 20 years in prison just for writing on a blog. And 65 years for advocating democracy.
What a brutal regime.

(One day you'll be free, Suu Kyi.)

Day of Remembrance

For all those who have lost their lives
or limbs
or sanity
fighting in a war
For all those who have lost a loved one
fighting in a war

May you find peace.

-- awyn

Afghan writer wins the Prix Goncourt

France's top literary prize this year went to Atiq Rahimi, an immigrant from Afghanistan, for his first novel written in French, Syngue Sabour, which in Persian means "Stone of Patience." It's about a woman in a country resembling Afghanistan whose war-wounded husband lies in a coma, "as paralyzed as a stone."

The 150-page story is set in a country resembling Rahimi's native land and is narrated by the paralyzed combatant's wife. Sitting at his bedside, she talks, not knowing if he can hear or understand. Freed from normal constraints, she reveals long- buried secrets about their life together. The book was published by P.O.L. [1]

Sounds interesting. I wonder if it'll be available in the local bookstores this week.

Atiq Rahimi's published works:

* Syngué sabour (2008)
* Le Retour imaginaire (2005)
* Les mille maisons du rêve et de la terreur (2002)
* Terre et cendres (2000)

Congratulations, Obama!!!

Goodbye, Bush.

lines from Conrad's Secret Agent

-- It hung at a moderate elevation above Hyde Park Corner with an air of punctual and benign vigilance.

- The shoulders of Mr. Verloc, without actually moving, suggested a shrug.

-- His wit consisted in discovering droll connections between incongruous ideas.

-- A sad silence reigned for a time.

-- ... he said, with sinister familiarity.

-- He passed on, unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.

Ungridify me

"Life are hard" he said

(and parenthetical)

tell me what to do

I am disappearing.

Where is the core?
Maybe if I undo the edge
or alter the pattern ...
what have you left
but shadows.

Open the window.
Breathe.

-- Annie Wyndham

Aung San Suu Kyi on Hunger Strike

I heard this morning that Suu Kyi has not accepted her weekly delivery of food since August 15 and is rumored to be on a hunger strike. [1] She has spent 13 of the last 19 years in prison or under house arrest, and has not been seen in public since September, 2007.[2] And the military junta has just extended her detention for another year. [3]

Burma has one of the worst human rights records in the world: a country of only 20 million people with a thousand political prisoners, 500,000 political refugees, poets and journalists tortured for speaking out.[4]

I passed along this news to a friend and former colleague with whom I worked in Amnesty International some years ago, who was lamenting the fact that despite all our efforts advocating for human rights, such monstrosities still continue. "History has moved on into an even stranger world that I no longer feel relevant to," he said.

I know how he feels. I've been thinking the same thing lately. But what is it about this woman that makes it so insistent that the fight must go on? Imagine ... winning your country's election, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and your country's military junta is so afraid of what you represent that they lock you up and forbid you visitors, not even a dying husband wanting to see his wife one last time. This woman is a giant, and they know it. Even if they succeed in killing her, she will have won.

And where is the rest of the world, while this continues? Why aren't more speaking up for Aung San Suu Kyi??

I find that so bizarre--that an army of over 400,000 soldiers is so afraid of this one woman. It says volumes, both about them--and her.

Saturation Point

Information overkill, I am shortcircuiting today.

Everytime I turn on CNN, it's the Denver convention, 24/7, and will be for the rest of the week. Overkill with re-runs of the same footage, repeated over and over and over, as if there is no other news. (When was the last time they talked about what's going on in Iraq? I can't remember.)

So what's happening in Denver? Well, you can click here to see Amy Goodman of Democracy Now's video coverage of the Democratic National Convention. She gives some interesting interviews, some of which helped put things into perspective for me. Real, in-depth discussion, as opposed to soundbites and spin.

Maybe it's time to kill the television. So rare that anything worthwhile ever comes out of that box, and it's eating up time better spent elsewhere.

You Are Who I Say You Are

I was thinking this morning of my best friend in high school, now deceased, whose name was Mary Lou. We all went to a Catholic school and every time she wrote her name on a school assignment, the nun would cross out the middle name "Lou" and replace it with "Louise". "No, that's not correct," my friend would say. "It's Lou. My birth certificate says 'Lou', not 'Louise'." But still the nun insisted it had to be "Louise" (because "Lou" is not a saint's name). My friend's birth name was not acceptable; she was forced to use the one the nun had assigned to her.

Then there was a friend from college days, Vladimer, from Slovakia. He had been renamed "Val" by his co-workers, who couldn't, apparently, pronounce a "v" and an "l" together.

These are examples of the perhaps unconscious reactions by people to the concept of Otherness, i.e., you encounter something that is not familiar or that somehow bothers you; it makes you a bit uncomfortable. Your solution is to change the situation to make it more acceptable. So you rename the person or thing, and in doing so reveal to the person involved, as well as everyone else, a subconscious desire to cancel out the Otherness. Some will acquiesce to this, out of a desire to be accepted or assimilated, and adjust accordingly. Others, however, may feel that a portion of their self identity has been compromised, and in some cases, forever altered.

Vladimer didn't seem to mind becoming Val. But Mary Lou stubbornly fought, from her desk in the third grade, to not become a Mary Louise.

Dunno why these thoughts popped into my head this morning, perhaps it was the winding down of the Olympics and I'm reminded again that since the Chinese began occupying Tibet, the Tibetan language and culture are being systemically wiped out. You can apparently get arrested for possessing a picture of the Dalai Lama. (Shades of the pesky Borg: "You WILL assimilate!") Kind of like we did with the Native-American Indians, discouraging and downright forbidding them to speak in their own language--and renaming them. (The goal of Indian education from the 1880s through the 1920s was to assimilate Indian people into the melting pot of America by placing them in institutions where traditional ways could be replaced by those sanctioned by the government.)[1]

What is it about Otherness that threatens us so? Why do we feel we have to make others be just like us in order to feel completely comfortable with them? It happens all the time, and not just with foreigners. People of some religions cannot rest until they have converted people of another religion, or of no religion, to their particular way of thinking. How many wars have resulted as a result of this type of mindframe?

I read an interesting review recently, by Naz Rassool of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas's book Linguistic Genocide in Education--or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? (2000) "Skutnabb-Kangas draws on experiences of people in the USA to highlight the different pressures on some immigrants to change their names as a prerequisite of belonging to the dominant group within the country of adoption. Other contemporary examples include the widespread pressures for workers employed by Western transnational companies located within, for example, the Far East to adopt a Western (Christian) name."[2]

Check out Skutnabb-Kangas's 2002 essay entitled Language Policies and Education: The Role of Education in Destroying or Supporting the World's Linguistic Diversity.

Myriad thoughts on a lazy Sunday morning, over a cup of lukewarm Chinese flower tea.

An invitation

A dear friend and former teacher has invited me to join a religious/philosophy discussion group, which would be a very good way for me to improve my French. But I am going to decline, not because I don't need the practice--I do. But because while it purports to be a "discussion," what really usually happens is that it quickly could turn into a verbal sparring session: Someone presents a theory and cites a historical reference; someone else disagrees and challenges the validity of the 'argument', citing a different reference; and then a third person pipes in to demonstrate why his belief or opinion is more valid than that of the others'.

What does it matter, really, that Buddhism is not really a "religion" [break off here for a 15-minute discussion on what constitutes a religion], or that atheists don't believe in God, or that agnostics aren't jumping on any particular spiritual bandwagon (i.e., committing one way or another, belief-wise), or how a particular religion mutated or evolved, or what Jesus or Buddha would say about X, Y or Z? I know these things matter to some people, and they can discuss such subjects endlessly. I guess I am not one of them because it doesn't, in the scheme of things, seem all that important to me right now.

My experience of discussion groups involving religion or philosophy (or politics), has been largely that participants attempt to defend a particular belief or position to people who believe the exact opposite. There is a lot of talking, but very little actual listening, and it always seems to boil down to: "I believe X, and you believe Y," and the sole purpose of the "discussion", as it sometimes escalates into an eventual shouting match, is everyone is trying to convince everyone else that they are Right and the others are Wrong. The thing is, nobody will admit that to themselves.

For example, say a person makes a statement (about religion or philosophy or politics) and someone else replies with an alternate view. This often results in an immediate verbal attack back. If the discussion is by email, it a response might be delivered with exclamation points or words all in capital letters (indicating that someone has hit a nerve). One then responds with a counter comment or cites a reference; the other person then argues that that information is erroneous, irrelevant, or biased and offers his or her justification for the opposite view... punctuated with more exclamation points. And the war is on, ha ha. And while it's always good to gain more knowlege and be better informed, it rarely results in either party's really being all that receptive to seriously considering anything that would radically change an already deeply held belief.

To have a meaningful discussion, you first have to agree on the terms, define the language. If what X means by "God", for example, is different from what Y means by the word "God", then you're coming from different universes. Ditto for philosophical or political discussions.

To be fair, perhaps this group wouldn't turn out that way. But discussions of this sort seem to me an exercise mainly for scholars and fellow devotees. I'm flattered to have been invited. While it might be interesting to compare what Kant and Plato and Aquinas and Spinoza and Christ and Buddha all have to say on a particular subject, in the end I have really only my own personal experience to go by. I have spent years reading and thinking about philosophy and religion and don't especially enjoy having to justify whatever conclusions I've drawn, or engage in debate about why I feel that one particular belief system seems more reasonable to me than another. It's too personal a matter. Again, if I were a scholar, such lively academic conversation would be of much more interest. (It was,at one time, very much so, actually.) But you can only talk about it so much (unless it's your "field"). Everybody to his own path.

It occurs to me that the REAL reasons for my declining, though, are something much more basic: (1) I get tongue-tied when obliged to speak in front of a group; and (2) my French is not yet good enough to allow me to engage in any meaningful way in what probably would be a lively discussion with everybody all speaking rapidly, discussing books or writings or philosophers or scriptures with which I may not be familiar.

But what a nice thing to have been asked.

<>

No Free Press at the Beijing Olympics

The IOC issued firm statements that freedom of the press would be respected during the games. China has also insisted that, "there will be no restrictions on journalists in reporting on the Olympic Games."

But foreign journalists have issued reports about everything from restricted internet access to restricted movement. They also report of being photographed by police officers while they interview athletes. [1]

So much for freedom of the press. As for the audacity of anyone raising the issue of what's happening in Tibet--don't even THINK about it! A number of Chinese commented on this video saying, in effect, that such protests are "disrespectful" of the Chinese people and "Don't come to China if you aren't going to follow 'the rules.'"

Run that by me again, will you? "There will be no restrictions on journalists", China said. So China blocks or denies internet access and restricts journalists' movements. (And in the case of this British journalist, arrests them.)

I think that's what the Native American Indians used to call "speaking with a forked tongue."

The Cobalt Blue Tea Kettle

Last week I happened to pass by a thrift shop and saw inside, high up on a shelf, a marvelous little cobalt-blue tea kettle, on sale for a mere $8.00. It was flawless, it looked brand new. (I found a similar one on sale on the Internet for $60, and another at $119.) I had no cash on me at the time and I resolved, at soon as possible, to return and buy it. It matched other items in my blue kitchen. I had bowls and dishes the exact same color.

I began obsessing about that blue kettle. I HAD to have it, I just had to. I had never seen one like it before. I wanted it desperately. It seemed, well, urgent that I go get the money and come back and buy it.

It was this sudden sense of urgency that puzzles me.

On Thursday I had an appointment across the street from the shop and arrived early, for the express purpose of going and getting that blue tea kettle. But when I went inside, it was no longer on the shelf. Someone else had bought it. I was devastated. It had become such an obsession. Why? I was willing to spend grocery money on it. I already HAVE a tea kettle--a plain, boring, rather pedestrian aluminum one. So I didn't NEED another one. But it wheezes and sputters instead of whistles and it was a hand-me-down--why not replace it with something more functional and attractive? And that cobalt blue color!, the sleek, smooth design--everything about it was perfect. And I HAD to have it--that one and no other, right then, right there.

In retrospect, it puzzles me, the force of that sense of urgency about that little blue tea kettle. It got me thinking about how strong some compulsions and obsessions are and how much they rule us. Just a random rumination today on Attachment and Obsession, and particular objects we covet and ultimately don't get to have. How does one detach oneself from the urgent longings for certain material objects?

Controlling Our Food Supply

The World According to Monsanto, a documentary by Marie-Monique Robin.

For Tibet

Tonight.
At 9:00 PM.
One candle,
in my window,
with the others around the world,
in solidarity
with the Tibetans.

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.

-- Kahlil Gabran

Where are you, Cedrika?

It has been one year today that Cedrika Provencher disappeared.

She was last seen at the corner of Descheneaux and Chapais Street in Trois-Rivieres by two women who said that she was looking for a small dog for an unknown person.

Cedrika is 10 years old, 5 feet tall, with brown hair and brown eyes, weighing about 70 lbs.

If you have any information regarding Cedrika, or know of her whereabouts, please contact L'Enfant-Retour Quebec at 1-888-692-4673, or call the QPP at 1-800-659-4264.

Une messe spéciale pour Cedrika, suivie d'une marche à la chandelle, aura lieu ce soir à 20 heures au Sanctuaire Notre-Dame-du-Cap, à Trois-Rivières.

A Candle for Tibet

It's almost time for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. If you're going as a journalist there, you will have to be careful what you write. You may be instructed to leave your Blackberry at home. And above all, don't mention the "T" word, or you risk expulsion or arrest. Welcome to the Summer Olympics.

Some of us are going to light a candle for Tibet on August 7th, the day before the Olympic Games, because it nags at the collective conscience when a culture--this time, it's the Tibetan culture--is in the process of being systematically, and cruelly, swallowed up.

Container Gardening

This summer, the city made it obligatory for every household to use large identical, standard-size trash and recycle bins. What to do with our old blue recycle bins?

Well some people have gone and created small container gardens out of them. What a great idea!

Sustainable urban and suburban gardening is a growing trend. So is container gardening. My next-door neighbor rents an upstairs apartment and uses her tiny front porch to grow cucumbers and sunflowers, and her back porch to grow tomatoes. Many people grow herbs in pots in their windowsills or on their patio but a lot of them are also using containers to grow small vegetable crops.



My back yard is beginning to resemble a mini farm, requiring constant weeding, pruning and working the soil. I'd decided that next summer maybe I should downsize a bit and bring back what used to be a green lawn. I hate relinquishing space now allotted to all my veggie plants, though. And so when I saw that some of my neighbors, whose space is not even a fraction of the size of my backyard, are establishing mini-gardens in their old recycle bins, I realized I can turn parts of my yard back to green grass AND keep my current veggie production by simply using earth containers!

One nice thing about container gardening is that you can easily move your portable garden-in-a-bucket around to follow the sun. You can grow carrots, beans, onions, garlic, lettuces, tomatoes, peppers, radishes and tomatoes this way. (Click here for how to make a container garden--and to grow your own tomatoes indoors this winter, click here. Don't have a yard, porch, balcony or patio? How about the roof? Check out this urban farmer's rooftop garden in Chicago (photos, video, and informative hints).


This is their roof garden -->

You hear talk about peak oil. Today I heard a backyard farmer warn about peak nitrogen. He plants crimson clover to fix nitrogen in soil that has been depleted of nutrients.

Suppose the unthinkable happens--food production becomes unstable, crops are increasingly contaminated, and commercially available foodstuffs are frequently unsafe to eat? More and more people will turn to growing their own food, even if it's only in a recycle bucket. And the saving of seeds becomes paramount.

Imagine an emergency preparedness scenario in which seeds become the new currency, where if you hope to find future food that has not been genetically modified or contaminated, a stash of organic saved seed becomes more valuable than gold.

Seed as currency, though. That gives me an idea for a short story, about a group of survivors following a global emergency, in which they're forced to sustain life by adapting and creating, out of necessity, methods both bizarre and ingenious by which to sustain life. It would not be a preachy type piece of fiction; rather one that examines the various mindsets before and after, and how each of say, eight different people react.

After a week of rain (and last week, hail!! which pock-marked many of the tomatoes and sliced and whacked the leaves of my little tree, Maurice)--finally, the sun has come out again.

Woo hoo.

A Day at the Moulin

This afternoon we went for a short drive over to Pointe-du-Lac to walk around the grounds of the Moulin Seigneurial.

This is an historic flour mill built in 1790 that still operates today. Its original machines were powered by a waterwheel that still drives the mill stones.

A wonderful place to take a nice, peaceful stroll through the woods behind the mill or along the pond and enjoy the quiet. There's a little garden at the side of the mill, just bursting with cosmos (my favorite flower) and other colorful blossoms.

The address, if you want to visit the mill, is: 2930, rue Notre-Dame Ouest, Trois-Rivieres, QC, Canada G0X 1Z0 (Telephone 1-819-377-1396).

A short drive up the hill will take you to Boulangerie Guay (home of the famous baked beans). Or you can swing down to the little beach along Lac St-Pierre and watch the windsurfers, occasional barge drifting by, and of course, the ever-present, wonderful, swooping seagulls.

Right now at the Moulin, there's an interesting outdoor art exhibit by Celine Noury, titled "Imagin'aire". (You can read a review of this exhibit (en francais) here.) This exhibit ends September 30. We just happened upon it by accident. (That is, we just went there to walk around a bit in the woods and enjoy nature. What an unexpected, delightful surprise!)

My favorite wood sculpture was in a group called "Les Voyagers" (the Travelers). (See the last photo at the bottom.)

Can't get there in person? Click here to take a virtual tour.

The There and the Here

When you reside in one country
but your heart lives in another…
the Here becomes the new familiar.
What may have begun as reluctant acquiescence
turns to habit
as the Now slowly compartmentalizes
all former knowns.

Sometimes, lured by the pull of nostalgia,
you return to the There,
only to be met with a chill of alienation
wrought by time
and changes,
prompting you to question:
Where is my home?

You vacillate between the There
and the Here,
between the Then
and the Now,
struggling to hold a life remembered
against the blistering winds of change
that take you sometimes
where you may have never
intended
to go.

--Annie Wyndham

It's That Time Again

... to celebrate what's the best--and try to fix what's the worst--of America.

Bruce Springsteen, live at the Memorial Colliseum in LA, singing "This Land is Your Land."

Happy Birthday America.