Archive for May, 2018

plus petites, plus incertaines, moins dangereuses: les autruches humaines

May 30, 2018

Gilberte appartenait, ou du moins appartint, pendant ces années-là, à la variété la plus répandue des autruches humaines, celles qui cachent leur tête dans l’espoir, non de ne pas être vues, ce qu’elles croient peu vraisemblable, mais de ne pas voir qu’on les voit, ce qui leur paraît déjà beaucoup et leur permet de s’en remettre à la chance pour le reste. Comme l’éloignement rend les choses plus petites, plus incertaines, moins dangereuses, Gilberte préférait ne pas être près des personnes au moment où celles-ci faisaient la découverte qu’elle était née Swann.” (Albertine Disparue, II, 210)

Scott Moncrieff: “Gilbert belonged, during these years at least, to the most widespread variety of the human ostrich, the kind which buries its head in the hope not of not being seen, which it considers hardly probable, but of not seeing that other people see it, which seems to it something to the good and enables it to leave the rest to chance. As distance makes things smaller, more uncertain, less dangerous, Gilberte preferred not to be near other people at the moment when they made the discovery that she was by birth a Swann.”

May 29, 2018

“L’embellie de l’économie française se confirme”….L’embellie

May 28, 2018

Shapes: a shape, a concrete poem, which tries to resemble in words a physical pile (of mail, of clothes, of desk clutter) but has hyperlinks, a la “cangue”, suggestive of a subconcious fears, desires, states…

May 27, 2018

“Talking of a penurious gentleman of our acquaintance, Johnson said, ‘Sir, he is narrow, not so much from avarice, as from impotence to spend his money. He cannot find in his heart to pour out a bottle of wine; but he would not much care if it should sour.'” (Boswell, Life of Johnson.)

le détroit

May 26, 2018

Nous avions dépassé le tropique du Capricorne, et le détroit de Magellan s’ouvrait à moins de sept cent milles dans le sud. (Verne) détroit / Detroit/ Detroit River . . . ‘

May 25, 2018

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s.ag.i
ingsi. sad
Maryopthami
rrida bashitru Mar
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The See’r The See’rThe See’rThe See’rThe See’r………
| B/
F e T….
lacia……
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May 24, 2018

three projects: (1) a person who constantly looks things up begins to grow sores and lumps on his head; (2) something factual: what are the limits of self-awareness? (Can I feel the blood in my left toe when I have an itch on my left forearm?) [holdd it forget that that could be one of the lumps]. … Pain in my knees, pain of the lumps, when the pain there is relieved, feels like a kind of “reaching up” of my upper calves […] hang on one second3 [interdextrousness of physical parts and of “consciousness” to be considered] conjoining of calves and thighs through inner nerves and pain

*

Joyce’s work (unlike Beckett’s) insulated against the moment of his writing them (to some extent also against the historical fact that he is writing them) it’s stated

May 23, 2018

“But Trumps statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant” [Brooks 5/15/17]

May 22, 2018

If the black bag is not a black cloud over the green blue stained waves of the steps, then the black bag is the black sail that holds the wind and moves me forwardAn Arm Outstretched

May 21, 2018

the hand sidles over the page as the pencil follows the hand’s arc

May 20, 2018

The Statue of Las Vegas: “the surface that isn’t level with itself”