Evelyn Waugh said

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."

un autre paragraphe (Sunday's)

excerpt:
"The bus was a large space of white and orange and neat dark rows of seats in two lines. Our hair--light, dark, curly, clean--stood out against the rest and our arms were stretched out careless on the seatbacks. The windows were bright striated streaks of light. On the way back home, we fell asleep in ones or twos, leaning on ripped faux-leather seats, and warm shoulders, and cold windowpanes."

I think I write fiction because it's so much easier to make things up than attempt to recreate such an intricate situation of reality! Memory, distance, and/or time make things infinitely easier--some kind of separation allows for a blurriness that then must be filled by an action, description, or character that is a compromise from truth. Maybe it's all about compromise--that's why trying to write "truth" is tough, because I can't stand the thought of not conveying everything perfectly to the readers. Sheesh.

Fifth Paragraph

Yesterday's paragraph was remotely connected to an unfinished story, so I didn't bother posting.
The first sentence of today's was written around 6:30 a.m., on the drive to the Greeley West Forensics tournament. I was (of course) napping, and woke up really quickly and looked past my friend's profile to see this weird vision:

"Far in the distance were the white lights of a parking lot, stretched over a flat gray expanse like a net of glowworms. Through the haze of a sleepy inertia, we saw the land lying in the cool metal window frame, moving by with the slow stretch of arms in the morning."

I dunno, blame it on the myopia.
If you've read Robert Pirsig's monumental rant (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) then you've heard his opinions about landscape seen through window frames (contrasted, of course, with the ultimate superiority of motorcyle-viewing). I'm pretty sure he and I disagree. Any good road trip stories?

Happy birthday to Anton P. Chekhov!

Speaking of femininity . . .

Ah, for those who are still here after the title--
Ibanez and I were talking about Neruda, and Garcia Marquez, and Latin American writing in general and how strongly it is able to reflect a more feminine side of life/living/truth. Here's something from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first volume of autobiography (called Living to Tell the Tale, translated by the inimitable Edith Grossman):

"I believe that the essence of my nature and way of thinking I owe in reality to the women in the family and to the many in our service who ministered to my childhood. They had strong characters and tender hearts, and they treated me with the naturalness of the Earthly Paradise." [then skipping a few paragraphs, in which he speaks of, among other instances, how when he was about six he saw one of the maids giving birth in the laundering room, with the aid of all the other maids] "In any case, I think my intimacy with the maids could be the origin of a thread of secret communication that I believe I have with women and that throughout my life has allowed me to feel more comfortable and sure with them than with men. It may also be the source of my convictions that they are the ones who maintain the world while we men throw it into disarray with our historic brutality."

Reading this made me want to reread everything of his that I've read! I have been thinking, recently, that I like to get to read books and authors the same way it is interesting to get to know people--everyone has something we can empathize with, and everyone has at least one thing we can find interesting. It doesn't matter what's absolutely true, really--if I read Garcia Marquez's books differently now, is that so wrong? This isn't explaining it well. In any case, I'd like your thoughts.

Paragrafo Numero Tre

An excerpt:
". . . unroll the strip of teabags like a roll of candy buttons. I would rip each open and pour the specks of scent into my hands, lift them to my face and rub them between my fingers, so that for weeks the wrinkles of my knuckles would smell of peppermint and chamomile, and the deep lines of life and death and fortune in my palms would be stained green . . ."

Le paragraphe numero deux

"The discussion of age must always result in the tossing of hands and an exclamation of impossibility. For in a discussion between two, the advantages and disadvantages are evenly divided: half has lived further into their thread of years, while the other half has not yet been tainted by compromise or fatigue. Half have seen, and felt, and believed and disbelieved more than the other, while the other sees and feels and believes everything for the first time, all afresh. Half are filled with history and stand high on their accumulated years; the other is unweighted by time, still filling themselves with truth and ideas. How are we then to frame our speaking, when each half moves within their own strong lens and thier own strong netting of truth? We can't, perhaps."

I have no ideas on this question--and seeing as I'm currently in that state of overdoing the cutting of the cord to the family, I'd like to know what you think. (flatter me and ignore the grammar mistakes)

Paragraph Numero Uno

Today's paragraph was a recreation of one of my favorite Iowa-exercises--writing as badly as you possibly can, to break down any fear you have of writing badly. Never underestimate the power of pulp. Here's an excerpt:

Tafoyla threw back her long, silky, red, ravishing hair and cried out, "Never! You shall never have my father's diamond mines, although you have most cruelly killed my former lover Troxel with your vicious knife-fighting skills, I will never love you!"

We have Avana to thank for the names. You have to imagine 'Tafoyla' with a southern Jersey accent to make it even funnier. Maybe tomorrow I'll write something, I dunno, good.

Postscript: Happy Birthday to Virginia Woolf!

Micawber's Quote for the Day

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider." - Francis Bacon, Essays

11 June--Museo di San Marco

A Dominican monastery, whose 42 cells, cloister, and chapel hall were frescoed (??) by Fra Angelico and his pals. The ceilings are very ornate. Walking up the steps to the second floor, you are immediately greeted by The Annunciation: Mary demure but as if she expected it, the angel with bright, bright wings. The two rooms on the right have paintings made like windows. In the first, Christ with a Crusader flag (red cross on white) charging into a cave, waling in on the door that has fallen to crush something gray-brown and insect-ish. A group of halo’d people are crowding towards him from a tunnel, and on the left, two more Terrible Things cower from the light. (Cross-discipline reference to Plato, anyone?)
The rest of the rooms have scenes of the crucifixion—Mary just looks like she is having stomach pains. She is always very old when he is crucified, but as soon as he is in Heaven and blessing people, she becomes young again. And at the crucifixion she’s always being splattered with blood.
How nice—they’ve included names on the haloes so as to avoid confusion. Are the angels’ wings tagged, do you think?

--stieglitz (o'keefe!)

--caravaggio

attack on academia!

In honor of the first volley launched in my all-out assault on the academic world (aimed precisely to a small New Jersey town) I would like to share some particularly triumphant images.
First, Giuditta Che Taglia la Testa a Oloferne, by Caravaggio. The title might be translated Judith Slashing the Head of Holofernes. (Taglia is the third person present indicative of tagliare, to slash. Testa means head, and in French the word is tete, pronounced "tet.")
Second, Portrait of Georgia O'Keefe, taken in 1920 by A. Stieglitz, photographer hero. (Did you know she was actually very short? Stieglitz, though, he photographed her like an Amazon, a queen. Cross-reference: Irving Penn's portraits.)

Edward Atkinson Hornel

At first glance, this painting seemed to me very straightforward and easy, something to hang on the wall of a library. But as I looked more closely, it took on a somewhat sinister feel--though perhaps sinister is not the right word. The commentary on the Tate site pointed out that the girls seem almost to blend into the landscape. To me they are porcelain dolls, a more innocent and round-faced "belle dame sans merci." (see Keats) Their dresses seem crafted of the same textures as the swans' bodies, and their bodies seem as natural to the ground as the leaves they are surrounded by. In short, I like it very much. The title is Autumn; happy October.

11 June--How to Travel: a Theoretical Linguistic Thesis

This “traveling”—another word that requires careful thinking—could get difficult. Tiring. I think, before, I thought of traveling as a type of collecting, or a collection of states (i.e. states of being). It was the whole thing I wanted, not just to have seen one thing or been to place. I just wanted to exist in a different space with people who thought in different patterns from those I know everyday.
What I should do is think of traveling (voyager: je voyage, nous voyagons) as a state of being, rather than an action. A gerund, not a verb, but not the usual gerund of “I love traveling” and not “I am traveling” unless the “am” is translated in Italian as sono or in French as suis, as opposed to being included in the present tense for “travel.” What we need is a word that explains a complete immersion in “the being in the present”/ “the current”/”the now”/”the here”/"what is.” And then there would be no trouble about not being in reality, because you are just being. And then “traveling”—the trains, the walking, the going, the seeing—would become clear as something whole, not an action of transit. What happens is that people do not see this as a whole until it is all behind them in the slipstream, because then they can see and gather up both ends. But with this apparently ineffable conjugation, we might appreciate it the first and actual time as well.

Samuel Palmer's pretty cool too

Another discovery from the Tate's "Carousel." This man is Samuel Palmer, 1805-1881. I saw this work in particular, called A Hilly Scene, and it reminded me so much of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I thought this was odd, considering the difference in time and place of the two men. Click here to see more about the man, as well as the interesting techniques he used.

11 June--Lucca morning

Lucca 8:54
We got up early to walk the ramparts, tall and wide walls that Napoleon’s widow turned into gardens—exquisitely grown grass, sky-stretching trees with papery bark. The whole way around is lined with trees.
The streets here change names every time they bend even a little, which is about every fifteen feet. The names are “Via Degli Angeli” and “Via Michele Rosa” and “Fiardino” and “Baptista” and the names that you read about in books with cracked spines. There are many churches. Everywhere we go we see the sign Gelateria—really, how relaxing and completely carefree to walk down the street with gelato; it reminds me of Thurber’s observations of girls and ice cream cones.
We see Mini Coopers everywhere as well; I still like the older ones best, and there were many of them in Milan. We see Puma shoes; black bags that have printed in large letters “PINK BAG;” bicycles that are ancient lady frames with baskets; red flowers in window boxes; and the beloved form of Vespas in all the colors of the cream rainbow.
The things that are most ubiquitous, however, are green shutters. Every building that has windows must have shutters, and if it has shutters they must be green. I think of what would happen if a person moved here and painted their shutters red, or bright blue. “Crazy newcomer,” locals would mutter. The house would become a landmark, something used to give driving directions: “. . . and turn right next to that garish foreigner’s house . . .” People might throw eggs at it on holidays (or whatever the Italian version is of throwing eggs) and when the person finally died I’m sure everyone would be sad, and the next person who moved in and tried to paint the shutters a proper green would be prohibited from doing so. Walking the ramparts this morning, I felt we had been given the same ability as Mary Poppins and Bert, and were now stepping into painted scenes and strolling, trying not to disrupt the rest of it. I remind myself sometimes to stop and touch the walls (when they are sort of clean, at least), or the treebark, or the doors. Things don’t seem real because I have never really been to a place like this. I have heard people tell stories, so it seems real to talk in my about seeing it. I have seen pictures of it, so it seems real to hold my camera to my face and press the shutter. I have seen cheesy smudgy paintings of it in motels and bathrooms, so it is real to sketch winding roads and the pillars of buildings. But being is not real. Remembering Japan is real, so I know when I remember Lucca it will be real and comfortable but being there was/is not. [on the train to Pisa] Even now as Lucca recedes, slipping away behind my back, it turns into something different. Why is it that the slipstream (Time) only allows you to finally appreciate in retrospect? Maybe this is why people who travel are so exhausted. I feel traveling the same way I feel when I dream—it’s exhausting, because you’re caught in a perpetual state of unreality.

Gwen John, my newest hero

Today I was browsing the Tate Online Collection with their "Carousel" and I found Gwen John. Born in 1876, she was the sister of the famouser (ha!) painter Augustus John and became Rodin's mistress as well as a friend of Rilke. She never received the recognition her brother had, and was always struggling despite her obvious talent. She died in 1939. Most of her paintings at the Tate are portraits--very quiet, careful portrayals of women. Click here to see all of the ones at Tate. The one shown here is Chloe Boughton-Leigh, one of my favorites.

10 June--Lucca

Now we are in Lucca. The barcode sticker is from a kind of drawing pencil I bought per due euro.

10 June--Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa

12:25 Piazza dei Miracoli
It makes sense to me, in a certain way, that people would make a beautiful place as a way to worship God. Certainly they had more secular concerns on their minds, but in a way, good things came of it. The exact occupying of space, the beautiful support of matter, the creation of an interior space that feels organic or otherworldly—all these things are as dizzying as an excellent song of worship or a prolonged liturgy.

10 June--thoughts on the language

Waiting for the train to La Spezia:

One of the main differences about this language is the vowels. Often, within a syllable, it is not the whole syllable that is accented but only the vowel. And the vowel sounds are unlike any others either in my language or in French, or in the little Spanish that I have heard. The diphthongs are completely gone, but in their place is a difficult type of accent, or voice modulation, or something. What happens is that extreme care must be taken to say one’s e’s with that non-French “a” sounds, and one’s i’s thickly but consistently throughout, and one’s a’s drawn out into two beats.
Perhaps one of the most challenging words is one that we hear quite often: grazie. The hardest part is the rhythm of the “ie,” which, when first learned, is pronounced as two distinct syllables, “zee—ay.” On further instruction it quickens a bit, to “tsz—uh.” But now, hearing it in cafés and after money exchanges hands, it becomes clear that it is actually an “ah” sound, something off the cuff and expansive and something that opens one’s mouth wide at the beginning but at the end ends up something at the back of one’s mouth, by the molars and the edge of one’s tongue.
It interests me very much to hear Americans with other accents speaking Italian, or other language-speakers speaking it. For example, a French woman approached me in Monterosso when we came in on the train (I was carrying a copy of Le Monde) and when she pronounced “Manarola” it was with that slippery French way of making the whole word more accented than any one syllable, and the a’s were breathy and it made more sense to me than it ever has in Italian. When she said “Vernazza” the “ver” was spoken like “verre” (glass) or “vers” (toward), and the z’s had a small Italian sound but just enough to make it clear. After we spoke, she asked me de quelle region was I from; I said we were Americans (I tried to say “sono” and then “siamo” before I remembered that I ought to say “nous sommes”) and she said “Mais vous parlez tres bien!” so I smiled the rest of the day and was altogether unbearable.
Eating dinner our first night here I overheard a woman with a strong Southern accent repeating what a man (one of our waiters) had just said to her: Che bella (ké bellah). It is impossible to describe how she made it sound entirely Dixie without even a hind of the original pronunciation.
I understand now why when Italians speak English they add an “uh” sound at the end of words, and at the end of sentences—because in Italian you are never without a vowel to make your phrase a question or an indignant statement. In French it seems to be that the emotions are created by intonation that occurs somewhere at the upper end of the throat, underneath the tongue, and between the teeth . . .