Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 20:17:33 -0800 (PST)
From: "James Welsch ________@yahoo.com
Subject: A.O.Scott
To: "Gerald Nick Nelson" <_________@gmail.com>, "James Quill" <_________@yahoo.com>
And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?
-A.O.Scott, N.Y.Times review of Apocalypto
His life was what it was. Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child.
-Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck (The Coast of Utopia, Part II)
December 09, 2006
E-mail: Apocalypto
November 01, 2006
But is come from a far country for thy great name's sake...
I thank my loyal readers for their barrage of comments & e-mails, mostly saddened outcries about the scarcity of postings on this weblog in recent weeks. Here I'll respond to a few.
My old friend Sarah, a college comrade with whom I bonded primarily over a shared appreciation of imported rums, just e-mailed me: Dear James, it's been a week, there's been so much election news, you've only posted an old poem and a few dumb e-mails. My plan was to read your blog all day at work, now I'm just going to read celebrity news.
Well, Sarah, this weblog doesn't often discuss politics – not that it aims to be “nonpartisan” in our increasingly polarized country. Perhaps the political landscape is changing with the emergence of the blogosphere. But the political climate is always changing with every new decade, with shifts of culture, technology, &, most importantly, different people. The internet is drastically & subtly rewriting political rules as it reshapes our world. Our culture has the largest “middle class” of any society ever anywhere, which means lots & lots of people sitting at desks with computers hooked to the internet, often idle. Blogs, like mine, are exciting! The nightly news seems fake, but here's political views, well written, by some guy, with access to an infinite amount of information. Maybe that's why this blog, O it was lost!, is so lame. Perhaps doomed. Perhaps its author was meant for another time, I should have been hired at a 19th Century publication like Melville's Literary World, where bookish arrogance thrives. Should I hone a more popular voice, or dig deeper & seek a marginalized audience? Am I a martyr for pseudo-intellectuality!? My God, what a thought! Needless to say, I felt dwarfed by the humongousness of the Midterm Elections, repulsed by the slime, into which the blogosphere dived & swam jovially. How could I post what I thought of John Kerry's botched joke? Maybe I need a real job.
I deleted an anonymous comment from my post on Borat, but I'll reprint it here: Yo fucker, it's just a funy movie. Sacha Barron Cohen can suck it.
Anonymous, I'm not really sure what you aimed to communicate with that statement. Was my review pretentious? Or is he reveling in the existential futility of it all. I'm curious what the second sentence could possibly mean – has “suck it” become a positive, like “bad” & so many other previously simply-defined words? I noticed in Moe's Books today that there is a book called Bad President. Indeed, direct. I believe strongly that “funy” movies can be important, revolutionary, & speak frankly about the human condition. Parody can be endlessly revelatory, & will be vital for as long as there is drama. The best artists, Shakespeares & Wes Andersons, so interlace the tragic & comic that... well, I don't need to finish that thought. Still, Anonymous, I'm not a fucker. You are the fucker. You can suck it, or not suck it.
My mother, now in Ghana eradicating polio, wrote an e-mail which said, among other things: James, [...] Why don't you review some of books you've been reading? If you're not going to be writing music or searching for employment, you should at least be responding to some of things you're reading. [...]
As she knows, my reading list has been daunting during these, my “lost years.” Besides several newspapers, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Cosmo, & a list of blogs, I also read many novels & non-fiction on a range of subjects. Why can't I report on more of the ideas I have in response to my individualized categories of intake? [I gave up on that sentence after several retakes -ed.] Sometimes, Mom, without the threat of a University to make you react in words, it's hard to find the motive to blah-blah about everything you're experiencing. I could write about my walk today, either metaphysically or empirically – for instance, it was 2.45 miles according to the little thing my dad gave me which clips to my pants. I loved the two books I read last week, Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country & Nabokov's Ada, but I feel that I've reverted to grade school reports in criticizing some author's works. “I would recommend it to my friends.” Seriously, tho, both those books are amazing, watersheds, they both changed me & made me cry. Sometimes a man is too busy to write because he is lying in the bathtub drinking beer.
We do, doodley do,
doodley do,
doodley do,
What we must,
muddily must,
muddily must,
muddily must,
Until we bust,
bodily bust,
bodily bust,
bodily bust.
-Bokonon (as quoted in A Man Without A Country).
October 30, 2006
E-mails & sundry late October Correspondences
| Date: | Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:39:58 -0800 (PST) |
| From: | "James Welsch" <_________@yahoo.com> |
| Subject: | Happy Nevada Day! |
| To: |
Actually, Nevada Day is tomorrow, but never too early to celebrate.
Some quotes about appreciating life:
Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me a fiddle,
When the sun's comin up, I got cakes on the griddle,
Life ain't nothin' but a funny, funny riddle,
Thank God I'm a Country Boy!
When the sun's comin up, I got cakes on the griddle,
Life ain't nothin' but a funny, funny riddle,
Thank God I'm a Country Boy!
-John Denver
Just like Michael Haverty!
But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well read & wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, & talking about this & that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
So I do the same now, & so do my kids & grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, & exclaim or murmer or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
So I do the same now, & so do my kids & grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, & exclaim or murmer or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005). I'm planning on sending this book to Barbara Lee, Berkeley's representative, & Nancy Pelosi, when they win next week, especially if Pelosi is the new House Speaker. He says our country has been taken over by people without consciences. Because of our government, one of America's great writers in his old age has given up on the human race, like Twain & Einstein before they died, & now Hawking! I also plan on sending Richard Pombo (R-Stockton) an e-mail saying "I hope you die poor!" Can I get arrested for that?
When it will be questiond "When the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?"
"O no no I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"
I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look thru it & not with it.
"O no no I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"
I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look thru it & not with it.
-William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment.
You know, I just went with "Brian Aha" (Cuban guy I lived with in Slonim 11) to a Halloween party full of gay lawyers, & you were the first person he asked about. I guess you impress a certain fine film on people's memories. Ah memory, my theme, that wingéd host that soared about me...
Diet of champagne not beer... Hardly stops one adding weight, but keeps the scrotum crisp.
-Professor Veen, in Nabokov's Ada or Ardor.
Well, a happy 27th to you & 145th to Nevada!
Peace & Love,
Mr Welsch
Posted on the New York Times Caucus Blog as a comment on "Nancy & Denny: Hanging the Drapes in the House", today:
| Date: | Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:41:03 -0700 (PDT) |
| From: | |
| Subject: | Re: Quarter way thru life |
| To: | "James Welsch" <_______@yahoo.com> |
James,
Sounds like a lovely way to spend the quarter century mark. While being around others is great fun, I
always need a little time for reflection when I round anoter year. I believe I celebrated with a bellini
that night, which is a mimosa except with peach juice. From what I can remember twenty five was swell. In
fact, it was my first time as an adult in San Fran... Speaking of that lovely city, if we had the resources
and a job waiting we would move there in a second. While perhaps we saw only a portion of the city, and
spent way too much money on the amazing food and drink, I can imagine it could be just as lovely on a
smaller budget. That said, as we were dreaming of moving there, a new Walmart opened in Oakland and
there was an article about the throngs of fairly educated folk beating down the door trying to get a
job. But we did love the city, saw lots of performances, went to the Asian, modern and mechanical
toy museums, ah, it was incredible. That said, I think I have decided not to attend grad school, which
makes the possibility of moving there even slimmer. I'm actually fairly happy in this city and we've
finally started finding a place in the arts community here.
I'm in a show right now at the Center (for puppetry arts) which is incredible fun. I'm part of a piano
trio of sorts for the show and we get to play and sing great music but also create some of the foley and
narrate the stories. We perform Mr. Ghost Goes to Town, The Blob!, Danse Macabre, Funeral March of the
Marionettes, the great song from the 1920s called "Creepy" among others.
So you're singing sacred harp? We performed a few songs in that tradition for Michael adaptation of
Gilgamesh. He's singing in a group regularly here so we went to the Southeastern conference. The sound was
just incredible. Have you seen the documentary? It's called Awake my Soul: the Story of the Sacred Harp.
It's a little low budget but tells the history of the music and the southern tradition quite nicely,
although they do point out a few too many times that the form defies any classical notion of musical
structure.
Well, I should go as I need to start the day. Before my call tonight we're going to the last weekend of the
Lakewood junk/antiques fair. It's this incredibly huge fair set on an old fairground in the middle of
the city quite near our house. You can find pretty much anything there. They are tearing the beautiful
and quirky location down to make way for condos. I hope you the best for your 25th year.
With love,
Kristin (Jarvis)
(I've kept my last name because I am quite fond of it
and Michael seemed to have no objections. So,
officially, I guess I'm Mrs. Jarvis, although when you
attach the Mrs. it sounds rather odd...)
Maude and the Triangle of Death
October 20, 2006
From the Archive: Holy Sonnet III
III.
There is one force to fuse the universe.
Is jealousy a fallen form of love,
Wrath a misunderstanding of above?
And what our ancestors calld Adam’s curse
A fractured reflection of the grand
And ancient scheme our divine selves created,
When with our seed the future permeated,
With nourishing desire, filled the land.
My love it is a drunken spinning wheel
With one still center which will never move,
And tho the sands the four winds breathing feel.
Our lives exist infinity to prove.
The twist is that the fuel we call desire
Will never be consumed despite the fire.
October 19, 2006
Music Review: Cuomo! & the Fucking Buckaroos!
La vie mes amis, it's true, sometimes the smallest concerts are the best times. Last night, I went by myself by BART to see a friend play, Cuomo!, a songwriter from Brooklyn whose couch I had surfed on & off for a month last January – (his girlfriend was my girlfriend's girlfriend.) He's wandering around the West Coast for a while on “tour”, playing in the streets, coffee shops, & just 
about breaking even with the payed gigs. The show was posted as “6:00pm” at the Mama Buzz coffee shop, so I arrived early with my book & drank a Californian drink, the very name of which might classify me & strike fear in the hearts of Fox News pundits. After fifty pages of Nabokov, tthere was no sign that there would be a show that night. Dave & Myan, his part-time upper-harmony from Maine, had gotten lost in rush hour, & when they arrived, there was still no sign of the featured act, a local folk-punk band. Oh, you know, we drank a few pints, spoke of politics & women, I made the occasional wity comment. At eight (an hour before the place closes), they sang their songs for me & a random girl in the back. Cuomo's music was exciting, poetic, & enthusiastically performed. Finally, half of the Fucking Buckaroos noisily stumbled in with a wave of apologies, bleary-eyed, they too had gotten lost. They played a short set (I would classify it as “The-Pogues-meets-Sam-Spade”) Some audience member (was it me?) requested a love song. The poor banjo-plucking Buckaroo was losing his voice. Despite diminished numbers, it was a great evening with better music than I've been experiencing elsewhere in my new town. I even hosted the after party, to which Myan invited the only other audience member, the girl in the back, a 100% turn-out. Ah, les soirées que j'ai! Je baiserais une amibe, mais je n'ai aucun aileron.
October 18, 2006
Party Announcement!
James.
Actually I screwed up the math: January 25th, 2009!
Your 27th, Rab's 250th, & five days after Bush leaves office.
Maybe we should fly to Ayrshire to celebrate. Where's your uncle's castle?
James.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Actually I screwed up the math: January 25th, 2009!
Your 27th, Rab's 250th, & five days after Bush leaves office.
Maybe we should fly to Ayrshire to celebrate. Where's your uncle's castle?
James.
__________________________________________________________________________________
New Song
How do you pronounce the word?
I'm the son of Abraham, the son of man,
And the elephants have gone crazy,
And the birds can sing the longest song I've ever heard,
And I'll miss it all, like only a lover can.
Were the garments rolled in blood?
And I know the maple, and I know the oak,
And the ass's back is broken,
And the phthalate left her barren in the darkest mud,
But I'll think of you, with every shaft of smoke.
Straightway from the holy land,
Whose sanctity such floods of human blood,
Unnatural rain for it, will soon wash out.
I'll look no more lest my brain turn,
And I'll break the yoke, & I'll topple down,
For the green never gets counted,
And the whales are swimming deeper than we'll ever learn,
Will you visit me, will bring my wasted crown?
Straightway from the holy land,
Whose sanctity such floods of human blood,
Unnatural rain for it, will soon wash out.
How could I forget the sky?
I'm the great crusader, I'm the pirate pilgrim,
But the ants are still in hiding,
But their industry will never foul the food supply,
So I'll raise my cup, and I'll fill yours past it's brim.
October 14, 2006
Movie Review: Borat
Last Thursday, I was walking thru the U.C. Berkeley Campus, & I stumbled into line for free passes to an advance screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. There was a slight confusion about my status as student (I told them I was a Scientology Major), but I got my big postcard. So I saw it this Thursday, in a hall full of rowdy, fully-appreciative 18-to-22-year-olds, probably the only suitable environment.
I walked the twenty blocks to campus, many hours early, & drank a few “soltice”-style pints in the university “lair”. There was loud thumping music, of course, but I spent both lemon-tinted pints reading Nabokov's Ada; Or, Ardor. With some European upper-class inflection, as Ada's mother has, both title & subtitle are supposed to sound about the same. I'm about a hundred pages into this book, about one-sixth. It's shocking, like Borat. It was a shocking night. Ada, in its own way a sequel to Lolita, is about cousins who are actually siblings, who have, whilst summering in Eden, their first physical contact. Wordplay & entymology, it's about anagrams: insect, incest. I guess it could be a companion-piece to Lolita – Humbert Humbert, you remember, had a proto-nymphet experience when he was a youth, which set the stage for his later perversion. A better way to understand it, both Van Veen & Humbert recognize true beauty & respond with an unquenchable erection. Humbert is fundamentally un-creative tho, & although he loves his nymphet, he doesn't get her intellect, & he's never really interested in her beautiful brain, his fatal flaw if anything is – one critic compares the book to a despot possessing a population, demanding allegiance thru rape whilst shutting himself off from true connection. I shouldn't comment yet on the quality of Van's lust, but I think he is legitimately turned on in part by his sister's intellect, even if he's bored by her pretentious scientific descriptions of caterpillars.
Sasha Baron Cohen is in a great position to mock American culture, expose it as racist & backwards, & Americans are dying to be constantly reaffirmed in this suspicion. At his best on Da Ali G Show, he acts far over the top, so that no sane focused individual could be fooled by the fraud of a fake foreigner making impossible & impossibly offensive cultural mistakes – yet they routinely are fooled. It's a similar charade with Ali G, the A-side of the shtick, with a “how stupid do these politicians think the 'hip-hop generation' actually is?” But, damn, what's with all the poop humor in this new movie? Maybe, because of my indoctrination as enlightened humanist, or my upbringing with Gallagher, I am not surprised nor scandalized by masturbation or feces, & therefore cannot be grossed-out or moved to a chuckle by gross-out stunts. If taking down Americans & exposing their prejudices is so easy, what can be learnt by bringing your own poop in a bag to the dinner table (because the foreigner didn't understand the flush)? Wouldn't anyone, not just racist Southern Christians, be dismayed? There are priceless moments – like when Borat, at a rodeo, gets the whole audience to cheer for something like “May George Bush drink the blood of every last Iraqi woman & child”; or when a cowboy tells him in confidence to shave his mustache so that he doesn't look like a Muslim terrorist. I guess I wanted more sociology & less scatology. I'm still convinced that the best movie ever made about racism is Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, using humor to discuss gray areas of the soul that a cheesy movie like Crash can't scrape away at. Borat, with its mockumentary format & deceiving character acting, had a potential to take Blazing Saddles into a post-9/11 world, but it seemed more inspired by Mel Brooks' fart jokes than by his comic insights.
October 08, 2006
From the Archive: Holy Sonnets I-II
I.
My metered speech, exalted language –
O yes there is a scheme to poetry.
My mundane words enshroud the lotus tree
And sound of beauty high transcend the page
And music what we hear & vision see
And manifest the cosmos with to be.
But no there is no way to hide my face
Exclusively in unseen silent realms:
Try as I might my ideal concepts lace
Themselves in woman’s eyes & outward imagery
That ecchoes in your rural pen & see
My grace immortal in all art’s embrace.
I speak of everything & all exists,
For thru my sustenance the earth subsists.
II.
My words are music & my thought is food.
I nourish all the cosmos with my pen,
And from it dust from dust will rise again.
All your reflections of my face are good.
My images are bread from which you live.
My outward nourishment permeates in.
The cycles that you breath & eat begin
When one intakes & I that apple give.
O must you woman mourn over your pangs
& you usurping king control our deaths?
No you will never take your feard last breaths,
For from a tree the fire stealer hangs.
My knowledge from the branch is what one eats
And art th’ imagination excretes.
October 02, 2006
September Review; two e-mails; plus, a Rilke poem translated.
September ended well this year, with visions of a drunken universe, transubstantiated mimosas on several sabbaths, and play-acting as with the idle rich. On the poetical front, my political soldiers were armed with “bunker busters”, for which our commander-in-chief couldn't get funding, but my imagination knows an alchemy which no congress can poo-poo. Musically, however, the world's body was impotent & incontinent.
I'll conclude this month's weblog with a thought. What if our government made it harder to get a driver's lisence? My sister once proposed that the drinking age & driving age be switched. Meaning, one should practice being a drinker when one is going to anyway, and postpone controlling 35-hundred-pound hunks of steel until we've passed thru our “collegiate maturity”.
I've been trying to picture what a city would look like with 25% fewer cars. My beautiful new apartment overlooks a huge parking lot; &, to walk to my favorite coffee shop & the bar where I play guitar, I have to walk thru two parking lots, cross a busy intersection, & walk down a quiet residential street which is nonetheless completed lined with parked cars. And my “commute” is only four blocks, taking about eight minutes! & I must pass a couple hundred cars! In addition to the obvious green considerations, a decrease in the number of cars would thin out some of the places where they congregate. But what would we do with all that space? Gardens, trees, patios, piazzas, museums, circuses, playgrounds, sculptures, trails, ponds, kitchens, lemonade stands – you know, the things that used to fill up a city before cars took over fifty years ago. How we might replace the noise of traffic is another issue.
Who would be the volunteers to stop driving, to decrease the amount of cars by 25%? What if the driving age was not 21 but 30? This would operate under the assumption that no healthy, single, childless twenty-something actually needs his car to commute to work or to get his groceries home. And this would operate under the assumption that no poor, entry-level-job, college-indebted twenty-something needs to be spending (on average) ten thousand dollars a year on something superfluous, noisy, dangerous, & polluting. Even renting an automobile for travel, the dozen times a year that might be necessary, plus the price of trains or public transportation, adds up to strikingly less than the price of owning one.
But of course, one could not expect, & one would not want, a law like that to ever appear. But what if it were a subject of morality instead of legislature. Christians, for instance, don't expect the government to enforce abstinence until marriage; why should conscious liberals want anyone but their community to discourage automobile-ownership until necessity. And by reshaping our society, necessity would quickly dwindle.
| Date: | Sun, 1 Oct 2006 23:03:40 -0700 (PDT) |
| From: | "S. Sandrigon" <_________@yahoo.com> |
| Subject: | Birds |
| To: |
Rachel,
We just finished watching Attenborough's Life of Birds. I used to love those Oxford coots so much, until I saw them killing all their own babies tonight. I got pretty choked up at the end when he was giving his "save the birds" speech.
I'm up thru Act Three of the Jest-book. I haven't quite figured out how to respond yet. I'd love an explanation of the song "Squats on a toad-stool" [III.iii.322-67]. It seems to be about an aborted fetus wondering which of God's gross creatures it should inhabit next; but, why, Rachel, why?
I've more or less put off my job hunt until I finish reading it, & then I'll tell you how I liked it. How's school?
Peace,
Sandy
_____________________________________________________________________
| Date: | Mon, 2 Oct 2006 19:43:40 +0000 (GMT) |
| From: | |
| Subject: | Re: Birds |
| To: | "S. Sandrigon" <__________@yahoo.com> |
Sandy,
When in Oxford, Nick and Geoff Schullenberger developed a highly detailed cosmology of ducks, in which coots featured as 'the fallen ones' and were charged with undertaking the devil's work, as far as it extended to the river bank, and for guarding portals to the underworld beneath their enormous and evil-looking nests. The two became so possessed by this idea that the sight of coots made them visible angry and, on occasions, prone to hissing. Only recently do they appear to have forgotten about it. I am not going to tell them what you saw.
As to dear little frog-voice, I'm not quite sure what to tell you. Of course he is not the only bodiless childfull who longs for a body in the play. He has been torn from from womb, as others from the tomb, and the question for all is of course 'where next'? Dying and staying dead just doesn't seem to be an option in a play written by a compulsive poet-experimental anatomist. Perhaps it's worth remembering too that Isbrand is an orphan, and one who spends much of his time plunging in and out of different bodies (court-fool, brother, conspirator, revolutionary leader, meglomaniac). His belief that he can choose who he wants to be is central to his character. ('I would have seized the sky some moonless night,/ And made myself the sun; whose morrow rising/ Shall see me new-created by myself.) I think he admires frog-voice, who like him aspires to be 'more than human'. Creating yourself and creating others (through alchemy, necromancy or the apothecary's art - all practised in the play) seems to be tactics in this foolish power struggle. What happens to Nature and humanity, I'm not sure.
School has begun well. Somehow my 'vocational' degree (that's what I told my parents anyway) involves me comparing and evaluating the relative merits of 'bio-ethics', deep ecology eco-socialism and Gaia theory. I shall be a hippy!
More later; I am trying to keep on top of the reading list this time around and i've a core class tomorrow. So far no sign of the old demons.
Love
Rachel
I notice you, in all of everything:
That which is good, you are, like to a brother,
That which is small, you shine, like to a sapling,
That which is huge, you give, like from a mother.
Such is the awesome theater of powers:
To go thru things, as with a slave's perfection,
To grow in roots, to flow with sap and flowers,
And in the canopy, as with a resurrection.
-from Rainer Maria Rilke, Das Studenbuch
(trans. by the weblogist)
September 28, 2006
Secular Poem
She writes the filthiest poetry we've ever come across.
Her poetry is written in not only the crudest of languages,
And marching naked in its metaphors the vilest of acts,
And rife with taboo fetishes, & backwards on the pages,
And topplings of moral structures, & perversions of facts,
And secret things in public kitchens drenched in secret sauce;
Not only is her poetry obscene, in words unknown, what
Unthought-of misconducts, in sliding racial-ethnic scales,
And body parts unheard-of, never even in textbooks shown; but
Offensive parodies of mystic insight & sacred details.
The ancient lyrics of the divine are trivialized in her verses,
And acts of saints are rendered bawdy, the thoughts of noble kings
Are mocked as profiteering off of endless wars of curses,
And truth is born from fornication of the foulest things.
Yet if we would condemn this poet to a life of silence,
O the riots we would cause, O the streets would tear with violence!
September 27, 2006
Letter to the Editor at the New Yorker
Dear editor:
Tell Woody Allen that I think his story “Pinchuck's Law” in the Oct. 2nd issue was one of his cleverest. It was also some of the funniest writing in the postmodern-noir genre, along with his debt to it in Match Point & his last movie. However, I think that genre finally ended when Jim Jarmusch mourned its expiration at the end of Broken Flowers. Maybe it's time to move on.
James Welsch
Berkeley, CA.
September 26, 2006
Quotes: More from the Archpope of Transubstantiation
Another flask, Kate. Thou knowest how fishy I am in my liquid delights. Dryness is akin to barrenness, & of barrenness comes nakedness & bareness, & these are melancholy, being the parables of human extremity, & of the uttermost of death & a pig's tail: therefore, good Kate, 'tis the duty of a wise man to thirst & the part of a good woman to wet his lips.
-Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death's Jest-book (1829), II.i.1-7
The ruffians
Of whom I spoke, turned towards the cedar forest,
And, as they went in, there rushed forth a lion
And tore their captain down. Long live the lion!
We'll drink his tawny health: he gave us wine.
For, while the Moors in their black fear were flying,
I crept up to the fallen wretch, & borrowed
His flask of rubious liquor. May the prophet
Forgive him, as I do, for carrying it!
This for to-day: to-morrow hath gods too,
Who'll ripen us fresh berries, & uncage
Another lion on another foe.
-ibid., I.ii.31-42
Therefore wine, hostess, ale & brandy. My legs hate walking on this stupid dead earth. I'm born to roll thru life, & if the world won't under me tumble & toss, why, I must e'en suck up a sort of marine motion out of the can.
-ibis., II.i.45-49
Contacts with this being [the divine] can be strengthened & the inspiration multiplied,
either thru interior withdrawel & fasting,
or thru ecstasy & intoxication.
-Klaus Koch, The Prophets I: The Assyrian Period (1978), pg. 9
The wife of my bosom, alas! she did die;
For sweet consolation to church I did fly;
I found that old Solomon proved it fair,
That a morning mimosa's a cure for all care.
I once was persuaded a venture to make;
A letter inform'd me that all was to wreck;
But the pursy old landlord just waddl'd up stairs
With a glorious mimosa that ended my cares.
-two verses from the Official Theme song for the Mimosa's Witnesses,
adapted from Robert Burns.
For sweet consolation to church I did fly;
I found that old Solomon proved it fair,
That a morning mimosa's a cure for all care.
I once was persuaded a venture to make;
A letter inform'd me that all was to wreck;
But the pursy old landlord just waddl'd up stairs
With a glorious mimosa that ended my cares.
-two verses from the Official Theme song for the Mimosa's Witnesses,
adapted from Robert Burns.
Do you know any famous poets who can write us epic Mimosa odes?
Doesn't the poet laureate live in New Hampshire?
Do you know him? You should start your canvassing at his house.
Posted by the Mimosa's Witnesses on the message wall of Don Tomaso's MySpace page.
(What follows is a private message on MySpace from Don Tomaso,
followed by a public bulletin posted by the Mimosa's Witnesses.)
From: 
Don Tomaso
Date: Sep 23 2006 12:04 PM
Subject: Mimosas.
Body:
-J-
I may or may not go door-to-door tomorrow. If not then I expect I will on the first.
The poet laureate (Donald Hall) is from New Hampshire and I've met him many many times. He used to frequent the little independent bookstore I worked at for five years. As to whether he'd write something for us...he does like his liquor. However, without working at the bookstore and with his busy schedule now, I'm not sure how I'd make it happen. I suppose there's nothing to be lost by trying. Maybe one of our first stops in the coming weeks will be his house.
-M-
From: 
Mimosa's Witnesses
Date: Sep 25, 2006 12:33 PM
Subject Mimosa's Wake
Body:
Attention! Proselytes!
I am proud to announce the success of the first Mimosa's Witnesses "Service". Three starry-eyed converts - Mark, Jamie, & Galin - feasted for hours on fresh organic fruit, fresh bread & fine cheeses, gourmet quiche with heirloom tomatoes, &, of course, bottle after bottle of champaigne. The conversation ranged from fine films to "John Denver's legacy", veered dangerously into politics (luckily, there was a general liberal consensus), we discussed the un-Christlike nature of modern Christians, & I attempted to promote a philiosphy of using infinitely recyclable plastics instead of tree-products. (Are you aware that the male English hedge sparrow will pick a rival's semon out of his mate's you-know-what? I had no idea!) There was no evangelical canvassing, but we did hit the flea market with our newly bubbly percepts.
However, this was only a trial run in microcosm. All are invited next Sunday Morning, the First Of October, say 10:30ish, for a feast of a larger scale. No-regrets only! No regrets, you lazy fiends of the bedchamber! The dress should be between business-casual to ironic-elegant. Please bring a bottle of cheap-ass champaigne &/or something like a muffin or strawberries, to add to our booty-horde. Please do not arrive by car! It's the end of the age of fossil-fuels, destructive bellicose-Saracens! (Unless you're coming from Tahoe, or the like). So, with a BART-price of $6 & a bottle of bubbly around $4, I'm inviting you to a gallant party with a minimal impact on the pockets.
Peace,
The Archpope of Transubstantiation
September 25, 2006
Song of the Theater
Why don't the soldiers speak in poetry,
And politicians squabble for a space upon the stage?
Where are the earls who drown, then reappear
As Third Citizen, second from the left?
Where are the labyrinths of logic, where the bottomless wells of rage?
Where is the theater with no commercials?
Revenge shall be my final secret earthquake.
Assassination always is a tool your foe's friends can utilize.
Revenge shall be the spaces between my words,
And be the grin behind my grinning mask:
No martyrdom a garb the tyrant wears as his disguise!
No, my revenge will undermine his smirk.
And when the hippies take the street with banners
The powers will point their cameras toward the dirtiest of the haters,
But my revenge will not be televised.
My soliloquy only the audience will hear.
The powers will spin their cameras on the clouds & under the craters,
But my revenge is written in the void.
The Jack Cade of the Revolution howls,
The powers deploy their mirrors & holograms to tax his peace,
But I will write a silent five act play,
I will sustain by eating locally.
The powers will evoke historical dichotomies,
I rhyme with sacred words they have forgotten.
When did the understudy lose his place?
How could the scenery fall down when all the ruins looked real?
When did the tongue of rhetoric trip up?
Or was the director drunk when his wife slept?
And what immoral prankster changed the cardboard sword for steel?
Who turned the tinted water into wine?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
Mrs. Haver-jar (?)
Hmm, what is your last name(s)? I always address my e-mails to ex-Bonnie Whiting as "Mrs. Smith", the last thing she wants to be called, love of her husband notwithstanding.
What are you up to?
Thanks for being one of two (the other: Melinda Rice) who sent me a birthday note. I was alone in a bar at midnight, & I got a free drink for answering a quiz question correctly (Only sports star who makes his own bed at hotels? I deduced "Tiger!") Sorry, it actually wasn't depressing, nor am I lonely, but it's an easy style of self-deprecating birthday-humor. Also, incidentally, I just re-read our last correspondence so as not to be redundant in this one, & there was a bit of miscommunication: I wasn't harrasing you for not ever visiting Tahoe, I was just describing why moving to the bay area had its advantages. In two months, I've been visited by a staggering amount of old friends.
I could be commissioned, by the way, to write a series of arguments, if you're ever at the point when considering pros of moving here. It's expensive, for instance, but I have a totally-super-sweet-ass apartment (huge, central location, 1905 building) for only $1k/month. But that's just bragging. Ha ha ha, suckers! I've also yet to find employment, but that may not be wholly the economy's fault.
Politics: Don't vote for warmongers / war-profiteers - the general sentiment in Berkeley, so I'm told. Jenny's working as a peace-canvasser. Is the situation hopeless / beyond our democratic control?
Beer: Boont, a brown ale from Mendocino, I think; Abbey Cat, & others from the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka; anything made by Anchor Steam, in SF.
Literature: Nabakov, Vonnegut, & the Death's Jest-book (1829, a strange neo-Jacobean play by late-Romantic proto-absurdist mock-gothic Thomas Lovell Beddoes). I might be writing a secret sensational novellette in my free time, but can it be sensational if it's secret?
Music: The bay area is amazing. I've already seen an opera & several concerts for free. I've been playing at an open mic every tuesday & singing sacred harp every monday, both good practice, for something. As for "popular" genres, I can't figure out why, 40-years since Dylan plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival, people have yet to figure out how to mix live rock music. & hip-hop is even worse! These are genres not only about volume, but about lyricisim & lyrics, & you can never hear what they're saying & you ears hurt! Bah! It's frustrating, having a classical training, & always trying to see as much various music as possible. But the two days of live free bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, every year, last weekend, was incredible - Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Freakwater (who you should "check out" if you've never heard of them), five stages, &c.
I hope you're well. I should have some new pictures digitalized soon. I always love seeing yours, of puppets, &c. "Halloween show"? "Exotic ghosts?"
Peace, Love, Roberta Joan Anderson, by Jo,
James