MJ

I don’t watch TV. I chucked it in the street 7 years ago or so to force myself to read more, spend time with actual people, work, etc. I only have the web. So, perhaps I’m not the average person and I’m not quite as exposed to all the Jackson coverage, having the leasure to read when I feel like it, but I think that in this culture of star obsession, it is perfectly coherent that we should spend so much time on Jackson. I also would like to add that he was an extraordinary musician, dancer, and such a strange personality that it seems perfectly logical to spend some time talking about his death; the death of an icon that we weren’t really ready for as a global community. I’m not shocked. And to boot, perhaps we all feel a little guilty about making fun of him so often when it would have maybe been more productive of us to question what had been done to this poor “freak,” who, from a beautiful black man with dimples and a smile that killed, turned himself into a white shadow. That’s what he did, and it’s a tragedy. Exquisite irony in this year of our first black president. I also think that these moments, when we have 911 calls, minute reports of when he stopped breathing, soon, certainly, what he was wearing, and which hair spray he had chosen that day, we probably equate this extraordinary death with our own. How will it be from moment to moment?

Which hair spray will I choose?

SB

Reading Samuel Beckett’s letters.

Who wouldn’t love SB reading Proust:

“… a mauldin false teeth gobble-gobble discharge from a colic-afflicted belly.  I think he drank too much tilleul.”

and ô, que les parisiens n’ont pas changé:

“How energetic they always are, these self-avowed cynics and désabusés, bristling with passionate estimates and beating their breasts in a jemenfoustiste & jusquauboutiste frenzy.”

(but of course, can’t mention Alfy without mentioning his demise…et puis, it’s offensive, et ça l’est… but still.)

add a low, grey sky and some antidepressants…

New York; H:83° L:62° sunny; join some friends in the park for a glockenspiel-fest(ed) afternoon.

I’m not even proofing this one.

It takes a martini and a father caring for a son for me to finally get here.  and write.  a letter, okay, and email, a poem.  but blog? a responsibility that just doesn’t work now.  Just doesn’t seem possible. I’m drunk blogging and that’s okay.  Some are afraid of their officiality being swallowed.  The French are very afraid of this.  They publish, and Americans seem to be twittering ’til twilight and then poof, which can be unfortunate if you are a dead rock star’s very much alive rock star wife, even if poof. Because if they can save your sorry ass interrupting the Father’s son’s Mother, then they can certainly save your tweets. And they will. because they’ve nothing better to do, like watching some celebrity hit on everyone at The Beatrice Inn.  That’s fine. But no one wants to save mine. So this is fine, because in comparison to the tweeting teens, this one is very anon, and no one will have the patience to read it, which is fine with me.  That permanence can be so immediate and finalement, présent, figé, processus d’un instant de la vie; hmm temporality is different these days. And nice and yet fleeting, did you know? betcha ya didn’t, that data rot exists.  yep, the times. data rot.  all your memories, all your thoughts, rotting away on silver slivers of plastic and in your lap on labyrinths of metal, tiny structures that hold you.  and you thought you were immune!  arrogant you.  25 or is it 24 kids, people, have committed suicide in Wales, in a small area in Wales. is it an epidemic?  They can’t figure it, but blaming phone posts seems to be the trend, or internet pacts. Ah, but I don’t twitter, or tweet, or whatever, and I don’t want to find those who I don’t want to find on Facebook.  

It is spring again.  It’s spring again. The trees are remplising leurs branches encore.  The baby is gagaing.  Gaga.  Singing notes that I can’t get to. Surprise. That’s fine.  enfin… as in anyway…   And here it is: My courtyard.  I had thought of writing this but then stopped.  Didn’t want to seem like a stalker.  And ignorant as can be, more so than my ultra-cultured friend, S, who seems somehow to know everything, even the existence of some terribly idiotic philosophies that shouldn’t even exist, much less be published and he says ‘oh yeah, them!’  And goes on to make me feel like a fool to his bibliothèque of a brain.  So, I shamefully didn’t know the existence of this person.  I admit.  And now I do and am ashamed.  Always ashamed to say, no I’ve never read that.  What is it?  The red running up to one’s face.  The not-so-rare moments when I say, who?  The rare moments when everything is silent, when everyone is sleeping, or crying in their sleep, but at least sleeping.  Across the courtyard is a man up there on the top floor who types on a typewriter, who is behind a tree and next to a wall of books.  I see two paintings hung on the wall in the first window which seem to be not framed, and in the second, a white-haired writer, like me, a writer, but, my God, like when Aperghis said to me, when you say you are nothing compared to Beethoven, you are comparing yourself to Beethoven, a white-haired man who is typing away until about 2:30 every morning. And I can tell you, when I was pregnant, when the baby was born and now, when sleep is so rare so rare so rare, I open the curtain, look up there and see that white hair in the window.  

I only suppose that he is writing, though I can’t see his hands.  I can’t see his table.  I can barely see him. I’m drunk blogging and he’s writing.  Me martini, him, TV?  Old and white.  But so it’s spring again and birds on the wing again and so the trees are going to be filling up again with leaves again and this is my last spring here and so I’m drunk blogging while the baby now cries with daddy, not the mommy, so the mommy can martini her evening away,  and the darkness lets the orange light shine in all those windows in the courtyard where that father reads to his multi-cultural kid dressed in black, where that old guy sits reading the times while his wife cooks, and this one, feeding the unfortunate cat who cries often in 0 degree weather to the tune of Buddha bells in the same garden, oh how i hate them and their buddha bell and desperate cat     this person sits typing away on a machine and I, on a machine, and writing, writing not singing not materning. Maternally typing, but not tweeting.  tap and kiss, tap and goo goo, tap and webern, tap and gawker stalker, what?, yes, it’s true, tap and gawker stalker, you try living in chelsea and not gawk stalking, too fun, where the baby is now screaming, having fallen on his head, it’s okay, not really, but a fall nonetheless, of which, oh dear, there will be many, that it’s spring again and it’s the last winter I’ll be able to see between the branches the beast writing at his table, the Ashbery on 20th street, who calms me when I can’t sleep, knowing that someone is still keeping the writing guard, that someone is doing something important, even in his old age with white hair and green? is it? sweater, me, shaking concoctions, official concoctions of powders and liquids FDA approved for the brain, the development, the eyes and whatever, of my little thing, shaking bottles and feeding to this ever mommy-knowing, mommy-recognizing baby with huge eyes, recognizing me in the night, in the morning, dark night-morning, like some sort of rabbit-child, eat your carrots, who is definitely screaming now, right there, right across the courtyard, whose poems, thanks to S and his culture, of which I am lacking oh dear, soverymuch, I have now read. And that is huge, to secretly watch a poet writing in his window.  That one.  THAT poet.  That John.

Archie and his hornets

 

“And I know how to lead off the sprightly

dance of the lord Dionysos, the dithyramb.

I do it thunderstruck with wine”

 

 

I was thumbing through a dictionary the other day and found this:

 

Ithyphalle, n. m. Antique.gr. Phallus porté en procession aux fêtes de Dionysos. // Archéol. Amulette de forme phallique.

Ithyphallique, adj. Qui a rapport à l’ithyphalle. // En termes de métrique ancienne : vers composé de trois trochées.

 

 

The Ithyphallic verse juxtaposes a rhythm in 6 to a rhythm in 8.  It is an ode or a dance performed at festivals of Dionysus.

We have Archilochos/chus, The Satirist, lyricist, founder of iambic poetry and its application to satire, professional soldier, 7th century BC aoidos, to thank for the ithyphallic verse.  He invented the epode, of which the ithyphallic verse is an example. Post-Homer, Hesiod, he was as well known in his time as they. We only have fragments today, some for example, found stuffed in mummies or wrapped around them; scrap paper from third-class homes. He abandoned Homeric ideals and composed often extremely coarse erotic songs for Dionysian festivals.  He enjoyed his life, full of the delights of sensuous existence. He showed little respect for those who chose to die in battle.

“Let who will boast their courage in the field,
I find but little safety from my shield.
Nature’s, not honour’s, law we must obey:
This made me cast my useless shield away,
And by a prudent flight and cunning save
A life, which valour could not, from the grave.
A better buckler I can soon regain

But who can get another life again?”

 

Heraclitus, Pindar and Critias, not too surprisingly, just said NO!

Heraclitus said that Homer deserved to be flogged, and Archilochus likewise.

Pindar describes Archilochus as ‘growing fat on dire words of hatred.’

Critias denounced him for presenting himself as “an impoverished, quarrelsome, foul-mouthed, lascivious, lower-class bastard.” …love it!

But Plato: “the very wise Archilochos.”

And finally, Horace and Catullus kept him complete in their collections.

Horace: “rage armed Archilochos with his own iambus.”

 

 

“I covered her; my arm cradled her neck,
while she in her fear like a fawn
gave up the attempt to run.

Gently I touched her breasts, where the young
flesh
peeped from the edge of her dress,
her ripeness newly come,

and then, caressing all her lovely form,
I shot my hot energy off,

just brushing golden hairs.”

 

 

“You whom the soldiers beat,

You who are all but dead,
How the gods love you
And I, alone in the dark,
I was promised the light.”

 

Want more?  You can have it, thanks to Guy Davenport!

Just search.

 

 

 

On his tomb could be read:

“Hasten on Wayfarer, lest you stir up the hornets.”

 

 

He was killed by a man named Crow.

 

 

 

 

beyond Carmen and strange juxtapositions

So, then, my question, now that the irony (see post below) has sunk in is this:

How many Yazidi men have committed suicide after hearing the word “stone”?

I’ll bet you’d be hard pressed to find one.

 

http://www.stophonourkillings.com/

 

http://www.equalityiniraq.com/

 

 

 

 

.

ô Oui, he did!

 

Thomas Demand today in the NYT

 

 

 

 

Feels good to imagine the new guy in this cardboard world, eh?

 

 

 

Carmen and the Yazidis

In May 2007, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two stories on the same internet page.

Carmen Electra released her book, How to be Sexy, the same week the press released the story of young Du’a Khalil Aswad.   17 years old, of the Yazidi branch of Yazdânism, Ms. Aswad was stoned to death in an “honor killing.”  -men holding their phones in the air to capture it with their cameras.  -some say hundreds, some say thousands of them.

Product description of How to be Sexy: “Everyone has what it takes to be sexy. Let go of those inhibitions and insecurities and allow Carmen Electra to take you from ho-hum to hot.  Millions have experienced Carmen Electra’s vivacious charm and drop-dead sex appeal from afar–from her roles on Baywatch and MTV’s Singled Out,  to her dozens of movie and television appearances, to her wildly popular Aerobic Striptease videos.  Now, in How to Be Sexy, she shows you that even if you weren’t born with an alluring aura (or killer curves), you can learn how to be super sexy. “ 

Aswad’s body was exhumed, after having been stripped, stoned to death, dragged behind a car through the streets and buried with a dog, to be sent to the Medico-Legal Institute in Mosul in order to determine if she was or was not a virgin.  

Ironically, in the Yazidi tradition, words associated with stoning, as well as the word itself, are not permitted to be spoken. If a Yazidi hears the prayers of a Muslim containing the word “stoned” (“I take refuge from the Devil, the stoned one”), it is incumbent upon him, according to the rules of his religion, to kill this person, and if this is not possible, to commit suicide in lieu.

“I never had my own name on a bathing suit on Baywatch. I was always given one that said Pamela or Yasmine. I earned my own suit, at the end of the season, which I now have framed.”  Carmen Electra