this week i

picked up marcie, flowers were for me.  cricket at the church of the redeemer invited us to watch juliana soltis describe bedazzled sneakers, play bach on the five string cello, dc united later in the week.  i swapped bedrooms, humans don't need so much space.  this was definitely a coke mirror

watched tampopo, inception filmed in ramen shops, ken wantanabe in both.  klimt's the best rendition of judith and the head of holofernes.  at glenstone, kristina and i forgot biscotti in our pockets, saw jimmy carter, backlit illuminated transparencies of james lindsay's double self-portrait

 

woke up, five a.m., leopards in the temple reviews of my father's favorite john barth, no weta sunrise announcement, first beaver spotted in slime of c&o, financial times described politics of lithium mines intruding on spanish burial grounds et measly $300,000 in sales of the $56,000 per patient per year alzheimer's drug, collard greens because no spinach at giant (under construction), watched marcie fly out door, argued happily with matthew over sampling then formatting then completed gananoque-built canoe (zora helped more than i did), ten five ten five pull ups chin ups plus the abdominal-focused calisthenics with seth meyers in the background, human answered at the embassy, yes tourist visas available, will call back in five or ten minutes no call, employer health benefits 2021 copyedits, anglo dutch pool and toys for zebra, jaguar, tiger face paints, little falls video holds, bookdown warning resolutions, drove to meet my date, jamaican take-out, passed mama and many baby deer on the way to our post-sunset picnic (aim for second one), drove whitehurst freeway home, cucumber gose, marcie still at collegial dinner and i'll call jay as soon as i fetch a second beer

 

read morris dickstein's leopards in the temple: the transformation of american fiction 1945-1970

 kafka's leopards in the temple, implosions of the irrational, children of the freudian century, sharp-clawed primitives who would somehow be integrated into the once-decorous rites of american literature, who would become american literature

by the time the thin red line appeared in 1962, heller's book made it look tame.  like heller, jones had the notion of writing a "comic combat novel," and many early scenes, such as bead's gruesome struggle with a japanese soldier who comes at him when he is emptying his bowels, are bizarre set pieces, strange, unexpected events demonstrating the absurdity of war

like primo levi, elie wiesel, hannah ardent, and jerzy kosinski, the holocaust narrative would eventually displace the combat narrative as our principal vision of the second world war

asked what he was rebelling against in the wild one, brando answered famously, "whad'ya got?"

of "a standstone farmhouse," which deals with his mother's death, updike himself commented that "by keeping the focus on the house - its stones, its smells, its renovations - i hoped to convey the dizzying depth of life its walls have contained....the story is about things - how they mutely witness our flitting lives, and remain when the lives are over, still mute, still witnessing"

a favorite device of the lyrical novel is the psychiatric monologue, the confession of the unhappy outsider who, after a life of conflicts and confusions, finally lands on the couch

mailer's proclaimed goal is "to encourage the psychopath in oneself," "to try to live the infantile fantasy," and always to seek "an orgasm more apocalyptic than the one which preceded it"

the body is a spiritual fact, the sinstrument of the soul

i did incorporate other people into myself and consume them.  when they died i passionately mourned.  i said i would continue their work and their lives.  but wasn't it a fact that i added their strength to mine?  didn't i have an eye on them in their days of vigor and glory?

renoir said he painted with his prick

as an analytic patient, portnoy does his stand-up routine lying down

 10/28

this week i

met ten day old elana grace choi

watched john wayne in the not recommended rooster cogburn and the lady.  breckinridge looks like tucker carlson

if I had my druthers, i'd pull a cork and jaw with you all night

 

laughed at norm macdonald's refusal to break into song and dance.  reina and tony sung church street blues, the punch brothers too in five four time

listened to bonus episodes 55 thru 58.  kevin stroud's listing of unpaired words prompted my lookup of irascible: nope

but there is a great deal of confusion over the origin of the term and the words that are represented by the letters o and k.  as i noted a couple of episodes back, that confusion stems in part from the fact that the term is really based on an intentional misspelling.  ok is an abbreviation of a short phrase, and it's actually derived from the phrase all correct.  which should have produced the initials ac.  but the phrase was intentionally misspelled as a bit of a joke.  it first occurred in a boston newspaper in 1839, where there was a fad at the time for misspelling certain words and phrases.  the phrase all correct was rendered as oll korrect.  and that misspelling was abbreviated as ok.  and that was the actual origin of our modern term ok.

 rsvp: respondez, s'il vous plait

snafu: situation normal all fouled* up (*or a different word)

this process caused the word like to be incorporated into a lot of other words, and many of those words still exist today.  and you probably don't even realize that they were originally formed with the word like.  for example, the word ilk, as in the people of that ilk, was originally elich, literally that like.  the word survived in scotland with the hard k at the end, and it produced ilk.  meanwhile, in the south of england that hard k tended to soften to a ch sound as it did in so many other words.  the word aelc, literally ever alike, became elch and then each.  the word swelc, literally so like, became swilch and then such.  the word hwelch, literally who like, became wilche and then which.  so the words each, such, and which are all formed from words that originally ended with the word like or ilich

read the history of madagascar wikipedia entry with austronesian expansion map.  extinct malagasy hippopotamus

malagasy cultural traditions shared with austronesians of taiwan, the pacific islands, indonesia, new zealand, and the philippines including ancient customs, such as burying the dead within a canoe in the sea or in a lake, the cultivation of traditional austronesian crops such as taro or saonjo, banana, coconut, and sugar cane, traditional architecture with a square house plan, music and musical instruments such as the antsiva conch, the hazolahy drum, the atranatrana xylophone, sodina flute, or the valiha tube zither, and dance, including the "bird dance" found both in central and southern regions

the malagsy names for seasons, months, days, and coins in certain regions come from arabic origins, as do cultural features such as the practice of circumcision, the communal grain-pool, and different forms of salutation (such as salama)

the number of sanskrit words in malagasy is very limited compared with the large number now found in indonesian languages, which means that the indonesian settlers must have come at an early stage of hindu influence, that is ca. 400 ad

the sea is the boundary of my rice-field

rainilaiarivony would rule madagascar from behind the scenes for the remaining 32 years of the merina monarchy, marrying each of the final three queens of madagascar in succession

read down and out in paris and london by george orwell.  etiolated, lascar, and london also nicknamed smoke (accra omitted, reykjavik: smoky bay)

"you never know when a stroke of luck is coming.  once when i was at the hotel royal an american customer sent for me before dinner and ordered twenty-four brandy cocktails.  i brought them all together on a tray, in twenty-four glasses.  'now, garcon,' said the customer (he was drunk), 'i'll drink twelve and you'll drink twelve, and if you can walk to the door afterwards you get a hundred francs.'  i walked to the door, and he gave me a hundred francs

slept the night on the floor of my room, with his coat round his shoes for a pillow

i left boris at my room and went down to the pawnshop.  when i got there i found that it was shut and would not open till four in the afternoon.  it was now about half-past one, and i had walked twelve kilometers and had no food for sixty hours.  fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes
then the luck changed as though by a miracle.  i was walking home through the rue broca when suddenly, glittering on the cobbles, i saw a five-sou piece.  i pounced on it, hurried home, got our other five-sou piece and bought a pound of potatoes.  there was only enough alcohol in the stove to parboil them, and we had no salt, but we wolved them, skins and all.  after that we felt like new men, and sat playing chess till the pawnshop opened

i lived entirely on the stolen food

in the heat of those cellars, as in a turkish bath, one could sweat out almost any quantity of drink.  plongeurs know this, and count on it.  the power of swallowing quarts of wine, and then sweating it out before it can do much damage, is one of the compensations of their life

sleep had ceased to be a mere physical necessity; it was something voluptuous, a debauch more than a relief.  i had no more trouble with the bugs.  mario had told me of a sure remedy for them, namely pepper, strewed thick over the bedclothes.  it made me sneeze, but the bugs all hated it, and emigrated to other rooms

the mattress was convex, so that one had to hold on to avoid falling out.  the sheets stank so horribly of sweat that i could not bear them near my nose.  also, the bedclothes only consisted of the sheets and a cotton counterpane, so that though stuffy it was none too warm.  several noises recurred throughout the night.  about once in an hour the man on my left - a sailor, i think - woke up, swore vilely, and lighted a cigarette.  another man, victim of a bladder disease, got up and noisily used his chamber-pot half a dozen times during the night.  the man in the corner had a coughing fit once in every twenty minutes, so regularly that one came to listen for it as one listens for the next yap when a dog is baying the moon

collecting cigarette ends and selling the tobacco at threepence an ounce

if you approach a stranger and ask him for twopence, he can call a policeman and get you seven days for begging.  but if you make the air hideous by droning, "nearer, my good, to thee," or scrawl some chalk daubs on the pavement, or stand about with a tray of matches - in short, if you make a nuisance of yourself - you are held to be following a legitimate trade and not begging.  match-selling and street-singing are simply legalised crimes.  not profitable crimes, however; there is not a singer or match-seller in london who can be sure of £50 a year - a poor return for standing eighty-four hours a week on the kerb, with the cars grazing your backside

the room stank of ennui

10/21

this week i

rented a decatur cavern down the street from an oyster bar, one pull-up assembly/disassembly to go.  ella, who has the best name, hid in ida's arms at sight of a stranger while theo demonstrated his marble labyrinth prowess and michelle clicked submit on the lancet.  the sunday evening jiffy lube crew diagnosed my faulty starter, replaced after hours.  under the hartsfield flight path, mrs. saint louis carved enough lasagna to feed an army

 

watched roadrunner

it's not you being a travel guide.  it's you being open to this experience.

i'm food bad boy tony bordain.  there's nowhere i won't go and nothing i won't eat as long as i'm paid in emeralds and my hotel has a bidet that shoots warm champagne

 

leafed through oriental rugs in colour by preben liebetrau

the painter holbein has given his name to a certain kind of carpet because it appears so often in his pictures.  'the ambassadors' at the national gallery in london shows two men leaning on a high open court cupboard covered with a fine near eastern rug

there is an old moslem saying that at the creation of the world allah made baluchistan out of the bits and pieces that were left over

patterns used by the chinese in their rugs are much older than the technique, and are not particular to rugs as in other countries.  instead, they borrow motifs which are familiar in the decoration of porcelain, lacquer, jade, bronze, and ivory

 

 attempted my third reading of heart of darkness

no, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which i remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire.  i found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams.  they trespassed upon my thoughts.  they were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because i felt so sure they could not possibly know the things i knew.  their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend.  i had no particular desire to enlighten them, but i had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.  i daresay i was not very well at that time.  i tottered about the streets - there were various ways to settle - grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons.  i admit my behavior was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days.  my dear aunt's endeavors to 'nurse up my strength' seemed altogether beside the mark.  it was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.  i kept the bundle of papers given me by kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it

10/13

this week i

drove clear across texas.  when johnny cash at san quentin sung then i went to sleep in shreveport, woke up in abilene wonderin' why the hell i'm wanted at some town halfway between he apparently just meant dallas.  separately, google getting dumber but pitstop neckpillows getting classier

sat on john's porch.  i'm self employed and my boss is a fucking idiot.  timet caught a gecko.  we visited civil rights museum, architectural salvage

 

read optical illusions in art by alexander sturgis.  holbein the younger's henry the eighth lost in a fire

read john steinbeck's travels with charley: in search of america

when we saw colored pictures of a vermont autumn forest it was another fairy thing and we frankly didn't believe it.  in school we memorized "snowbound" and little poems about old jack frost and his paintbrush, but the only thing jack frost did for us was put a thin skin of ice on the watering trough, and that rarely.  to find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling.  i can't even imagine the forest colors when i am not seeing them.  i wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native new hampshire woman about it.  she said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate.  "it is a glory," she said, "and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise"

i've always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map.  i envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality.  i feel that there are too many realities.  what i set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style

before i went to sleep i went over all the things i wished i had said to that immigration man, and some of them were incredibly clever and cutting

there was a time not too long ago when a man put out to sea and ceased to exist for two or three years or forever.  and when the covered wagons set out to cross the continent, friends and relations remaining at home might never hear from the wanderers again.  life went on, problems were settled, decisions were taken.  even i can remember when the telegram meant just one thing - a death in the family.  in one short lifetime the telephone has changed all that.  if in this wandering narrative i seem to have cut the cords of family joys and sorrows, of junior's current delinquency and junior junior's new tooth, of business triumph and agony, it is not so.  three times a week from some bar, supermarket, or tire-and-tool cluttered service station, i put calls through to new york and reestablished my identity in time and space.  for three or four minutes i had a name, and the duties and joys and frustrations a man carries with him like a comet's tail.  it was like dodging back and forth from one dimension to another, a silent explosion of breaking through a sound barrier, a curious experience, like a quick dip into a known but alien water

roadside america is the paradise of breakfast

one of the few places i have ever seen where the night was friendlier than the day

montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think texas is like from hearing texans

every evening is pamplona in lower new york

 

 10/7

this week i

dispute clean truck owners need trucks.  dominoes delivery vehicle waved one american, one give pizza a chance flag

visited the university of new mexico's art museum.  best career for being remembered?  a futurist.  artificial intelligence may launch the first nuke

watched ken burns' hemingway, featuring the last interview with john mccain.  yours till the war is over

 

read design motifs of ancient mexico by jorge encisco.  yes, thar be dragons in pre-columbian america

 stamps were generally made of baked clay.  occasionally, one finds the use of other materials, as the two stone samples from yucatan, one of copper from patzcuaro, and another made of bone from xochimilco.  it is evident that stone silver was used, the stamps have yet to be found or have been melted long ago.  wood and bone have not survived the ravages of time.  this may explain abundant survival of clay stamps

flat stamps showing masks of deities..iii shows the old man god (ueueteotl), from teotihuacan.  iv shows the rain god (tlaloc) and is from los tuxtlas, veracruz

read the truth about animals by lucy cooke

leonardo da vinci painted the disciples enjoying eels at the last supper

larval marvels

no one has ever seen a beaver using its tail as a builder's trowel

the jane goodall of hyenas

"most hominid remains are just teeth and jawbones.  when you are finding teeth, it's almost a guarantee that the dead person has been through the digestive tract of a hyena, because that's all that comes out"

the zoo was forced to admit their famous female panda had sexually imprinted on the wrong species

tuxedolike livery for camouflage: their white front disguises them from predators and prey looking up at the sun-bleached surface of the water, and their black back conceals them from predators above against the murky depths below

no humanzees were conceived

 

9/30