Pumpkin Blue...

This past Sunday at St John's - Staten Island was family day, where friends and family of the entire community gathered together for fun and reflection. The reflection took place at the mass that was held at 11:00 to start things off. It was so well attended that they had to bring in more seats after the mass had started. And as the crowd dispersed to the great lawn outside, reflection gradually turned to activity, as the great tent and the bustle greeted us outside.

All through the mass, my almost-three year old daughter, Lucy, kept wanting to see out through the window behind us where they had begun to inflate this large play track. She had noticed it just before the mass started when we were still outside and as it expanded and distended, she could begin to make out the shape of the car that crowned the plastic structure. This drew her attention. This and the ice cream trucks that she saw parked in the driveway. As any child, she was drawn to the activity and impatient of the reflection.

So after mass no one renounced reflection more quickly than she, eager as she was to get outside and see what all the fuss was about. We walked slowly through the student staffed tables, past the bandstand, and found our way under the tent, where we waited for grace. Lucy liked just looking around, being carried, and sometimes walking through the crowds, and she kept asking, "Where is Connie?" and "Where is Harry?" (My colleagues, whom she met last time we were on campus. The memory of them anchors St John's in her thoughts.)

But she also got to meet, as did my wife, Johanna, some of my students, past and present, and their parents. And she loved the band and the flags that were on the table that she waved and brandished.

One activity that occupied her attention more than the others, though, was the pumpkin painting. With Halloween just around the corner and all the stores on 5th ave. in Brooklyn festooning their windows with harvest colors, Lucy is well-conditioned for the season of witches and mellow fruitfulness, as long as that fruit is a pumpkin. We already have a small pumpkin or two around the apartment and she is seeing orange everywhere. So it was no surprise to us that she gravitated towards the pumpkins that were on the ground behind the pumpkin painting table.

And when she saw what the kids were doing with them -- drawing on them! -- she was even more enticed. So she went over, picked out a pumpkin she could lift, sat down at the table, and began to paint...

There were several plates in front of her all with different colors, some containing sparkles, some phosphorescent. The plate she chose was one with a generous puddle of deep blue paint on it, with streaks of yellow swirled in the periphery, from the previous kid. Lucy began to paint, at first tracing delicate vertical lines and applying small and random (to me) dots to the surface of the gourd. But as she became more comfortable and got a feel for the brush and the spherical shape that was her canvas, she began to more liberally and totally apply the paint. She went for completeness, total coverage, and gradually all traces of orange began to be obliterated. She would have me turn the pumpkin to assure that all spots were covered. She did so with care and precision, not with wild abandonment, which was frankly the effect that was achieved. Her method, her technique, if one could call it that, was slow and almost meditative, like some kind of obscure ritual or service that provoked a reflection in her that was lacking when we were at mass.

After one final circumspection, she was done. She put the paint brush down (she was remarkably clean, not one spot on her dress or hands, a testament to her focus and devotion) got down from the chair and had me carry the pumpkin over to where the others were. We told her that it would dry there and then we would take it home with us. She seemed satisfied by this, and we then walked around some more.

By the time we left, we had seen other things, met other people, and had some cookies, and we didn't remember until we were almost home that we had forgotten Lucy's blue pumpkin...

"Brave New World of Digital Intimacy"

Here's an article from the New York Times Magazine section from 9/7 about facebook and twitter and about how these developed and how they have transformed or are transforming the way we communicate.

I was recently reading "A Painful case" from James Joyce's Dubliners, " and found a sentence that reminded me of this article. "A Painful Case" is a story about Mr Duffy, a writer manque, who is engaged in an illicit affair that he rationalizes by seeing it as part of the artist's life he craves. That the woman is married only adds to the charm while also making the affair "safe." Duffy is a portrait of an artist of a different kind. Mr Duffy is forever translating Gerhart Hauptmann's Michael Kramer and he keeps rotten apples in his desk drawer, so that when he is in need of inspiration he breathes in the apple fumes. The latter is a trick that he learned from Schiller, and it is as much this fact as it as any enlivening properties of decaying apple that serves his purpose and his self image. The woman he is seeing, Mrs Sinico seems like she has been written just for him, though her Bovary-like end is more of an inconvenience for him than anything.

But it was the following sentence that reminded me of this article, especially its discussion of twitter and the news feeds on facebook:

He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.

Now twitter and facebook feeds aren't generally written in the third person and the predicates are conventionally in the progressive not in the past tense, but the impulse is the same, to narrate our lives briefly, moment by moment, to capture and encapsulate the on-goingness of life, to telegraph experience, to translate our daily movements into traces of information, to an audience that is out there. And in doing so to see ourselves as writing our lives, as artists do, if only artists of the Mr. Duffy kind.

Lucy in the Park

Lucy and I went to the park this morning, before the thunderstorms that rolled in later that afternoon. We hadn't been to this particular park in a while, though it's the closest one to where we live. But she got it in her head that she wanted to go to the swings and I couldn't say no. I think what she really wanted was to walk down the block, the swings providing a convenient excuse, and since I did too we set out.

It was gray outside, warm and gusty, and I was glad that Lucy had insisted on bringing along her small jacket that for some reason she refers to as her raincoat. As we walked down our block and across 6th ave., Lucy stopped at every house and noted what was already familiar to her (the statue of Mary, the lighthouse on the lawn, the porcelain cat in the window, the house where the kids live, the flag etc.) or what was novel (the car in the driveway, the lady in the window, the streamers hanging from the tree from what must have been a birthday or a baptism, a real cat in a different window). She strolled, she dawdled, she had me lift her up so she could walk on the concrete barriers. Our progress was slow.

In the street next to the park, there was an empty B-16 bus parked in the bus stop. Its engine was off and there was no one nearby. Every time another bus passed it the driver of the passing bus gave a token honk of acknowledgment that was never returned. Lucy is always aware of buses and she duly pointed this one out. And where it was sitting reminded her of the ice cream truck that usually parks just ahead of the bus stop and she reminded me, with a wrinkled brow and a tone of reminiscence that clearly held out hope for the present, of the time we got ice cream. Later when we went to leave, the bus had gone and neither of us had seen it go, though it was visible from everywhere in the park.

When we entered from the far side, over by the checkerboards, we saw no one else except for one young father and his year old daughter who were just finishing up on the swings. We exchanged pleasantries but it seemed strange that we should both be there; had there been a crowd or had it been either one or the other of us, that would have made the scene unremarkable, but there being just the two (four) of us underscored the strangeness of it, and so they left.

Lucy wanted to go on the swing and she loved going higher and higher, and then she wanted to go on each of the four remaining swings as well, relishing the freedom to do so as much as the swinging itself. And then when she was done, we went on the kiddie slide and the other equipment. She also wanted to go on the older equipment, which is usually overrun by the bigger kids. It has a bigger slide and higher places to climb. So we did, relishing as I did the freedom to do so.

We played at various things for half an hour or more. It wasn't until we went over and sat on the bench near the stone frog that the strangeness of it all struck Lucy too. We sat there and chatted, and she kind of looked around from time to time not knowing what to do. The wind picked up a little bit and Lucy got down to make one more perfunctory round of the equipment. But her heart wasn't in it and she only made it halfway up the steps to the slide. Instead she came over and without saying she wanted to go home let it be known that it was time for us to leave.

So we strolled home just as slowly as we had strolled to the swings, and we looked at all the same things we looked at on our way there. And now all those novel sights we saw when we came were part of her stock of familiar things as we returned, except that the lady had left the window and the car had gone from the driveway, but those streamers were still there, blowing more stiffly in the rising wind.

When we got home Lucy related to Johanna with all due enthusiasm what we saw and did, and within half an hour it was pouring.

The Research Pedestrian

The Economist ran an interesting piece in the July 19th print edition about the digitization of information and its effects on scholarly production. You can read it here: Great Minds Think (Too Much) Alike.

According to the article, a sociologist at the University of Chicago investigated the process and quality of research in this technological age and found that as more and more scholarly journals and their archives appear online, the scope and variety of citation in published articles has declined. In fact, the deeper the online archive is, the less likely it is that earlier articles will be used. Which is counterintuitive as the ease of access and culture of Web 2.0 would actually seem to contribute to the variety and texture of scholarly citation. What do we make of this?

The author of The Economist article speculates why this might be so:

Why this should be so remains unclear. It does not seem to have anything to do with economics. The same effect applied whether or not a journal had to be paid for. One explanation could be that indexing works by titles and authors alone, as happened with printed journals, forced readers to cast at least a cursory glance at work not immediately related to their own—or even that the mere act of flicking through a paper volume may have thrown up unexpected gems. This may have led people to make broader comparisons and to integrate more past results into their research.

The comments below the article offer some more theories on this phenomenon (not often kindly to the author of the article). One reason for this change might be simply that people are still less likely to see something that they found online as being worthy or authoritative and thus are less likely to cite it. Especially if it comes from an age when it was not "naturally" digitized." The very speed and ease of access somehow makes the work we do seem suspicious and the objects we uncover especially frail. This perception is something that research communities, and tenure committees as well, the latter of which The Economist author mentions, will need to grapple with.

It's as if there is still a latent belief that we must descend into the depths, into the basements, into the catacombs, the libraries, the stacks, passing by gatekeepers and guardians and an entire class of experts trained in their cataloguing and the maintenance of the bureaucracy of access. We don't trust that information has turned into light, that it is transmitted by wave and particle and not requisitioned by slip. If this were true, it would man that academia would be the last of the institutions of culture and society where this recognition has not become commonplace.

Cymande

Here's a great blog, Funky Sixteen Corners, I just came across while looking for information on the funk band Cymande.

Cymande, from the Calypso word meaning "Dove," was formed in the early 70s in Britain and is best known for their song "Bra," which you may have heard if you saw Spike Lee's 25th Hour.

Here's a great song called "Crawshay" (not "Crawshway"), not that I know what that means...

Anyway, I'm going to go look around that blog...

Anniversary of Andijan Massacre

Three years ago today in Andijan, Uzbekistan, government troops fired on unarmed civilians who had gathered in the main town square to protest ongoing government repression and discrimination against the muslim population by the government of Islam Karimov.

The precipitating event occurred earlier that day when a group of men broke in to the local prison, located not far from Babur Square, the gathering place of the protesters, to free 23 local businessmen who had been imprisoned on charges of belonging to a militant Islamist group, Akramiya. There is little evidence that these businessmen, all of whom were local and successful, belonged to either Akramiya or to Hizb ut-Tahrir, the separatist Pan Islamist organization trying to establish a caliphate in Central Asia, of which Akramiya was supposed to be a local version. The interests of the men and the concerns of the crowd were local and economic.

People gathered throughout the day, including women and children, and the crowd swelled to several thousand. Later that day, the government, fearful in the wake of the various so-called color revolutions that swept the region in the months previous, acted forcefully and without warning, opening fire on the gathered crowds who had been prevented from leaving the immediate vicinity by government-erected barricades. Troops placed armored personnel carriers along Navoi Prospekt to the south, Komil Yashin St. to the west and Kizil Bailok St to the East, drawing the crowd down Cholpon Prospekt, where soldiers fired from the rooftops, and where armored peronnel carriers moved in, and there were even reports of choppers, though much of the information was hard to get at the time, in the beginning, and especially in the days and weeks afterwards.

The official government body count stands at under 200, though I've seen reports as high as 700 and some estimates over a thousand.

In his just-published book Islam After Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia, Adeeb Khalid discusses the causes of the Andijan massacre in the context of a wider view of the clash of Bolshevik ideology and Muslim life in the region. In speculating why the government suddenly became so concerned about Akramiya to the point that they persecuted and arrested 23 of their members, Khalid writes:

So what triggered this sudden burst of persecution? Religiously conservative businessmen who display philanthropy may be significant pillars of American society, but in independent Uzbekistan, they can be threatening to the established order. At the very least, the state saw the businessmen as ideological competitors, but it may have had other reasons for their persecution as well. As we shall see below, the regime has sought to keep the control of much of Uzbekistan's economic activity in the hands of a select few. The success of the Andijan businessmen was unacceptable to those who domiated the city's economy; the men's philanthropic activism made them suspect in the eyes of a state that seeks control over all public life; their piety provided the best possible pretext to frame them. Here is an extreme case of the state's construing unsanctioned piety as a threat and persecuting it.

Interview with Sneha Mistri

In addition to a successful pop career in the UK, including the 2004 hit “Intoxicating,” singer, dancer, choreographer, and lately Profesora Sneha Mistri has recently brought her unique brand of music and style to Spain. Since moving to Madrid, the versatile Mistri has been involved in a number of projects, including choreographing and appearing in Salvador Calvo’s 2007 film Masala. The title refers to the popular genre of Indian cinema that blends together elements of all the other genres and this might likewise refer to the way in which Mistri herself successfully blends music, dance, and film as well as a variety of cultures, influences, and styles in all that she does. In addition to choreographing large scale productions such as the recent and successful Suenos de Bollywood, Mistri also teaches Bollywood dance to Spanish locals.

You can check out her official website here and her MySpace page here.

She has just returned from Sweden where she performed in the Oriental Dance Fever Festival and she has graciously agreed to talk with us about her career, about Bollywood dance, and about the state of Pop music today.

Thank you so much for talking with us, Mistri.

How did you get your start as a singer and dancer? Which came first?

Dance came first. I’ve been dancing since I was about 7, started learning pieces for pop songs for the school fete. Then I started Indian classical and realised how many styles of dance made me feel so good, and that I was good at it. Choreographing and trying out new steps became a challenge for me. Of course, in school I was also in the choir, which I enjoyed a lot although I didn’t think of it as a career choice!

Tell us a little about your dance and musical influences.

I’m a pop girl through and through, with elements of everything else thrown in for good measure. I love music and songs that you can “perform” to. I was very much into show artists like Janet Jackson/Madonna/Michael because of the choreography involved. I became interested in Prince when a friend of mine sold me her Sign of the Times cd. I then got hooked on the idea of lyrics and meanings as well of the drama of a song. So all those influences together made me who I am I guess. Someone who can enjoy a song but can make drama out of it in a performance if that makes sense!!

How would you define “Bollywood” for an American audience?

Bollywood is an interesting genre because really in the history of American cinema, we’ve already been there. The old American musicals are basically what Bollywood movies are. The word Bollywood comes from the fusion of the word Hollywood and Bombay which is the centre of the Indian film industry (it’s now been changed to Mumbai but I don’t think we’ll change the word to Mollywood!) A traditional Bollywood movie is family oriented, with something for everyone. Up to 10 songs with full dance choreography, stories of love, deceit, rich, poor……it’s another reason these movies are called “Masala” movies. Everything thrown in!

What drew you to Spain?

I did see an opportunity here to bring Bollywood to Spain. Whereas in the UK the whole Bollywood thing exploded onto the commercial market about 7 years ago, it’s just starting here and I thought I could be one of the first to enjoy the wave!

What’s the reception been like in Spain for Bollywood dance and music? Is there a Desi community in Madrid?

There is an India community here and also a Bangladeshi community but it’s still very much in the minority. Most of my students and people who come and see the show are Spanish.

How is living in Spain different than living in London?

Well living in the city of Madrid has its similarities to London but the weather is the biggest difference. It’s amazing the mindset of a person when the sun is shining. Everything seems a lot more positive and less depressing as you can sometimes feel in London. Of course people are still rushing around, but it’s definitely a slower pace here, especially when you go out of the city.

I’m in Brooklyn where the weather is bad and it’s rushed, so let’s change the subject. Tell us about your involvement in the film Masala. How did that come about? What is the movie about? What role do you play?

I was introduced to the director of the movie through a student of mine (she was his ex-girlfriend). She may have mentioned me to him and at that time he was looking for someone to work with him on a scene in his movie. It was basically a Bollywood dream sequence to be filmed in Madrid that summer. It was sheer coincidence that this happened. The movie is basically a story of a group of kids from differing ethnic backgrounds (Latino, Indian, Chinese etc) who go to a school that is going to close down. The story follows their private lives and dreams as well as their lives together in the school. I ended up singing the song for the dream sequence and appearing in the scene.

How was it working on a movie set? As glamorous as all that, no doubt.

Working in film is never as glamorous as they make out. I’ve worked on film and TV and you only remember the waiting around with a few minutes of filming. We were filming in August in Madrid which can hit 35 degree C and so it was a hot hot hot day and shoot. Of course it’s always fun on set as you can meet some great people.

Would you like to do more film work?

Yes, I do enjoy this medium a lot. I like the team work and the process. Of course it takes time but the end result is always fascinating.

In addition to introducing Spain to Bollywood dance I wonder if there are any Spanish influences you have picked up during your time in Madrid, either music or dance?

I love Spanish rhythms and their passion in music and dance. I have bits of Flamenco in my show and I am planning to learn Flamenco.

What similarities, if any, do you see between Bollywood dance and Flamenco?

Bollywood dance is a fusion of so many forms that its not a question of similarities, it’s a question of whether you include this form in your choreography. A lot of the music in Bollywood now is using a lot of Latin, Arabic and African rhythms and so you will see some aspects of this in the dance form too!

In what ways do all of these cultural influences, not only Spanish, but British, Indian, American pop etc. inform your work?

You are always influenced by all around you. As an artist you take in as much as you can to better your work. It would be sad to say that I know everything about my art as that’s impossible. You can always learn more and better yourself.

Novelist Vikram Chandra writing recently about the uniqueness of what he called the “Indo Anglian novel,” described it as a "form that grows out of interactions between Indian and western forms of narrative." Do you see this same kind of vibrant interaction working in Indian music, pop music in particular?

The problem with pop music is that ultimately it is a commercial product and so you can never be sure what the intention of that singer or writer is. It’s about selling music and image. That makes me sound a little cynical but I totally understand the industry. A lot of the pop music in India is very much influenced by the American industry because the kids are now watching MTV; they are very much clued up about the world and so want that to be part of their music. I was in India in January and was amazed at the music videos I was seeing. The quality is comparable to the American music industry even down to scantily clad backing dancers and BMWs! If this is the vibrant interaction that Chandra speaks of, then I guess it is!

Tell us about Suenos de Bollywood.

I’ve always wanted to put together a dance show and that’s what Suenos de Bollywood is.

It’s a journey through the different sides of Bollywood music and dance from a very classical style to a very funky one and everything in between. My style of dance and choreography is such that Bollywood is perfect for me as I can be so free in what I want to express as there are no limits. There is no “typical” Bollywood dance move -- it’s what you make it! I previewed the show last year and it was a huge success, I’m now tweaking it a little (a bit more time for costume changes is necessary!) And I will be performing it for 5 nights in July with my 8 dancers. It’s gonna be a lot of fun!

Do you think Bollywood has come into its own as an industry or maybe more importantly as a cultural force in the UK and the US?

Definitely. I can also see that in the quality of its movies and music and genres. There are some movies made specifically for the international market. The huge shows that they do are to keep the international fan base happy; there’s a lot of money to be made.

What music do you listen to these days? Are there any artists out there that blow you away? What do you think of Amy Winehouse for instance?

I appreciate Amy Winehouse a lot. Her voice is stunning and I do have her first album Frank and bits of the latest. Unfortunately, as an artist I don’t support her because of the choices she’s making. I really do believe that artists have a duty to be better role models. Of course we are not all perfect but we can make better choices. She has so much going for her, and she’s throwing it all away. It makes me sad that she’s wasting her talent. I listen to a lot of Bollywood music these days purely cos of my work. I’m constantly choreographing for courses and shows. When I take some down time, I like listening to R&B, Hip Hop, Pop, anything. I was at a great concert last week, a Spanish group called Chambao. They are unbelievable – mixing Pop with Flamenco. I highly recommend them.

I think I read that you were in London last summer. Did you get a chance to see any of Prince’s 21 Nights in London gig at the O2 arena? What was that like?

Prince is one of those artists that you appreciate more when you see him live. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve seen him many many times, over 30 for sure, in concerts as well as aftershow gigs. I saw him 5 nights last year and 4 aftershows and I took along with me a different friend each night who had never seen him live. I love seeing their reaction after the gigs because like always he blows them away. I don’t think you can get bored of his performance when he gives it his all, although some of the 20 min jazz jam sessions can get a bit tiresome!

Do you get back to London often?

I come back when I need to, every few months or so to see family and friends and if there are any projects for me.

Where do you consider home these days?

I think just for the language, the UK will always be home, although living here in Spain I’m very happy and content. It’s just that being around people speaking English gives you a different confidence and I only get that in the UK.

What projects are you working on right now?

Basically planning the show in July is taking up a lot of my time! My rehearsals start in a week or 2 so I have to start making all my ideas more concrete!

What does 2008 hold for Mistri?

I’m teaching a lot of intensive dance courses all around Spain. I’m very lucky in that I’m getting to see Spain this way. The people are great! I’m hoping to do a tour with the show later on this year, who knows!

Okay, so you’ve conquered Spain, when will you be bringing Bollywood to the States?

When I get a call, I’ll be right over!

Blog Til You Drop

Blogging: A Cautionary Tale...

Biomorphous Black Monster: Slapdash and Ambiguous

Here's an interesting story out of Russia about a proposed monument to former president of Russia Boris Yeltsin that was rejected out of hand by the competition committee and by representatives of Yeltsin's Family.

After a competition that involved over 6,000 entries, the winner was declared to be the young artist Dmitri Kavarga, whose black metal sculpture was called Biomorphous Black Monster.

Here's a picture I found of the biomorphous black monster on the BBC News website:



It looks like some kind of infernal ab machine, if that isn't redundant. As the article points out, the stated reason for rejection of the BBM was that it has not been 10 years since Yeltsin's death, though why then they were having a contest at all is a little puzzling. In rejecting the proposed monument, a spokesperson for the State Duma's commission for monumental art also called Kavarga's work "slapdash and ambiguous," so apparently there were at least some aesthetic considerations that were made as well.

Kavarga himself said of his work that it "symbolized de­struction and break-down, the swallowing-up of orderliness by chaos." (Again, very much like an ab machine.) And this is a view of Yeltsin's reign that is not unheard of. For anyone interested in learning more about Russia in the nineties with Yeltsin at the helm I highly recommend Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinsky's wonderful book The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy, a gripping and detailed account of the slapdash and ambiguous Yeltsin years.

The statue would have stood in Lyubyanka Square, not far from Red Square and the Kremlin, and in front of the old KGB headquarters, currently the FSB headquarters. For many years, the square was the home to a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, which was the muscle behind the Red Terror.

New Kid on the Block

Lucy played with the neighborhood kids for the first time the other day. I mean she plays already, of course, whether at daycare or at home etc. And she has friends, though they are mainly kids of our friends; but yesterday was the first time that she played with the neighborhood kids.

We were walking home from daycare and she saw this older girl (about 8 or 9?) whom she knows slightly, and her brothers, also young -- one is about Lucy's age and the other may be 5 or 6 -- out in front of their house kicking a ball against their front stoop, and she was mesmerized. This was happening a few doors down from ours and she wanted to go down and see (she wouldn't go inside) and when we got closer she just stood there frozen, watching. The girl smiled at her and invited her over, but she didn't go, though I could see her become more alert. I asked her if she wanted to go home, hoping that would prompt her to join the kids, but she shook her head and remained planted, watching them kicking the ball.

She drifted closer to them, almost imperceptibly, while holding onto my finger, trying to be cool about it, but she wouldn't break free and go over. Suddenly, she looked up at me and mouthed "My ball," and pulled me home. She wanted to get her ball and bring it outside. So we went inside and found her lime green rubber ball and when we got back outside she started kicking the ball as best she could, to me mainly, and I kicked it back to her, but it generally went in the direction of the kids. And she wanted to play closer to where they were still playing. And she kept getting closer, until she blended in with them, and then suddenly they were playing together, and I saw the next years of her life laid out there...

I Threw Out 50 Books Today...

It wasn't easy but it had to be done. We are bursting at the seams and need to lighten our load.The books I threw out were all old yellowed paperbacks, many with either water damage, bent or ripped or missing pages, or markings too unintelligible to ever be of use again. Some were "doubles" and some were cheap (usually Dover) editions of works that I had in other formats. They weren't even books that could be given away. I would be turned away at any respectable bookstore and probably run off my street if I was to try to have a stoop sale.

But even with the guilt free knowledge of the necessity of it all it was a melancholy day. Out went William Blake; out went Thomas Traherne; Plato was discarded three times over, Edgeworth twice. A water-damaged Mary Shelley was hard to part with as I don't know when I might see her again, though frankly a marked up Norton Critical Edition of Percy Bysshe was a relief to be rid of. I didn't even realize I owned Tom Clancy. Well now I don't. Andre Hodeir argued with me fiercely, but I put him out next to Conrad and some Cavalier poets. The Blind Owl was left to consider the state of dark wisdom from the perch of the Thursday night curb. I threw out 3 copies of Madame Bovary, leaving two behind (all 5 translated by Steegmuller). I threw out a very old very yellowed paperback copy of Harry Kemelman's Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet, a book I acquired more than 10 years ago at the American Studies Department of the University of Innsbruck, where I rescued it from being discarded (it being yellow even then). My goal was 100. I had a quota and conviction. But the more I pruned, the harder it got. I had to stop thinking like a collector and consider the likely use these books would get, the use that *I* personally could give them or get from them, and only such twisted and perverse thinking allowed me to proceed. But it was bibliocide, and my conscience kicked in just as I got to around 50. I turned and looked at a semi-worn Rebecca West. I eyed the cover and the muscular paragraphs and the lithe sentences. I put the book down, and that day I threw out no more.

I can only imagine what it would be like to decimate a library like this, not just a collection. In some ways it would be easier to weed, because you could submit the task to the discipline of criteria and rules, and not get caught up in the erotics of it, the sensual nature of paper and bindings and memories, and the stark authority of it all. You could simply deselect a set number of books and mark each one for reassignment according to such practical matters as how infrequently it has been looked at, or requested, or touched, or how much dust it had accumulated, the dust of its own disintegrating self, loosed from the body of the book and redescended in a certain thickness. As if that was a bad thing.

Lucy and the Senator from New York; or, To Think that I Saw it on 5th Ave.

We went to the Saint Patrick Day's parade today (don't ask) in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and had a memorable time. I took my 2-year-old daughter Lucy along and told her we were going to see the "people in the street," in a tone that conveyed that this was something she might like. In fact, she seemed so eager to see the "people in the street" that she practically pulled me down to the corner herself once we got outside. Johanna had to catch up with us later.

We got there just as the lead police horses were passing by. At the sight of this and the drum corp that followed, Lucy froze in amazement and remained that way for the remainder of the parade. She was most entranced by those horses, by these two clowns who were carrying a green banner and honking, and by this giant eagle that was strolling down the street waving to people. She kept looking down the street after it had gone saying "Where'd he go?" She was also glad to get a yo-yo that was handed to her by an employee of Commerce bank and which was emblazoned with their logo. She later saw a green balloon fly by that someone had let go and she pointed at it and followed it with her eyes as it drifted into the cold blue sky. When the balloon was gone she cast her eyes back down to the street and as she did she noticed these three teenage boys who had taken up a perch on the top of a building across the street. She pointed to them and kept saying "look at the guys!" This was an eventful day.

Towards the end of the parade, after about a half dozen bagpipe bands, several vintage cars, a lot of green hats and wigs, twirlers, vans, the aforementioned giant eagle, flags, and vendors, we saw Senator Charles Schumer walking up the street. Apparently he was born in Brooklyn and still resides in Park Slope, and he was here today in Bay Ridge paying his respects to the Irish.

Just as he and his retinue were passing in front of us, the parade paused. As the Senator was glancing around, looking for a target for his next wave, he saw Lucy who was in my arms in front of the Benjamin Moore paint store. He broke from his people and came over. He asked Lucy's name, complimented her shoes (which we had just bought her the day before at Payless - they are white faux-patent leather, with little mauve flowers on the straps...the Senator has remarkably good taste), and wistfully remembered when his daughters were young. It was a very nice moment and we were thrilled to have talked with him however briefly.

I didn't have the heart to tell Senator Schumer that Lucy is an avid Obama supporter, that every time she sees him on television or in the paper she shouts out enthusiastically, "Barack Obama!"

Kids today. Like I said, memorable etc.

Where My Nukes At?

Here's a story that would send chills down Ted Taylor's back.

The article recounts two "accidents" involving nuclear materials or parts for nuclear materials in the past year or so.

This article is from Thursday, March 27th 2008. Today (Friday) there is an OpEd cartoon in the New York Times about the legacy of Three Mile Island...





What do you think about either or both of these stories, bloggers?

Research Challenge

I can only find the opening lines of Andrei Sakharov's article "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom" online.

Can anyone do any better?

If you find the whole thing somewhere and post a link, that will count as a blog post.

If you write about it? Two.

He sounds here like a Creative Nonfiction writer...

We regard as "scientific" a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussions and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies, demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements.

The Arms of Orion

Here's some early video of testing that was done on the Orion project, which would have propelled spaceships and more to planets well beyond Mars.

Big Bombs, Big Bomb Makers, and the Sounds of Dissidence

Krystina at "For the Record" makes a good post here about the biggest bomb ever detonated by the Soviets or anyone, the so-called Tsar Bomba, which yielded 50 Mt and was tested in the Nova Zemblya (Russian for "New Land") archipelago on October 30th 1961, the same day as it happens that Stalin's body was removed from its privileged place inside Lenin's tomb to a lesser place outside, near a Kremlin wall. The Soviets claimed at the time to possess an even bigger bomb that would have yielded 100 Mt that they were holding in reserve and whose existence coupled with the testing of Tsar Bomba they were hoping would act as the mother of all deterrents.

This idea of building the biggest bomb possible as a means of ending the nuclear race, as preposterous as it seems, is something we saw in the youthful idealism (if we can call it that) of Ted Taylor as well, as McPhee describes it in The Curve of Binding Energy.

And it seems that the Russians had their own Taylor just as they had their bomb; for one of the scientists who worked on Tsar Bomba was Andrei Sakharov, who would go on to become one of the leading Soviet dissidents and opponent of proliferation.

Sakharov was also a critic of anti-ballistic missile defense seeing it as fueling the arms race and perpetuating the cold war. Not to mention that he saw it as a policy that would inexorably lead to nuclear confrontation. ABM defense was to Sakharov what safeguards were to Taylor.

Sakharov's words and activities led to his arrest and internal exile in 1980, from which he was not to be released until December of 1986 by Mikhail Gorbachev, during the early years of perestroika and glasnost.

And for those of us who wonder and worry (as does the Amazon reviewer) about the potential dangers of breached nuclear secrets documented in McPhee's 1974 book for all to see and the danger such openness generally poses to an open and democratic society, we might consider these words from Sakharov:

The second basic thesis is that intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture.

Sakharov died on December 14th 1989, 164 years to the day after the Decembrist uprising shook the Russian monarchy in Moscow.

"And poor old Homer blind, blind as a bat"

An Op Ed in today's New York Times provides a different perspective on the downfall of Eliot Spitzer and the subsequent rise of David Paterson, the blind, African American Lieutenant Governor suddenly thrust into the spotlight The mainstream media has largely mined the incident for all its salacious details regarding Spitzer and "Kristen," reviving a kind of news tabloidism not seen since the mid-nineties, but Stephen Kuusisto here gives us our first real view of Paterson and attempts to discuss what he says will be harder for the public to deal with than even his race: his blindness.

Kuusisto, who is blind himself and thus speaks from experience and with authority, describes the challenges that Paterson faces every day:

I can’t afford forgotten things. Blind folks must constantly keep track of what we learn and memorize our surroundings. For us, an unfamiliar setting that a sighted person could map out in a glance is a puzzle that requires agile problem-solving. On occasion we even need to ask strangers for advice.

And what is perhaps more important for our immediate purposes, and I suppose related in some obscure way, is that Kuusisto also teaches Creative Nonfiction (which the NYT editors see fit to put in lower case) at the University of Iowa.

And I was struck by how all that Kuusisto says here applies to the writer in general, but how it particularly applies to the Creative Nonfiction writer, who is constantly probing what they see, the received, the perceived. Writers must not take the world around them as an end, but get beneath it in whatever way they can. Rather than being complacent in what they have seen, the Creative Nonfiction writer must constantly ask "What is it I have seen?" to reapply an interrogative formulated by Francois Hartog.

The urge to see and the lack of satisfaction with what we do see should guide all of our writing efforts, as we see in this famous account of a student learning to see what was before his eyes.

Henry Street Settlement and The Big Give

Yesterday on The Oprah Winfrey show there was a segment promoting Oprah's new philanthropic reality show "The Big Give." It showed a brief clip of a shipment of shoes being delivered to The Henry Street Settlement.

Here's a link to an article that says more about it.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

John William Waterhouse's painting "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is based on John Keats' poem of the same name, which I have linked to below.

Describe what you see in the painting and as you do so be careful not to tell me a story about what you see.

How does Waterhouse adapt Keats' poem? Can you identify the moment, the stanza, perhaps even the line that he chooses to represent?

How do you know?

John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

Still in NYC

Here's a video that harks back to the days of Candid Camera...



Performance artists and installation artists have always been drawn to the activity and bustle of NYC. Not too long ago we had Christos and the orange gates that he spread through central park like construction cones on the BQE. Now we get this group performance piece that has the opposite effect: rather than pathways being highlighted in bright flappy orange, human barriers suddenly materialize in the paths of thousands of New Yorkers in one of the most heavily trafficked places in the city.

But although the stunt is revealed at the end of the clip and people clap, perhaps the best analogy is not the "gotcha" humor of Candid Camera so much as the clever hoaxes recorded in Herbert Asbury's All Around the Town. I am thinking especially of "The Sawing Off of Manhattan Island," a story about two clever con men who, according to Asbury and his source, manage to convince a large number of people to take seriously the notion of cutting Manhattan Island off, floating it out to sea, hooking it past Governor's Island, and floating it back to reconnect to the mainland. The con men convince people that this is the only way to redistribute the weight that had thrown lower Manhattan out of balance in the 1800s because of increased traffic and construction.

The story climaxes with thousands of ready-to-saw New Yorkers gathered in midtown waiting to take their orders from the two con men, who by this time have long since absconded, their hoax having been played out.

Of course, the hoax is directed as much at the gullible reader as it is at the contemporary New Yorkers who are left wandering around, no doubt seething and filled with thoughts of vengeance and humiliation. Who, after all, would believe that such mass gullibility could exist? Who in their right mind would follow such patently absurd logic? How could two con men mobilize such large numbers of civic minded people in a scheme so hairbrained?

Anyway, the piece of performance art in this clip is more a hoax than anything, especially since the target is not a single person like it is on CC, but rather a large number of people, who are confronted with the unprecedented notion that there can be beauty in stasis and who applaud in relief when movement resumes.

I think on some level any good art is hoax.

Silent Storm: Poems of Obliteration

I found this online, a poem that was written by selective obliteration of text on a page.

Here's the main page that describes the process.

It's an intriguing notion, though not one new to poets: the idea of creating from what is already there, writing through erasure, the act of restricting language to meter and rhyme and somehow adding to languages power in the process of studied subtraction.

The American poet Ronald Johnson wrote a book length poem of obliteration using words taken from an 1892 edition of Pardise Lost that he found in a bookstall in Seattle, WA. Johnson's poem is called radi os.

Here's a sample from radi os that I doubt I will be able to get the spacing correct on, though the line breaks should be close:

and thy words so strange


double-formed, and

phantasm



Surprised
In darkness


Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized



in secret
growing
And fields

Through all the Empyrean.
headlong
Into this Deep;
I also:
key

Without my opening.

Johnson contrives this poem by the erasure of words from the following passage from Book 2 of Milton's poem, in a scene between Sin and Satan before a council in Hell:

"So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand,
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds
What it intends, till first I know of thee
What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why,
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son.
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable than him and thee."
T' whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:--
"Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul?--once deemed so fair
In Heaven, when at th' assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed,
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized
All th' host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse--thee chiefly, who, full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,
Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st
With me in secret that my womb conceived
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose,
And fields were fought in Heaven: wherein remained
(For what could else?) to our Almighty Foe
Clear victory; to our part loss and rout
Through all the Empyrean. Down they fell,
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down
Into this Deep; and in the general fall
I also: at which time this powerful key
Into my hands was given, with charge to keep
These gates for ever shut, which none can pass
Without my opening.

This is a classic epiphany scene. Satan doesn't recognize the "snaky sorceress" in front of him, so she reminds him of who she is and where she came from. She tells how during the Satan-led rebellion in Heaven -- Satan's greatest moment thus far, even in failure -- and before the legions of rebellious angels and gathered seraphim she sprung out of the left side of Satan's forehead, clad in armor, frightening momentarily the heavenly hosts, who are the ones who named her Sin.

This scene is a dark redaction of various biblical and mythological accounts. Allusion is made to the holy family, to the trinity, to the virgin birth, and, of course, to the classic myth of the birth of Aphrodite, who emerged fully clad in armor from the forehead of Zeus.

Or was Milton perhaps not simply "alluding"? To create this passage set in hell, Milton obliterates all that is good from the story of Athena's birth. He obliterates the sanctity of the various biblical generation stories; and finally he obliterates the very act of recognition itself on the part of Satan, who doesn't know his own offspring until she explains who she is, and who in another mythological incarnation represented the painful but divine birth of wisdom.

Johnson hints at the mechanism of allusion through the "double-formed words" and "phantasms," but he obliterates all reference to a lack of recognition, thus restoring a special kind of wisdom and sight that Milton obliterated and had obliterated in him.

Amazing Memory Man

Here's an interesting story from CNN about a guy who remembers everything.

In a letter to his brother, the twentieth century Irish novelist James Joyce once described imagination as the constant reworking of the material of memory, or something like that, and Joyce seems to have had a phenomenal memory and a prodigious ability to rework it.

It is this reworking faculty that makes memory something creative, something sacred. Otherwise it is just like a really good scrapbook.

The article mentions another woman, known only to the public by the initials A.J., who also had an astounding memory and who describes it like this:

That woman is in her mid-40s and was identified only by the initials A.J. She told McGaugh that whenever she hears a date, memories from that date in previous years flood her mind like a running movie. The phenomenon, she laments, is "nonstop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting."

"Most have called it a gift, but I call it a burden," she wrote. "I run my entire life through my head every day and it drives me crazy!!!"

Punctuation in the News

It's not often that punctuation makes the news; here's a story about semicolons that you all might find interesting: from The New York Times. I like this section:

In fact, when Mr. Neches [the marketing manager who wrote the sign] was informed by a supervisor that a reporter was inquiring about who was responsible for the semicolon, he was concerned.

“I thought at first somebody was complaining,” he said.

Typical New Yorker. I'm curious, though, about that 2004 case in San Francisco. I guess it's appropriate that those who would try to prevent two people from being joined would be undone by a judge wielding a semicolon.

Here's an online semicolon quiz you can take to pass the time:

Quiz;

What is Missing From This Post?

A hint: "I am most common of all, and though I am hard to do without you probably don't know that I am missing."

So far, you all do a fantastic job with your blogs! Onward and upward! (Sorry for my colloquialisms. lol) I think that this kind of writing (blogging) is good for what you will do in all your work at St John's. Sports and fashion blogs? Most common, yah. Both flood my blogroll. But both sports and fashion blogs should avoid (Important word! This post has a void in it...) only including information that is got from tv and such , but mostly, I can say good work! Watch now how I do it (blog) in an unusual way, mainly so you can grasp various ways that you might blog on your own. (Or not.)

This kind of writing (this particular blog post) is painful. Avoiding that which is most crucial, it's as if I was doing without a vital part of my soul. Just this past Monday, as I first thought of doing this, as I was crafting it in my mind and as it took off, I thought I would go crazy. I would walk around and sights and sounds of that which is missing would fill my mind I would stray, not pay any mind to walking, and so bump into things. It was foolish, but it shows how much I took this thing for an important task. Okay, not "important," but it is a task that has a vital point to it.

Anyway, can any of you say what is missing from this post? (And no, it's not "humor," hahah). If you know, contact my St John's account.

Or...do a post just as I did (75 words+, minimum) that mimics a singular and important lack in this post...and I'll post to yours with a yay or a nay.

Good luck.

Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch

On January 21st, Marie Smith Jones, the last remaining speaker of the Alaskan Eyak language, died. You can find the story here in The Economist, where the author gives us a linguistic snapshot of the world of Smith Jones:

BEYOND the town of Cordova, on Prince William Sound in south-eastern Alaska, the Copper River delta branches out in silt and swamp into the gulf. Marie Smith, growing up there, knew there was a particular word in Eyak, her language, for the silky, gummy mud that squished between her toes. It was c'a. The driftwood she found on the shore, 'u'l, acquired a different name if it had a proper shape and was not a broken, tangled mass. If she got lost among the flat, winding creeks her panicky thoughts were not of north, south, east or west, but of “upriver”, “downstream”, and the tribes, Eskimo and Tlingit, who lived on either side. And if they asked her name it was not Marie but Udachkuqax*a'a'ch, “a sound that calls people from afar”.

An older article from The Economist says that at least one language is lost every day.

A Life in Books

On a corner of Court Street in Cobble Hill, there is a used bookstore that is owned and run by a man who lurks on the threshold and looks like a trapper. His scraggly beard and distracted air give him the appearance of some mad Russian prophet out of Dostoevsky. He has the social graces and the bodily twitches of a hermit, but he knows every book in his store.

I've found some good things in his store. It's a corner store and so has ample space and the inside is divided and arranged in a labyrinth of aisles lined with a shelves and piles. I suspect that were one to climb to the storage space above one would find an endless stretch of shelves, appearing kaleidoscopically to the climber, honeycombed to infinity. His shelf system has long ago been strained to the breaking point by the new books that constantly arrive, dropped on the doorstep. Although perhaps "system" is too much to describe the canyons of books that have overflowed the shelves and drifted to the sides of the aisles. The walls are made of books.

I avoided the place at first -- though I love any bookstore -- because I resented the apparent disresepct with which the owner treated the books that came to him, the way they were heaped and handled. He would display them in front of the store on these old and rickety card tables, still in the boxes he found them in when they were abandoned on his doorstep. Sometimes he would put them outside even when it was drizzling. He also doesn't distinguish between yellowed paperbacks and books with cloth bindings. Instead he just piles them together indiscrimminately.

The piles always seem unprocessed, the ones outside anyway. They are arranged in no categories that I can tell. More like a permanent flea market than a book store really. Part of the reason for that, no doubt, is that most of the books he receives are donated from locals, from people trying to lighten their loads during a move, or from former graduate students who shed their books as quickly as they shed the unpleasantness of the graduate student life. No one person could have the time or energy to organize all these books. It would take 15 years or more.

But I did come to like the store and to respect certain things about the owner. For one, he sets his own hours. He's rarely open during the day and seems only to emerge around 4 or 5 and then stay open until, I don't know, I've seen him standing in front of the door as late as 10 or 11. He also closes during the peak months of summer for two months and then opens in mid September. This holiday being announced in a fine handwriting in black magic marker on a crumpled piece of paper hung in the dusty shielded window. That must be a great way to make a living. And whenever he's closed, when I walk by, I miss the store and the books inside.

I think I like buying books more than anything, almost more than reading them, though these are very different activities. Reading a book is to share an experience, not necessarily the experience portrayed in the book, whether it is fiction or nonfiction, but the experience of someone who has sat down and taken the time to shape their thoughts on the page. Collecting is a different kind of activity. I sometimes buy a book knowing that I probably will not read it, but always with the impulse that I might, in some unforeseen situation, need to. Buying books is for me a collector's activity. In collecting books we amass and store the experiences of others; it's a kind of recovery effort, a desperate search and rescue. I have very few books that are worth anything, except to me. And I guess in some ways what is true for me might very well be true of the owner of this local bookstore as well, whose role seems to be that of a collector, a wanton gatherer, a Maxwell's demon of text, a bibliophiliac.

I once bought in this store an old Modern Library collection of Russian short stories I found. Among these stories was one I first read many years ago called "The Bet," a story about an older Banker and a young Lawyer, who, at a party the Banker is giving, get into a heated discussion about the death penalty. The Banker feels that life imprisonment is less humane than the death penalty because the death penalty kills you instantly while life imprisonment draws the life out of you slowly. The Lawyer disagrees saying that "to live somehow is better than not to live at all." In order to "prove" their respective opinions they arrange this bet whereby the Banker stakes two million roubles that the Lawyer will be unable to stay in prison for 15 years. His "imprisonment" will occur in a lodge somewhere on the grounds of the Banker's estate, where he can be observed.

One of the stipulations is that the lawyer will be able to have all the books that he wants. We then see how the lawyer spends his 15 years in solitary confinement, and we witness his psychological ups and downs, as we see him either lying on his bed doing nothing, weeping, or, alternately, reading and learning with a fevered exuberance. He plans his time carefully and strategically in the first year, denying himself the pleasure of smoking, for example, so, he says "as not to despoil the air inside" his room. After 5 years, he shows signs of weakening, but then recovers in years 6 through 10, as his struggle with captivity continues.

Towards the end of his confinement he spends a good year reading nothing but the bible. Then in his final years he begins to order books haphazardly, randomly, books that seem to get opened and set aside, cross referenced, abandoned. All of this we guess by the way we see them scattered about on the table, the chairs, and the floor of the lodge, heaped and handled.

The Banker has been observing the lawyer over the years with growing concern, and is near frantic as the lawyer approaches the end of his term. Over the years the Banker has lost much of his fortune to gambling and speculation and paying this bet now will ruin him. Out of desperation, he decides that he must kill the lawyer. The night before the bet is up, he sneaks into the lodge to smother the man. As he is about to commit the deed, he sees a letter that the Lawyer has written (in a "fine hand") and decides to read it first.

The letter is a manifesto of disillusionment, as the Lawyer first regurgitates everything that he has read in the books that have been his sole companion over the years, and then repudiates both earthly happiness and wisdom as being fleeting and illusory. The letter is shocking both to the Banker and to us as we realize that we have never really known, even though we have followed his reading over the years, what has been going on in the lawyer's head. It is a letter of despair, in some ways more desperate in its tone and message than a suicide note. He ends by stating his intent to leave his prison just before the time is up and so renounce the bet and the money.

In response, the Banker weeps, returns the letter, and leaves the man alone and alive. The next morning when the guards announce that they saw the lawyer escaping over the garden wall, the Banker removes the letter from the desk before anyone can see it and locks it in a fireproof safe. Just as the Banker has been watching the Lawyer in his prison and communicating with him through notes through the small window made just for that purpose, so the Lawyer has been observing the world through the windows of books. Neither man makes any sense of what they see, as they are both cut off from life in ways they are not always aware of. I have always wondered why the Banker puts that letter in a fireproof safe at the end of the story. Wouldn't he want to trumpet the news of the Lawyer's renunciation of the bet to all the world?

But I guess this is a story not only of two strongly willed and foolish men, but about small spaces and windows in and out: it's about the room in which the lawyer is confined and in which he is observed by both us and by the Banker. The books he reads are windows onto the world he cannot touch, just as they are windows into the minds of others, though they are windows that can't ever be opened. "The Bet" is also about the small space of the human skull and how it both can and cannot be peered into by others, who seek to understand us through our words and through our actions. In the letter, after stating how much beauty he has read of in the books he ordered, the Lawyer says that he feels like all the wisdom in the world has been compressed into a small compass in his head, or as a better translation has it, a small lump at the base of his skull. That the Banker puts the letter, the one true window that we have into the Lawyer's mind, back into the enclosed space of a safe, is somehow appropriate and perhaps even part of the great power of this story. The letter is returned back into a confined space, hermetically sealed, closed off, it never gets released to the world. As if Pandora's box was being resealed forever. As if the world was not ready for such a bleak assessment. For his part, the Lawyer is seen by the watchmen climbing over the garden wall. He disappears and one wonders where he goes...

This local bookstore reminded me of this story for some reason, not only because it was there I bought this book. There the walls themselves are made of books, and it is owned and run by a man who is a mirror image physically of what I imagine the lawyer would look like, unkempt and raggedy, as if after 15 years of not minding himself; but who now comes and goes as he pleases, who can most often be seen slouching at the threshold with a cigarette, blowing the smoke outwards into the evening air, so, I guess, as not to despoil the air inside.

The Hawley Arms is Burning...

Last night, around 8:00 GMT flames swept through Camden Town, North London. As firetrucks descended on the area locals formed bucket lines to try to quench the massive blaze. The fire was thought to have started in a market stall just behind The Hawley Arms, a pub located near the Camden Lock bridge and famous for its clientele, which includes, among others, singer Amy Winehouse.

The Camden Town district is known for its nightlife. The marketplace is a mecca for alternative lifestyles and vibrant subcultures and young people vying for the mantle of cool and alternative. The emo, the goth, and the otherwise disaffected congregate in clusters of cool in clubs such as The World's End, The Underworld, The Good Mixer, Koko, The Purple Turtle, Dublin Castle, and the Oh! Bar. One wonders which, if any, of these hotspots was the inspiration for the cutting satire of Amy's "Eff Me Pumps."

By 8:10 last night reports were coming in that the fire had spread from the market stall to surrounding buildings. Half an hour later witnesses saw flames leaping 30 feet above the buildings, as the number of firetrucks responding reached at least 20 and rumors of people trapped inside began to circulate. These rumors were dispelled early on as the smoke cleared, and as of today there were no reported fatalities.

The Hawley Arms, standing adjacent to the source of the blaze, was badly damaged. Pictures surfaced on the internet almost immediately showing the building shrouded in smoke that glowed with the flames beneath. The pub was at first thought to be completely destroyed, but by morning the damage was upgraded to severe, and patrons voiced hope that it would be back in business soon.

An article in The Independent from last summer tells more about the famous Hawley Arms and its star clientele, including Winehouse who was seen sometimes in the company of Kelly Osbourne and sometimes fresh out of the clinic.

Amy wouldn't have been at the Arms tonight in any event, as she is scheduled to be performing at the Grammy awards in a few hours, though she will sing from London, appearing live via satellite, not from the Staples Center. Her recent and publicly broadcast troubles with drugs and with the law have derailed her career in a number of ways, forcing her recently to cancel tour dates and appearances. Musicians from George Michael to Prince have reached out to the singer with offers of assistance of whatever kind she might need, having been touched by her talent, and there seems to be a general feeling of sadness and inevitability among friends, fans, and fellow musicians alike who have been watching her in the past few months. The US State Department even reversed at the last minute a ruling that prevented her from entering the country to perform at the awards in an odd moment of compassionate bureaucracy, but, according to her publicist it was too late for her to appear in L.A.

Her album Back to Black is up for Album of the Year and she received a total of 6 nominations altogether. For those of you not familiar with her album, it is striking for its retro-soul feel, its Saturn-like digestion of the music of the past, and its compelling lyrics that have gotten so much attention for (amazingly!) drawing on or otherwise relating to her own life and experience.

Here's hoping she doesn't perform the song that is nominated for record of the year, Rehab, as it is too easily a joke for the tabloids as it is, and doesn't give an accurate notion of what the album is about anyway. Here's another song from her freshman effort Frank that you might like better:



Winehouse seems to be welcome fodder for tabloids these days, who hang on her every failing with a thinly-veiled glee and offer it up for consumption; it's as bad as those who stand around watching a fire and fan the flames of rumor by saying, with well-intentioned though unfounded certainty, that there are people dying inside The Hawley Arms.

It's Like Pulling Teeth

In his essay, "Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character," Philip Lopate warns that when writing in the first person we should "resist coming across at first as absolutely average." We have to approach autobiography, in other words, like any other writing task, and instead of describing the all-too-familiar or documenting the mundane, we should instead be mindful of the unusual, the odd, and the offbeat.

In his 1924 autobiography Everywhere, Arnold Henry Savage-Landor Landor, the famed traveler and painter and grandson of Walter Savage-Landor, describes the following moment from his childhood.

There was in our garden a big tree, a Mespilus Japonica. The lowest branch was too high for me to reach. The tree was laden with fruit. I went to the stable, took a long feather strap and threw it astride the lowest branch, then held one end firmly between my teeth while I jumped up, pulling at the same time with my hands the other end of the strap, thinking I could thus lift myself up. Result -- my eight front teeth were torn from my gums. With a bleeding mouth I picked up my incisors which lay scattered on the ground, and ran to show them to my horrified mother. You're lucky you're not seven yet," she said. I was then four and a half years of age.

Lawrence Lessig: Three Stories on Their Way to an Argument

Postcard from Syria

I received a postcard the other day from Syria, from a friend who has been traveling in the Middle East. I didn't know he was there.

I've known him for many years. We both come from big Irish Catholic families. We went to grade school together and had many of the same classes, though I don't remember which ones. In 3rd grade we both had a crush on the same girl. We took swimming lessons together, went to religious ed, etc.

He's one of those friends who I don't see or hear from for many years at a time, but when we do get together it's like we pick up in the middle of a conversation that has left off a only few minutes ago.

The fact that I didn't know he was in the Middle East means very little. I remember one time when we were in college I called his house for some reason and got one of his younger brothers on the phone. I asked if K. was there. The younger brother turned his head away from the phone without covering the mouthpiece and yelled out "Is K here?! It's David!" I then heard a return yell in the background (yelling being the preferred means of communication in both of our families) "He's in Venezuela!" The young voice came back to the phone and said "He's in Venezuela." "Okay." I said, and hung up. I knew there was no use asking when he would be back since they probably didn't know themselves.

While in college, we traveled to the USSR together. This was back in the heady days of glasnost and perestroika, not that we knew what those were, or cared particularly. I remember that when I would take the subways in Moscow, I would always get people coming up to me and asking directions, whereas when he walked around he looked very much the American. (He used to wear this t-shirt with a big picture of Opus from Bloom County on it.) And yet for some reason he always seemed more at home there, more comfortable meeting people or just letting his feet wander. I think those early trips (there were several of them) impacted us both in different ways: he continued to travel to many different places and continued to meet people and see things; I wound up writing about travel writing...

This postcard, as I mentioned, was from Syria. It said little, as postcards do. Just, "I wanted to send one from Lebanon, but the postcards there weren't as nice." There was something reassuring about it. With this "war on terror" still raging on, with all the talk of security and borders, with the use of airplanes as weapons, with the travel restrictions, the travel warnings and the general small-mindedness that seems to characterize many Americans' world views these days...it's nice to think that K. was walking around Syria and Lebanon, probably wearing a worn t-shirt that says "Who farted?"

Edmondo De Amicis...

...writes on page 32 of his travel book Constantinople [published in 1877; I quote here from the 2005 Hesperus Edition, translated by Stephen Parkin], "to describe great things you must be at a distance from them, and to remember them well, you must have forgotten them a little first." The "great thing" that he is referring to here is Constantinople itself. De Amicis can't process his first sight of the Turkish city, let alone describe this first impression to the reader. He finds that not only can language not help him communicate what he sees, but he is unsure exactly what it is that he is seeing.

As his boat approaches the city, he is momentarily frustrated that his initial view will be spoiled by the fog that has enveloped the Sea of Marmara; but the fog slowly lifts, almost on cue, unveiling the city piecemeal to the eager eyes of De Amicis. So works the mechanism of fog...

Jules

Sometime toward the end of the nineteenth century, De Amicis traveled to Amien, France to visit the great Jules Verne, author of the fictional travel book Around the World in 80 Days and scores of other books. You can read De Amicis's account of his visit

here.

Despite their relative nearness in age -- De Amicis died in 1908 in his early 60s. Verne died in 1905 in his mid 70s -- De Amicis here seeks Verne out as an elder sage, and this trip is more of a pilgrimage than anything else. He unabashedly approaches Verne to elicit some creative secret, to gain some elixir of genius. And in an interesting way, he does.

When De Amicis first sees Verne, we get the conventional disorientation of the young enthusiast meeting their hero for the first time, as he tries to bring the fantasy of Verne the genius and the reality of Verne the man into focus. But that foggy disorientation passes as Verne talks about his writing habits. De Amicis writes:

Contrary to what I had thought, he does not first imagine the characters and facts of he novel he is to write, and then begin to make investigations into one or more countries for his scene of action. On the contrary he reads up the history and geography of the countries first, just as if he intended to do nothing else than describe them fully and minutely. His characters, the leading facts and episodes of his story, rise up in his mind during the reading, which is really an object in itself and not a mere means to acquire useful notes for his book.The reading of books on foreign countries is, it appears, Verne's true object, not the stories he creates about them. It's as if the stories serve no purpose but to knit the facts together in a useful way, so they won't be forgotten.

This may seem an odd description of Verne if you have read any of his globetrotting novels. Countries are often so much backdrop, as, for example with 80 Days, where characters have more important things on their minds then stopping off and going native, and where technology has as its main goal the eradication of space, trouble, and all but the most obvious differences between people.

But as De Amicis learns more about the man whom he knew only through books and reputation, he finds that even the reading of books on these countries was not Verne's true object as he had first guessed, but rather a means to a much more ambitious, and, in its way, poignant end:

In regard to the choice of countries which are to be the scenes of his romances he is guided by an idea I was very far from anticipating. His intention is to describe the whole earth in his books and he goes from region to region in a certain redetermined order, not retracing his steps unless through necessity, and then as quickly as possible. He still has many parts of the world left, and has estimated the number of stories he must still write in order to fill out his entire plan. “Shall I have time for them all?” he asked, smiling.

I once taught Verne's Around the World in 80 Days in a course on Cultural Studies, where I was focusing on the twentieth century travel book, in which these writers' goals were much more modest: to diagnose a particular political situation; to understand how the past overlays the present; to find out the cause of war... I thought it would be a lark to start with Verne, and I made some points about technology and fantasy, not realizing at the time the sheer scope of Verne's ambition.

I was in the book store the other day and I saw a new biography of Verne. I browsed through it while standing there and noted the lack of De Amicis's name in the index; but I may get it anyway, because I would like to learn more about Verne than I now know. It was interesting to see how De Amicis's thoughts of Verne were clarified as he talked with him and as Verne answered questions about the secret of his craft, as the fog of unknowing dispelled to reveal Verne's city-hungry mind.

The Brooklyn Book Festival

A few weeks ago at Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn, right near where all the lettered subways hub into a jumbled commuter's alphabet-- the C, the R, the A, and M trains -- the Brooklyn Book Festival was held.

It occupied the space usually taken up by the weekly farmer's market, which found itself as a result amidst the diesel fumes of the nearby busstops.

All the Little Presses were hawking their latest titles through catalogues and business cards. Though the festival operated as much by word of mouth as by the printed word, as the news of books spread orally, through a campaign of "did you see that book with the...?"

Some of the Big Presses had their territory staked out too: St Martin's was there, as was Oxford. Those displays were glossier, their reps more knowing, and they attracted the biggest crowds. But this was nonetheless a day for the small guy.When I first heard of the Brooklyn Book Festival earlier that day, I assumed it would be a place where small bookstore owners or even the general public would be selling used books, and I kicked myself for having recently (and cavalierly) thrown out some of my own books in preparation for our move. But I preferred what this festival turned out to be, a kind of expo with all these small presses advertizing that they were still in business, that they hadn't been swallowed up by the Literature/Cappucino Industrial Complex.

We approached the fair from Atlantic Avenue and had the bridge in our sights. Its image tented Borough Hall like some Persian bazaar. And it had that energy, that diversity, that busy-ness, as well as the underlying desperation that spoke of a need to sell in order to live. But rather than gew gaws or fabrics, dates or nuts, there was litrachure on sale, spread out on tables, propped up for display. And as we approached nearer, we came under the magnetic infuence of the vendors of books.

We bought Lucy something from the very first stand we stopped at. It was for her, not for us, so that doesn't count as an impulse buy (we both agreed). It was some Russian Publisher and the book was a bilingual edition of two stories, Speckled Hen and The Little Goat Kids; or, KyPoCHKA PYABA and KOZLYATYSHKI. We will bring it to daycare so that Lucy can be read to in the proper accent.

Archipelego Publishers, our next stop, and coincidentally, immediately next to DomKnigi, had a table with boxes of books spread out, beautifully bound and oddly shaped books in that they were almost square. Gate of The Sun by Elias Khoury reproached me with its remaindered beauty, only $15.00 (They printed too many copies by mistake, the woman said. I wondered how many was too many...) I didn't buy it. I now regret it. I've had a small paperbound copy of one of Archipelago's other titles, Moscardino by Enrico Pea (translated by Ezra Pound) for a while now, though I thought the attractive binding was some publishing anomoly. But here were laid out book after book, each with its unique charm and yet with a similarity of binding that bespoke a deeper familial bond.

We continued on through crowds of Starbuck denizens released from their hazelnut-scented surroundings for this one one day a year. And at the next table, around behind the entrance for the C train, I bought The Man Who Walked to the Moon, by Howard McCord, a novella about an ex-marine sniper turned professional lone wolf.

Against a mountainous Nevada landscape and one peak in particular, The Moon, Gasper's [the lone wolf/sniper] menacing tale unravels of a life lived without illusions yet driven to the boundaries of mystical consciousness -- a gripping and disturbing indictment of the exigencies of civilization.

Is "exigencies" the right word here? I guess I'll have to read the book to find out. Anyway, it sounds good!

I also bought The Dream Sequence by Kate Hunter, a local writer, a novella (again) which bears the intriguing tag on the cover: "THE MOST DANGEROUS PERSON IS ALWAYS SOMEONE YOU KNOW." Five bucks never went so easily
.
CUNY's Feminist Press had a table, and there was more than one table with Afro-Centric titles, often (though not always) mixed in with Marxist books; though there were separate Marxist/Socialist tables too. Lucy tended to gravitate towards both the African and the Marxist tables because of the brightly colored materiel.

One table was selling t-shirts (as well as a magazine or pamphlets or something) that were all black with "FUCK LITERATURE" written in big white letters across the chest. I loved the idea of it, but couldn't think of an ocassion when I might wear it so I didn't buy it. Plus there is the off chance that these might be the first words that Lucy learns to read. She's pretty precocious. I wish they had mugs...

There were also people giving readings at various stands. One of the editors of Brooklyn: A State of Mind was there reading and dropping names like he was working for the Bush administration. Jonathan Lethem got more than one mention this day; he must have been in the crowd, browsing for FUCK LITERATUE t-shirts, no doubt.

Underneath the reconstructed dome of Borough Hall itself, in the shadow of the golden statue of justice wielding a bright and slicing sword, there was a reading of Richard Wright's Native Son, a passage I heard said something about how all the world is Bigger...

At one point Lucy got impatient in her stroller, so I picked her up and carried her around. She preferred that, looking at the life around her, smiling at the random people who entered her view. Though after a while, she became bored again and began to steadily raspberry. As I walked up to one table -- it was the Aragon Press I think -- she let loose a particularly distinct one, seemingly right on cue. I jokingly apologized to the man sitting there behind the table, but he just looked up wearily and replied, "Everyone's a critic..."

Lucy's Doubles

After daycare each day this past summer, I would take my daughter, Lucy, to this little park in Carroll Gardens where she would run out the day. A special section just for toddlers includes the usual equipment, with a bridge, an incline, a stone elephant, little swings, and a sprinkler (which Lucy loves) that is always crowded during hazy Brooklyn summers.

Before you get to the kiddie section, there is a basketball court and a baseball diamond in a different section, both on blacktop, that Lucy loves to traverse on her way to the sprinkler, and I can see her already sizing up the "big kids" for when she is ready to play with them.

One hot day in August, Lucy insisted on going under the sprinkler, gesturing wildly at it while imploring me "Dush! Dush!" (her word for "water" of all kinds), as I held her in one arm, pushing her stroller through the wrought iron gate with the other. So I changed her into her bathing suit, shod her with her pink crocs, and off she went.

Sprinkler-time is highly ritualistic or stylized, like those linguistic bee-dances. She first runs up to the sprinkler and puts one hand in front of the stream while leaning on the stone water source with the other. Then she runs back at me and throws what water she has grabbed all over my shirt and laughing runs away. Eventually she musters the courage to run straight through to the other side, where jets of water come from the facing pylons. Her courage stoked, she then runs in screaming circles through the gauntlet of jetstreams, dodging the other orbiting kids all the while. I don't know wht there aren't more kid-collisions in this toddler accelerator, especially during these peak summer hours.

This particular day, after having done her rounds, Lucy took interest in a puddle on the circumference of the sprinkler area. She splashed carefully in the water as she looked down at her pink feet. She loves to splash in puddles and sometimes does this little dance where she cocks her head up in the air and stomps her right foot emphatically while dragging her left. It's very atavistic (in a good way). Soon there were two other little girls, about Lucy's height (I've given up judging ages) and they too took to splashing in the curved narrow puddle. They were all aware of one another -- there was no competition for the splashiest part of the puddle or anything -- but they mostly kept to themselves as they splashed, sometimes looking up at their respective parent.

Suddenly one of the girls reached down to pick something up from the puddle, and the water that had just seemed so pure for the stomping suddenly seemed filthy now that it was reached into. The mother lurched. At the same moment, the other girl started to splash more emphatically, just as Lucy started to wander off. So we both reacted too. At once there was a chorus of parental shouting, all of us calling to our own: "Lulu!" "Lucy!" "Lucia!"

We all looked at one another; the three girls looked up at the parents not their own, then back to their own mommy or daddy. After a moment, it hit us. We had all named our daughters Lucia!

But rather than this being a moment of bonding or light, it turned things suddenly awkward. We all began to explain, to justify: "Yes," said one father, "We call her Lulu. She's named after her grandmother." "Strange, I've never met another Lucy," said the mother,"I thought it was unique." "She calls herself "Cia," I said dumbly.

Carroll Gardens Park is a place where children and parents come together and is most full as the day ends, and in it we find not just recreation but the beginnings of the social dynamics that shape all our lives so inexorably, like some ominous starsign. I guess that's why (we tell ourselves) we take Lucy there, why we see daycare itself as important, so that our Lucy can interact with others, so that she she can begin to be socialized, though I wish it would be with people who find coincidence to be a mark of revelation rather than a sign of having been out-thought.

As we strolled home after I dried Lucy off from her ablutions, we saw coming out of their brownstone not three doors down from ours, a fourth Lucia -- one also Lucy's age and one we knew already -- and her parents. This Lucia was born on the very same day as our Lucy, only a year earlier. The family was going out to the Hamptons for the weekend, seemingly glad to escape the hazy heat of Brooklyn. The girls smiled at one another, and I chatted amiably with the parents, who when we met them several months ago were as surprised and delighted as we were in the coincidence of naming, under similar stars.

Hurricane Dog

The strongest storm recorded in 1950 was a category 5 hurricane called Hurricane Dog. It started in the West Indies in late August of that year and strengthened as it made its way north. Its strongest winds were recorded in St John's...the capital of Antigua and Barbuda...with gusts reaching 145 mph.

Here's a link that leads you to a pdf file of a 1950 issue of the Kingston, Jamaica paper The Daily Gleaner that tells of the aftermath of the storm as well as providing information about a special fund that was set up to help the victims in Antigua.

"Hurricane Dog" seems like an odd name for a storm. The current system of named hurricanes wasn't actually put in place until 1952, and so before that, as with Hurricane Dog, these names weren't really used in published accounts. It's not, for instance, mentioned in The Daily Gleaner article at all. But it's not just some irreverent wordplay. Before 1952, the names came from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet, and so Hurricane Dog is military-speak for Hurricane "D."

I don't know how long the 1950 hurricane season lasted. I don't know if it got as far as Hurricane Jig or Hurricane Nan or Hurricane Oboe. I sure hope not.

Hyperannotated Lear

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drowned the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds , and germens spill at once,

That make ingrateful man!"

Hips Don't Fry

Storms don't only happen here on the earth. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, for example, is an anti-cyclonic storm (meaning it spins below the planet's equator in a counterclockwise direction) that has been raging, as far as astronomers can tell, since at least the time of Shakespeare's Tempest. It is large enough to engulf the earth three times over and yet, even with that, it is nothing compared to the storms that erupt on the sun.

Solar storms are among the most awesome events that are within the range of our concern. We see their effects mainly when their proton discharges interrupt out favorite radio programs but they are also responsible for the kalaidescopic Northern Lights. Solar storms or Coronal Mass Ejections as they are also known eject massive amounts of light matter into space and these displays have been recorded by instruments designed for this purpose:



But for all their beauty, they pose a real danger to astronauts. According to this article, if you encounter a solar flare while walking on the moon, the most vital body parts to protect are those that encase your bone marrow. And thus, if you get enough warning, in addition to your hips, you should shield (in no particular order) your "shoulders, spine, thighs, sternum and skull."

It seems weird to suggest that astronauts would be able to protect themselves and their body parts simply by crouching behind a moon unit or angling their bodies away from the radiant beams of the sun, but it makes sense in a way that this is how we would react, whether through instinct or according to NASA protocol. After all, that's what we do with earth-storms too, that is what we do. We duck, we shield ourselves with umbrellas or ponchos, we hide behind screens or doors, always crouching against the onslaught of matter that is hurling around the atmosphere, that is the atmosphere, that churns at great velocities, at killing vectors.

Daniel Paul Schreber once thought he detected in these killing, life-giving sun-beams something articulate speaking to the analogous rays that were bandying about the neural passageways of his brain exactly at the speed of thought, and he may have been right, if what he thought was being said was "shield yourself."

Here's a site for all of you earth bound readers who are interested in following these storms and who are fans of the Weather Channel:

Solar Storm Warning!

What Lies Beneath...

Here's an article from yesterday's New York Times (the Weekend Arts section) for those of you who are Discovering New York.

This paragraph struck me in particular:

We began in Tompkins Square Park, a focal point in the neighborhood’s history, which before the 1800s was soupy swampland and marshes. The East River shoreline was where Avenue C is now; everything east of that was built on progressive stages of landfill — including, amazingly, rubble from bombed London, shipped across the Atlantic after World War II to form part of the foundation for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive.

We tend to think of cityscapes as separated into grids, as mapped out onto neutral planes of land, or as encrusted onto the blank slate of the earth. We don't always see a living city as stratified, as something archaeologically interesting, and we don't always see archaeological digs as containing the histories of remote places.

When I showed this article to a friend he said that he'd always been interested in the similar plight of the tons of rubble from Ground Zero. We treat the emptiness of Ground Zero as something sacrosanct, and yet the tons of matter have seemingly dissipated without a word or a memory. It would be interesting to trace the mass migration (or forced exodus?) of rubble, any rubble, around the globe, and I wonder if we could detect any patterns the way we can with birds or humans.

And if we believe, along with Werner von Braun -- the father of the German rocket program who came to the United States right around the time that that section of the FDR drive was being built with the London rubble von Braun's rockets helped create -- that "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation," then we might be tempted to wonder about the future transformations of all the rubble being created these days, in cities around the world...

Umbrellas Down Boerum Place

I had to cross Boerum place the other night in the wind and rain, right near where it widens as it approaches the Brooklyn Bridge. I was proud of myself because I didn't lose my umbrella. It didn't even blow inside out!

Boerum allows some freak intersection of winds that causes havoc with umbrellas. I've heard it described as a wind tunnel but it is not that. Wind tunnels channel the wind. This is like some kind of wind blender.

Most mornings when it has been raining and even a little bit windy, the broken skeletal remains of umbrellas can be seen sailing up or down the street. It looks like a rowing team trying awkwardly to play polo with their straight boats. The winds can gust so strongly and so suddenly that most people just give up trying to hold onto their umbrellas. Though I think that it's often not the force of the wind so much as the realization of a lost cause that causes this despair. It would take too much time and energy to try to restore the umbrella to its proper shape anyway, and the bodily contortions needed would be so publicly awkward that I suspect most people just "let go."

Mostly you see those 4 dollar short umbrellas with the retractable handles that won't work for long anyway; they're the first to go and they just look trashy tumbling up and down the street. But on really windy days, you can see those larger black umbrellas with the wooden handles, umbrellas with corporate logos on them, those clear umbrellas that are almost like hoods, those umbrellas with the bottle on top, even children's umbrellas that have either frog ears or cat ears on the top. Some of those boys glide.

It's probably not so bad for the young children who have lost their umbrellas (adults who frequent Boerum Place should know better anyway) since kids usually wear rain slickers in addition to the umbrellas they carry. I've always wondered why parents do that and I guess now I know. You never know what can happen and it's better to be safe than sorry. Though I also wonder if maybe that's the wrong message to send to kids. Am I going to be one of those parents? I'll probably just dress Lucy in a slicker as I implore her to "Simplify! Simplify!"

After I conquered Boerum I was feeling triumphant. I stopped in a deli to get some food and they had this empty white coleslaw bucket at the entrance where people could leave their umbrellas and there were cardboard boxes spread on the floor. I went to the back of the store to get what I needed, paid for it. But when I got to the door I saw that someone had walked off with my umbrella.

Brooklyn can do that to you.

The Eye of The Storm

In 1704, Daniel DeFoe, author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, published his first book, The Storm, a journalistic account of the Great Storm of 1703, which devastated lower England and the English Channel. It remains the largest most devastating storm ever to hit England and The Storm is a compiliation of eye-witness accounts of this meteorological anomoly. It is a book of anecdotes, fragmentary views, glimpses of an event distorted either by exaggeration or, in some cases, mitigation, since what people witnessed was never really clear to them.

DeFoe's book created for the public a large scale view, made up of detailed particulars, of an event that we now know to call a hurricane. Not that they didn't have the word "hurricane" to describe this event, or even more biblical terms such as "deluge." But it is striking the way that so many of the people Defoe gets his information from are describing an unprecedented event, not just in its scope but in its very existence. There is a letter, for example, from one man in Oxfordshire who describes what we soon recognize to be a tornado. His friend calls him to come see this great "pillar" descending from the sky. And when he gets to where his friend is he sees himself a "spout" dipping down from the heavens, like the trunk of an elephant, leaping across a field, carving a swath through woods and farms.

It is no wonder that we consistently seek in such terrible, large-scale events some larger meaning and that we arrive at that meaning by seeking out a similarly large perspective from which the event was authored; and that the wrath or will of God is the most frequent "source" of any natural disaster. Dies Irae.

The Storm was written during the rise of journalism as a profession, when broadsheets and newspapers were being distributed more frequently to greater numbers of people. Robinson Crusoe, a book often seen as the first novel, a book about one man's surviving a storm, was still 15 years in the future. It is perhaps no accident that DeFoe got his start writing a book about a storm in which the author/survivor gathered together all avaiailable empirical information and fused it together into one large perspective, giving the world a picture in words of a hurricane, something we can now in an instant see with great sharpness on any satellite image. The minute and subjective perceptions of people on the ground have their cosmological analogue in the great organized structure of a storm, whose eye passes over the earth like the gaze of God.

Francois Hartog in The Mirror of Herodotus has called for an archaeology of perception, a record of how people have seen throughout the ages. Because how you see changes what it is that you are seeing. One wonders what the residents of England in 1703 who survived the Great Storm would see in the radar image above of Katrina. Would it allow them to make sense of the turbulence that they survived and that many didn't?

The Night God of Thunder

In Book IV of The City of God, St Augustine tells of a Roman god who had fallen into obscurity. This deity was the nighttime equivalent of Jupiter or Jove, the king of the gods, and at one time, according to Augustine, Summanus (for that was this nighttime God's name) was more popular among the Romans than the now more familiar Jove. Jove was the god of daytime thunder, whereas Summanus rolled the night.

Eventually, somewhere down the years, through a process that even Augustine finds too obscure to comment on in any detail, Summanus became overshadowed by Jove, who pleased people with his daylight tricks and sunny manifestations of power and pyrotechnics by, among other things, building a "famous and conspicuous temple." Summanus was less willing to pander to the crowd, preferring the aural displays best possible at night when the other senses become all focused into this yearning ear.

The early books of The City of God are an overt attempt to prune the garden of the Roman gods, to try to whittle it down to just one, or, failing that, to condemn those he deems unworthy. For Augustine the paganism of the Romans was too prolific. It was too much, there were too many, it was too bureaucratic, there were too many names and attributes to remember, and you never quite knew (Augustine complains at one point) which god you were supposed to pray to as you walked through a door: the god of doors, the god of hinges, or the god of fair egress.

I'm actually not sure if Augustine is saying in this book that the god's name was Summanus. He says: "For, as we read in their own authors, the ancient Romans paid greater honours to I know not what Summanus, to whom they attributed nocturnal thunderbolts, than to Jupiter." "I know not what Summanus" is a locutaion I just don't follow. Augustine here seem to be piecing together the story of a God that exists by then only orally, who exists in the stories that people tell themselves and each other of the impact and severity of storms, storms that still exist in the public consciousness. There needed to be a God to manage all the storm-wrought damage and to tend to people's individual needs, and Summanus did just that; until, of course, Rome fell and the ominous signs of a decaying empire that gripped a people with a paranoia became nothing more than a passing thought...

But it's a shame that Augustine's pruning was so fervid and so complete, so monomaniacally monotheistic, though I think we can discern a hint of regret lingering through this passage. It's a shame that the god of nighttime thunder, whatever his name was or is, lost to us. Because there is nothing more fearful-divine than thunder at night, not in the distance, but right on top of you. There is something otherworldly about it.

It is, for example, a dark rolling thunder that awakes Dante from his swoon in "Canto IV" of the Inferno.

From the Longfellow translation...

Broke the deep lethargy within my head
A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted,
Like to a person who by force is wakened;
And round about I moved my rested eyes,
Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed,
To recognise the place wherein I was.
True is it, that upon the verge I found me
Of the abysmal valley dolorous,
That gathers thunder of infinite ululations.
Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous,
So that by fixing on its depths my sight
Nothing whatever I discerned therein.

Storm Front Matter

In 1786, between the first drafts of his Ur-Faust and the publication of Faust Part 1, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then the acknowledged leader of the Sturm und Drang movement in Germany, traveled down through the Brenner pass to Italy. On his trip he kept a notebook of his impressions and observations that he published much later in greatly revised form as The Italian Journey.

After leaving Innsbruck, Goethe's journey took him through the beautiful and perilous terrain of the South Tyrol. Though the weather often made the travel difficult, the combination of turbulent atmosphere and sublime landscape prompted some of his most interesting writing. At one point, as he approaches one of the mountain peaks of the Alps, a storm gathers and the sky darkens. From this spectacle of Nature Goethe discerns cosmological principles.

From page 31 of the Penguin edition of the book:

On the plains, one accepts good or bad weather as an already established fact, but in the mountains one is present at its creation. I have often witnessed this as I travelled, walked, hunted, or spent days or nights among cliffs in the mountain forests, and a fanciful idea has taken hold of my mind which is as difficult to shake off as all such fancies are. I seem to see its truth confirmed everywhere, so I am going to talk about it. It is my habit, as you know, to keep trying the patience of my friends.

When we look at mountains, whether from far or near, and see their summits, now glittering in the sunshine, now shrouded in mists or wreathed in storm-tossed clouds, now lashed by rain or covered with snow, we attribute all these phenomena to the atmosphere, because all its movements and changes are visible to the eye. To the eye, on the other hand, shapes of the mountains always remain immobile; and because they seem rigid, inactive and at rest, we believe them to be dead. But for a long time I have felt convinced that most manifest atmospheric changes are really due to their imperceptible and secret influence. I believe, that is to say, by and large, the gravitational force exerted by the earth's mass, especially by its projections, is not constant and equal but, whether from internal necessity or external accident, is like a pulse, now increasing, now decreasing. Our means for measuring this oscillation may be too limited and crude, but sensitive reactions of the atmosphere to it are enough to give us sure information about these imperceptible forces. When the gravitational pull of the mountains decreases even slightly, this is immediately indicated by the diminished weight and elasticity of the air. The atmosphere can no longer retain the moisture mechanically or chemically diffused through it; the clouds descend, rain falls heavily, and shower clouds move down into the plain. But when their gravitational pull increases, the elasticity of the air is restored and two significant phenomena follow. First the mountains gather round their summits enormous cloud masses, holding them firmly and immovably above themselves like second summits. Then through an inner struggle of electric forces, these clouds descend as thunderstorms, fog or rain. The elastic air is now able to absorb more moisture and dissolve the remaining clouds. I saw quite distinctly the absorption of one such cloud. It clung to the steepest summit, tinted by the afterglow of the setting sun. Slowly, slowly, its edges detached themselves, some fleecy bits were drawn off, lifted high up, and then vanished. Little by little the whole mass disappeared before my eyes, as if it were being spun off from a distaff by an invisible hand.