The READIN Family Album
Dogwood (May 20, 2003) (cf.)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

There is a constant barrier between the reader and his consciousness of immediate contact with the world.

William Carlos Williams


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Saturday, October 15th, 2011

🦋 Unexpected Muumishittiä

Sylvia got a lovely birthday present from my parents, a bunch of merch from Moomin Shop, in Finland. A "Little My" nightgown, a mug with a likeness of Moominmamma, copies of "The Book About Moomin, Mymble, and Little My" in both English and Finnish -- Sylvia and I spent a little while watching this (beautiful) 2009 production of "Kuinkas Sitten Kävikään?" and reading along...

posted evening of October 15th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Moomins

🦋 Jamming notes

Bob and Janis are coming over this afternoon to play some tunes -- I'm eagerly anticipating my first jam using the custom shoulder rest I carved this morning. Ever since I got this fiddle I have been thinking that a wooden block shoulder rest would work better than the contraption the maker provided, to attach a standard violin shoulder rest. Fate forced my hand a few weeks ago by ordaining that I should lose the said contraption... (come to think of it, I've been playing with no shoulder rest for a few weeks, and have been making some interesting music that way too... Mountain Station recorded a fun take on Odds & Ends last week.) Turns out I was right! It's extremely comfortable to hold the violin with this extension.

I've been listening to some old (well not that old I guess but from like last year) Mountain Station tracks lately and enjoying our sound. And it is just getting better -- our new "St. James Infirmary" is a different, more organized and complex song than our first recording of it.

Also -- bought a pickup for the fiddle, I decided to get a saxophone pickup that will clip onto the bell. This will help with amplification when we play at Studio 12 in Montclair next Friday.

posted morning of October 15th, 2011: 1 response
➳ More posts about Jamming with friends

Friday, October 14th, 2011

🦋 Morning

Laura's wishing Peter would just
Give up this pretension, would just
Break this patterned silence
Where he builds his lonesome castle. Now she
Cries out in the morning when she
Wakes and finds him missing. Wishes
He'd reach out and touch her, wants
To hold him in his grief -- she wants to
Have back these long years that
     she's been waiting for his voice. Peter's
Walking in the garden, where he
Knows the paths are laid,
Planted crocus in the springtime, planted
Hostas in the shade, wanders
Down the road to town, but nothing's
Open Sunday morning, now he
Rubs his eyes and wonders if he'll
    ever find his home.

Expectation conquers knowledge and the
Evidence of senses; what I
    see and hear and feel
    I'll never grasp if I decline;
For all I wish and want and hope I'll never
Stand beside my grave, I'm seeing
Gauzy patterns traced out
On the page of wounded time.

She gets up, groggy, runs the water,
Steaming up the mirror, she hears
Peter downstairs in the kitchen,
    hopes he's making coffee,
Laura's tired out, she didn't sleep well,
Combs her hair and squints and in the
Mirror she can see the look of
    anguish on her face.
She's downstairs with a cup of coffee,
Looking quizzically at Peter,
Peter's solemn face that just
    can't seem to meet her gaze.
A question's in the air and they both know it, but the
        heavy silence keeps their lips held tight; keeps
Heavy thoughts drawn back to yesterday.

posted evening of October 14th, 2011: 3 responses
➳ More posts about Poetry

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

🦋 A passing

int main() {
    printf("Goodbye, Ritchie\n");
    return 0;
}

posted evening of October 13th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Obituaries

🦋 The Calamity Janes

Last night was a blast! Met up with Christine and Miriam and John to see Crooked Still's show at The Bell House, and fell in love with the opening act.

Two sets of high energy old time music from two such distinctly different bands was about as much as I could have asked for. Amazing fiddling and banjoing and singing and thumping. Brought home two CD's from the merchandise table.

posted evening of October 13th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Crooked Still

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

🦋 Angular

A couple drawn by James Gillray. More Gillray at Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner today.

posted morning of October 12th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

🦋 All Around the Water Tank

Let's listen to Jimmie Rodgers!

This song has been in my head all day since last night when I was listening to Old & In the Way playing it, on the Sonoma State concert tape. Vassar Clemens' fiddling is extraordinary of course; but there is a whole lot to be said for the original as well.

posted evening of October 11th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

🦋 Completist

One of the big attractions for me about reading this edition of Cosmicomics was its completeness -- all the Cosmicomics stories Calvino ever published, including seven that have never previously been translated. The collector in me loves getting the opportunity to read and reread them all at once...

And what about it? I'm nearly at the end of the book now, is it a good thing to have the stories all bundled up like this for reading together? I think it is. My memory of first reading Cosmicomics (just the first 12 stories) is of being excited and stimulated and pulled through the book -- that is very similar to what's happening this time with the 34 stories. While the first volume felt complete on its own, the subsequent additions certainly hold their own and complement it.

The newly translated stories (translated by Martin McLaughlin, who also wrote the introduction to this collection) are seven stories from the 1968 collection World Memory and other Cosmicomics Stories. They are not all in the vein of the earlier stories -- some certainly are similar, such as "The Meteorites", and some are distinctly different, such as the exquisite "Solar Storm." The title story, "World Memory" (the only one that was already translated, by Tim Parks) is a... well a sui generis story, but sort of a murder mystery. They reinforce the themes and ideas of the earlier stories, and they branch out and diverge into their own stylistic innovations and subtleties.

posted evening of October 9th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Cosmicomics

🦋 Post it

John Kenn's stunning Post-it Monsters blog is coming out as a book: it will be available next month.

posted morning of October 9th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Comix

Saturday, October 8th, 2011

🦋 Road Trip

Ellen and I watched The Stone Raft (2002) tonight. A good, solid movie and a faithful adaptation of the book. It did not give me the sense of being in the presence of genius, as the book did; but then it also did not take weeks to watch. There is a lot of beauty in the movie and I would certainly recommend it. This book was half road trip/buddy story/love story, half weird unresolvable meandering about the metaphysical/​metahistorical status of Spain and Portugal; the team that turned it into a movie made the wise choice to focus on the more filmable aspects of the book. And the dog! What a sweet dog!

posted evening of October 8th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about The Stone Raft

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