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Jeremy's journal

Be quiet the doctor's wife said gently, let's all keep quiet, there are times when words serve no purpose, if only I, too, could weep, say everything with tears, not have to speak in order to be understood.

José Saramago


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Thursday, July 12th, 2012

🦋 Peter's Voice

I haven't really written much narrative (that I can recall) in the first person voice. Let's give this a try. Peter seems like a good place to start with the first person, being as he is at least roughly modeled after myself.

(The plan as it now stands is, write fragments as they come to me. Revise and post at READIN those that seem worth while. Wait and see, see if anything is coming together. And if not, well, I'm having fun with the fragments and the revisions...)

posted evening of July 12th, 2012: 11 responses
➳ More posts about This Silent House

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

🦋 Otro poema de Maximiliano Josner Ávala, con nota explanatoria tentativa

Mi esperanza es (supongo) que esa especie de composición (intento decir, el movimiento de imagen vaga, abstracta, nada muy específica, en combinación con ritmo escuchado -- justo al español, sin intervencíon de inglés en la medida en que soy capaz de eso) vale la pena si nada más, en la instrucción idiomática... El español que hallaré con ese método de instrucción sonará muy ajeno, muy forzado, y de vez en cuando incoherente, pero también (tal vez) muy distintivo, una voz verdadera/engañosa. No tengo idea qué destinación busco, vamos a ver luego, cuando llegamos.

Mi tía descansa, su cara resplandece
Con luz infinita y magia y misterio
Viva retrato de dios
Hija

posted afternoon of July 8th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Poetry

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

🦋 (silly)

It's foreign, outlandish, in Spanish extraño,
the moving hand writes and escribe la mano
you play with your meanings and juegas con rima
built up from an image, imagen encima

posted morning of July 7th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Friday, July 6th, 2012

Está bien te dices
Déjalo sencillamente
Transpirar acerca de ti
Solamente hunde
En el momento ajeno
Luego harás.
Se llama ésto «técnica»,
Técnica desechable.

posted evening of July 6th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

🦋 La obra de Josner Ávala

La cuerda corta: finidades, la poesía de Maximiliano Josner Ávala fue 1914 publicada en la prensa Universidad Técnica del Estado, editado y con introducción del colega y discípulo de Josner Ávala, Miguel Arroncoyo de Marcoa. Fue el único libro de Josner Ávala desde su tesis Sobre las tradiciones y instituciones de los peruanos indígenos casi 40 años antes, y fue publicada unos seis años despues de su muerte inoportuna. Su opus magnum, un tratado acerca de la divinidad del tiempo, nunca se completase.

La ambición de Miguel Arroncoyo editar y publicar ese tratado puede bien haber influido el escogimiento de poemas que componen las Finidades -- esas 229 estrofas representan las miles de páginas de los diarios que fueron donados a la biblioteca de la universidad, en armonia con el último testamento de Josner Ávala. De Marcoa las define en su introducción como «poemas breves y crípticos sobre magia» y como una «investigación en la divinidad»; pero las leyendo en el contexto de los diarios, se muy fácil entienden como notas personales, pensamientos sobre su infancia y su orfandad, la pérdida de la madre y luego de los abuelos.

posted evening of July 5th, 2012: Respond

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

🦋 "brief cryptic poems about magic and the divinity of time"

Here's a bit of how I'm imagining Maximiliano Josner's voice...

corta euforia ya no ciego
gustaría a mi abuelo ver
la cuerda corta que lo separa
de dios

del tuerto el juego de manos
sonrisa, rápido ofuscamiento
el robo consagrado

posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: Respond

Friday, June 15th, 2012

🦋 cranial apples

Michael of The New Post-Literate posts a fantastic new piece of work from SAzzTnt, which appears to be composing a soundtrack record for the forthcoming Seraphinianus...

(be sure to click thru)

posted evening of June 15th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Codex Seraphinianus

Sunday, June third, 2012

🦋 Omnivalence

In Pontiero's translation, Saramago calls silence the "universal synonym, the omnivalent" -- a basis, a bottom layer to the intricate sediment of meaning which accretes as sounds are given voice and associated with their meanings. As these fluid meanings set and stick and harden, deepen, language diverges, attaining "a variety of words which never say the same thing, however much we might want them to. If they were to say the same thing, if they were to group together through affinity of structure and origin, then life would be much simpler, by means of successive" erosions of the sediment. Perhaps it is implicit here that this destructive simplification is/was a goal of Salazar*, the "poor wretch" sitting in the termite-eaten chair in its last moments as chair, but I may be reading this in.

*And a million thanks to Pontiero's introduction for elucidating this supremely important detail -- when I was reading this story in Spanish last year, I could mostly understand and make sense of the words and sentences, but was unable absent this critical bit of backstory to put them together into anything like a meaningful whole. Wikipædia says,

In 1968, Salazar suffered a brain hæmorrhage. Most sources maintain that it occurred when he fell from a chair in his summer house. In February 2009 though, there were anonymous witnesses who confessed, after some research about Salazar's best-kept secrets, that he had fallen in a bathtub instead of from a chair. Despite the injury, Salazar lived for a further two years; as he was expected to die shortly after his fall, President Américo Thomaz replaced him with Marcello Caetano. When Salazar unexpectedly recovered lucidity, his intimates did not tell him he had been deposed, instead allowing him to "rule" in privacy until his death in July 1970.

posted afternoon of June third, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about An Object, Almost

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

🦋 Ecce Bilbo

In foramine terræ habitabat hobbitus.
Middle Earth Network News reports that Mark Walker's Latin translation of The Hobbit will be available this fall.

posted evening of May 22nd, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Hobbit

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

🦋 Otras Palomas (otros almuecines)

Some really striking passages are popping up in this collection of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poetry. Sound, listening, singing, sirens,...

y el mar es ceniciento
tiembla dulce inquieto
como una paloma

Agua confusa
como el ruido de popa que escucho
en la sombra
del
sueño

Hay niebla que nos borra
Tal vez nace un río por aquí
Escucho el canto de las sirenas

El sol roba la ciudad
No se ve más
Ni   siquiera   las   tumbas   resisten    demasiado

Below the fold a stunning elegy. Who is the translator? Not credited in the linked file -- possibly it is Luis Muñoz, his is the only name I am finding as a translator for Ungaretti in a few tries via Google.

posted afternoon of May 19th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Giuseppe Ungaretti

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