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Saturday, July 7th, 2012
... His second book was even more successful than the first, professors in North American, and some of the most distinguished ones among the academic world of those long-past days, wrote enthusiastic reviews, wrote books about the books which were commenting on the Fox's books.
And from this moment on, the Fox felt -- with good reason -- that he was content; the years passed by without his publishing anything.
Well, people started talking. "What's up with the Fox?" -- when he showed up right on time for cocktails they would come up to him and be like, You ought to publish something more.
-- But look, I've already published two books.
-- And good ones, too! -- would come the reply -- That's exactly why you should publish another one!
And here the Fox did not say anything, but thought to himself: "What they're really looking for, is for me to publish a lousy book. But because I am the Fox, I'm not going to do it."
And he didn't. "Fox is the smart one."
The Black Sheep and other fables
Augusto Monterroso
 It's the funniest thing -- somehow I had gotten it into my head that the title of Bartleby y compañia was Bartlett y companÃa -- this despite many times of reading the correct title, and of writing it out, and even of ordering it on Amazon [and it occurs to me now that I have not really read anything, anything that sticks in my memory, about it, just references to the title]... thinking it had something to do with the quotations dude. (And to be sure there are a lot of quotations in the text -- that's not really here nor there though.) This is my introduction to Vila-Matas and it sure is a pleasant one. The idea of "un cuaderno de notas a pie de página que comentaron un texto invisible" is just about exactly what I am wanting to be reading right now -- and here I am experiencing that reverse-projection which I refer to as identification with the text in spades, I feel like the first chapter of the book is written in my voice. Thanks for the impetus, Richard. (And I am going to throw caution to the wind disregarding the hinted warning in Jean de la Bruyère's epigraph. Tal vez soy yo entre los otros a quienes la gloria consistirÃa en no escribir, pero...)
posted afternoon of July 7th, 2012: Respond
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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
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Friday, July 6th, 2012
Still not sure what to call this project. At first it was a poem, then a story, now something is nagging at me to think of it as a book, a novel! I wonder if there will actually be that much material in it... Details of the work keep cropping up and interesting me and changing, I want to look at the project as a whole for a minute. The idea is that Peter, a conflicted youngish man with anxieties and a love of Spanish poetry and a love for his girlfriend, Laura, who also has some anxieties, though different ones; Peter is making a project of translating poetry from this 19th-C. Chilean poet Maximiliano Josner Ãvala. And woven into this is a back-story about Ãvala's work being mostly unpublished, and about Ãvala's life and work. Everything is still very unfocused; I'll be thinking over the next couple of weeks how to bring portions of it into focus.
posted evening of July 6th, 2012: Respond
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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
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Thursday, July 5th, 2012
La cuerda corta: finidades, la poesÃa de Maximiliano Josner Ãvala fue 1914 publicada en la prensa Universidad Técnica del Estado, editado y con introducción del colega y discÃpulo de Josner Ãvala, Miguel Arroncoyo de Marcoa. Fue el único libro de Josner Ãvala desde su tesis Sobre las tradiciones y instituciones de los peruanos indÃgenos 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 Ãvala. De Marcoa las define en su introducción como «poemas breves y crÃpticos 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
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Wednesday, July 4th, 2012
Here is (I think) the song that the opening credits of CrÃa Cuervos make reference to -- El dÃa que nacà yo, by Carlos Cano.
posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: Respond
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Here's a bit of how I'm imagining Maximiliano Josner's voice...
corta euforia ya no ciego
gustarÃa 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
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Trying to flesh out the characters slightly... here are some different, fragmentary approaches, and a picture of my backyard that I'm happy with.   So you'll be talking about mistranslation and shortcuts, in the back yard with Laura, drinking in the humidity and the bird calls -- you'll be sprawled out on the grass beside where she's sitting, effectively you are looking up at the fading glow of sunset and she down at the book she's reading -- she's already getting annoyed at the dusk and swatting at a mosquito, heading in.
Peter's in the back yard lying sprawled out on the grass and Laura's sitting by his side and reading Josner's thoughts on magic -- sitting listening with half an ear to Peter's rambling discourse, now he's stuck on mistranslation
The book of poems is Josner's writings, short melodic notes on magic, not allowed to quote them but I should quote Peter's mistranslations, also show him writing in the back yard with his insect noise cicadas larks and bumblebee and walking in the early morning down past Mountain Station and the park, he's fretting, brooding as the nighttime's dark and quiet ebb, he heads back home and goes to brew some coffee.
↻...done
posted afternoon of July 4th, 2012: 1 response
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Tuesday, July third, 2012
towards a business proposal: Maniapedia
- Maniapedia offers clients supervised, controlled "Mental Illness Experiences", in a variety of safe settings. Clients will have the opportunity to descend into the pit of schizophrenia/mania/psychosis and to emerge unharmed from its jaws after a set period.
- Slogan -- some variation on "Abandon hope all who enter here" which makes it clear that Maniapedia is in the business of hope and growth. "Embrace hope all who enter here" possibly; or something a little faker, slicker. Possibly have the Hippocratic oath on the homepage somewhere, with a sort of implied self-consciousness of the irony/hypocrisy (There's a fine line...) in such a declaration.
- Staff of psychiatrists and nurses work to ensure that each client's MIE has only positive sequelae (and we will be up front about the judgemental, paternalistic tone implied here) -- although room will also be made for the occasional thrill-seeker/Mental Illness tourist, the occasional macho adventurer or seeker of validation through stress; obviously we are going after a middle or upper-middle class clientéle, but we can make some allowances, subsidies for struggling artist types and can potentially even broaden our appeal to a more diverse, more urban client base -- commercials will include close shots of staff smiling in the surroundings of our facility, shot through a light amber lens to soften the distinctions between them, to sweeten the gleaming white surfaces of the clinic.
- Therapeutic goals --
- Understanding of self. MIE and the experience of return to normalcy will provide client with a heightened understanding of his/her internal structures, needs, desires, fears (and, but, is that such a selling point?)
- Conquering fear of illness. Fear of mental illness/breakdown is a neurosis* which can prevent the client from living an honest, non-repressed life. The controlled, supervised nature of the MIE allows the patient to confront and master this fear across multiple sessions. Here we will have to include some language about the low failure rate, and I'll note in passing that the sardonic tone does not quite ring true for a "business proposal", if that is indeed what's being proposed, and that the high negatives of the term "illness" may be a way of shooting yourself in the foot, it's becoming an inseparable core part of your strategy.
- Vacation from self -- market this aspect of it to the "mental health tourists" segment of the client base mentioned above. (Strictly avoid, of course, too much time spent on this segment, this and the neurotic repeat business, would not be desirable -- we would like to try and paint a more therapeutically defensible picture of the business. But they have to be mentioned when they are, after all, such a key potential piece of our revenue stream.)
What motivation people would have for using our service is going to be a sticking point if you make it one -- on the one hand it sort of seems obvious to me that people would want to experience insanity if there was a safe out, but --
I know, not really, right? That would be difficult and unlikely to succeed, for us just to come out saddles blazing, "We know you want to go crazy, come on, give it a try," doesn't make much of an advertisement unless there is already a group of well-off people who want to go crazy and will seek us out -- and if we pitch it that way it will seem more like a form of entertainment we are advertising than a therapy. So instead of trying to justify it we take as read that we will be a success, that everybody's already on the same page... if we can get away with that...
 *And of course a key to Maniapedia's success will be getting its client base to accept this formulation.
posted evening of July third, 2012: Respond
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Sunday, July first, 2012
Okay, who knew about this? I did not know about it and now I am blown away, stunned. This is the best thing ever. (Thanks for the link, Henry!)
In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Salvador Dalà to paint a series of 100 watercolor illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the greatest literary work written in the Italian language. The illustrations were to be finished by 1965, the 700th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and then reproduced and released in limited print editions. The deal fell apart, however, when the Italian public learned that their literary patrimony had been put in the hands of a Spaniard. Undeterred, Dalà pushed forward on his own, painting illustrations for the epic poems that collectively recount Dante’s symbolic travels through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. After Dalà did his part, the project was handed over to two wood engravers, who spent five years hand-carving 3,500 blocks used to create the reproductions of DalÃ’s masterpiece.
 «The wood and the suicide»: Inferno ⅩⅢ Nessus had not yet reached the other side
When we moved forward into woods unmarked
By any path. The leaves not green, earth-hued;
The boughs not smooth, knotted and crooked-forked;
No fruit, but poisoned thorns. Of the wild beasts
Near Cecina and Corneto, that hate fields worked
By men with plough and harrow, none infests
Thickets that are as rough or dense as this.
posted afternoon of July first, 2012: Respond
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