READIN

Monday, December 17th, 2012

🦋 From Bukowski

Some wisdom in Factotum:

“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”

posted evening of December 17th, 2012: Respond

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

🦋 porotos: making it up as I go

And on every one of these occasions, plus many others as well, the Christ of Elqui's response was simply to recite this verse, as boring already as the menu of a pulpería: "I'm very sorry, dear brother, my dear sister, very sorry; but the sublime art of resurrection belongs exclusively to Our Divine Master."

And that is what he said to the miners who arrived caked with dirt, carrying the cadaver of their workmate, just at the moment when he was most full of grace, preaching before the people on what diabolical influence the modern world could wreak on the spirit of even a devout Catholic, a believer in God and the Blessed Virgin Mother. The gang of calicheros broke through the midst of the crowd of worshippers carrying on their shoulders the body of the deceased; clearly dead of a heart attack, they were telling him as they laid the body with care at his feet, stretched out on the burning sand.

Upset, embarrassed, everyone talking at the same time, the rednecks were explaining to him how after they had eaten their lunch, the Thursday plate of porotos burros, the group of them had been on their way down for a drop to drink, to "wet the whistle," and that's when tragedy struck -- their fellow worker, all of a sudden he grabbed at his chest with both hands, he fell to the ground as if hit by lightning -- not even a chance to say so much as help!

The art of resurrection: Chapter 1

Porotos granados

1. Cook beans until tender. I used ¾ pound dry of cranberry beans. Cook with dried oregano and bay leaves. Add some salt when they get soft-but-not-tender.
2. Peel and chop squash and veggies. I used 1 medium butternut squash and a couple of carrots as well. Fresh corn is a recommended component but is not available to me this time of year; canned or frozen corn probably would have added a lot to the dish as well.
3. In a stock pot, saute 9 cloves of garlic, minced, and two chopped onions in a good amount of oil. Season with a tbsp. ground cumin and more oregano. Add squash, veggies, and beans. Add a little water, not enough to cover the vegetables, and cover the pot.
4. Let simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water if it gets too dry. When everthing is falling apart, mash it together with a wooden spoon -- it should be about the consistency of lumpy mashed potatoes.
5. Serve with a salad of bell peppers and minced cilantro; sour cream and hot sauce make good condiments.

posted evening of December 16th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Recipes

🦋 Displacement

Uno no es de ninguna parte
mientras no tenga un muerto bajo la tierra

my perception of duration and of sequence of events
is growing weaker
dislocation
fading slowly into timelessness, displacement
sense memory of objects I displaced, dispersed
so,

I rubbed against the floors I walked on
and they do my thinking now

posted morning of December 16th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Poetry

Saturday, December 15th, 2012

🦋 Eternal present/in memoriam

we mortals are present, he said: we die but once.


we mortals are present, and die but once,
I hear you say, and die a bit each day.
we mortals are present, we die but once,
and half the time it is in vain;
our ticking hours and years crawl past us
marked with Adam's stain

we mortals are present, we die but once
and God's outside of time and there's a line
between the mortal and divine, outside of time.
"God's presence" (is) our mortal past and future
which do not exist, oh let them not exist
we plead
and let us die but once
we plead
and pass outside of time
our meter, rhyme connecting memories and ashes
and our second nervous passage out of this
connective sibilance eternal disenmomented
reflected crashing echoes die
and dust and endlessness

posted morning of December 15th, 2012: 4 responses
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Saturday, December 8th, 2012

🦋 Two metaphors for the sun

I'm working further on my translation of Hernán Rivera Letelier's El arte de la resurrección... Vague plans to write an interesting cover letter for the first four chapters in rough draft translation and see if I could find a publisher who'd be interested in having me work on the book.

Obviously there is a lot of sun to describe in this book, taking place as it does in the Atacama desert. I found this metaphor just gorgeous:

The Christ of Elqui left the station. The town of Sierra Gorda, nailed down here on the bottom of purgatory, seemed to be completely empty. It seemed an oasis, a mirage in the desert -- indeed its only inhabitant appeared to be the sunshine, stretched out lazy on its four dirt roads, a giant, yellow mongrel dog.

Many of their dear ones -- as they themselves would say, their voices low -- had probably died in a work accident, or in a barroom brawl, or infected by one of the epidemics which regularly tore through the north, or had fallen in one of the Army’s massacres of the saltpetre workers -- most had simply vanished into thin air, like the reverberating sun of mid-day vanishes into the desert. They rode the trains in hopes of meeting up with their kin, even if it were to be in a graveyard.

posted morning of December 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Art of Resurrection

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

🦋 Brand new

A journey through labyrinths of identity, of degradation and oblivion. Donoso's opus magnum, says the back jacket

posted evening of December 6th, 2012: 1 response

Sunday, December second, 2012

🦋 Rivera Letelier glossary

Nice find! (via a wordreference thread referencing The Art of Resurrection.)

posted morning of December second, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Hernán Rivera Letelier

Saturday, December first, 2012

🦋 Current reading material

posted evening of December first, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings

🦋 Lullaby for Laura

Midnight's oil is inky black, it shimmers
in the orange glow of the match you've struck
Midnight's oil is an inky puddle in your cerebellum
There is no wick in midnight's oil
but will it burn? Hesitant
you drop the match
it hisses and dies
in your moist consciousness
and you feel the dark embrace
of midnight's oil
midnight's oil swells, becomes
itself
the fabric of your consciousness
no claustrophobia here nor displacement, indeed
the opposite
a warmth one might say, a carnal pleasure
in the closeness of midnight's oil
you get a pleasant contact high from midnight's oil
indeed in its glow you sense a new path
new vision
come quickly to love the way it burns
pale blue flame, dim flame, warm flame
illuminates you, passes through the membrane
separating self and your surroundings
And so you're out there now and everything's burning
burning in quiet joy, in dim blue ecstasy
but what can you do when everything's on fire
but fiddle
take your cue
the camera pans in close on Nero's graying braided hair
and the hair of his bow slides quickly
sometimes sloppy on the strings
which are burning too
and none of it consumed like Rome was
and from this ubiquitous burning bush hear the voice
of midnight's oil deep and resonant asemic
hear the syllables
neither skatting nor as they might appear
some ancient language dead and never traced
nor yet a new invention
timeless nonsense tripping
from the nonexistent lips of transcendent midnight's oil
what madness will this incantation work?

posted afternoon of December first, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Projects

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

🦋 A couple of things about Joaquín Pasos

• I spent a few weeks in October working on a translation of his "Canto de guerra de las cosas" that I had started and abandoned a couple of years ago. What a great poem this is!
• Searching for more about him led me to find some of Chris Brandt's translations -- I was particularly floored by his version of "Hotel Tremol", which you can hear John John reading on YouTube.
• From Brandt's translations I was inspired to buy Pasos' Poesía completa, which is available in a very nice edition being remaindered at Amazon.es -- with shipping included it is ~$12. (You should buy it if you read Spanish.)
• I'm just blown away by the poems -- it is premature to talk about favorites at this point but already with the very second poem in the book, "Cook «Voyages»," we are among the very highest ranks of poetic imagery.
• Three of Pasos' books are called Poemas de un joven que no ha viajado nunca, Poemas de un joven que no ha amado nunca, and Poemas de un joven que no sabe inglés. This last one, "Poems by a kid who doesn't know English," is not in the collected edition I got but you can read it online at The University of Utah's site. "Hotel Tremol" and "Voyages" are both in the first one, "Poems by a kid who has never travelled." They are together quite enough to put Pasos among the best poets I've read.

posted evening of November 28th, 2012: Respond

Previous posts
Archives