The alternatives are not placid servitude on the one hand and revolt against servitude on the other. There is a third way, chosen by thousands and millions of people every day. It is the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration.
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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Lots to say about Juan Gabriel Vásquez' new book -- I have no time to post right now but just want to say (midway through) that this is an absolutely captivating read and you should put it on your list.
I just loved Juan Pablo Roncone's story "Geese" in the new issue of 60 Watts. I thought I would sit down and try to translate it... And wow! I am surprised at what a challenge it is to get the English to sound as simple, as elegant as Roncone's Spanish. It seemed like it would be a breeze -- the sentences are generally quite short, single declarative clauses, easily understood, I don't have the problem of forgetting midway through the long sentence what the subject was... But it turns out that mimicking the structure of the sentences in English comes out clunky and repetitive. Or at least it has so far. I think I am going to finish the rough translation, then tear it up and try again.
A lovely passage from "The Return", the first story in Zupcic's Dragi Sol.
He walked down to the beach. He carried in his eyes the blue of his childhood seas. There would be no point in trying to compare it to this other blue, the blue of America: even if all the world's seas flowed into one sea and all the earth were a single mountain, the blue which was dampening his feet would never be the same as that of his eyes, as that whose gleam he had sought out from the bell tower of the cathedral in Rikeja, from the tall houses of Sibenik, forty years ago.
An interesting translation puzzle -- the narrator in this story (and throughout Dragi Sol) refers to Croatian boys as "niños cerulei", an Italian adjective modifying a Spanish noun. My impulse would be to translate this as "cerulean boys" but I don't think that's quite right, I've never heard "cerulean" used to mean "blue-eyed"...
posted evening of September 13th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Slavko Zupcic
NPR's Robert Krulwich takes a look at the ordered art of Ursus Wehrli. More photos, and making-of videos, at Wehrli's home page. (Thanks for the link, Jeff!)
Oh many are the lovely northern rivers!
the Housatonic and Connecticut and Charles and James and Thames and Roanoke and the St. Lawrence and the Kennebec and the Potomac and the sweet Delaware
and not of them the least the lordly Hudson; and all of them have made the fortunes of famous towns as arteries of trade, but all of them flow down into the sea, all of them flow down into the sea.
Today is the anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the river that bears his name; on September 12th, 1609, he sailed as far north as Albany (had there been an Albany) looking for a shorter passage to India.
Oh and look at that -- Goodman would be 100 years old just a few days ago now, he was born September 9, 1911.
posted evening of September 12th, 2011: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Readings
Christine passes along a link to Brooklyn Rider's web site -- a string quartet featuring a couple of the musicians who made More or Less I Am such a fantastic show. Take a look -- a fun site design and some marvelous music.
posted evening of September 11th, 2011: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Ellen is going out for dinner tonight with Lisa; Sylvia and I are going to cook a nice dinner for ourselves.
Rigatoni with sausage and spinach
Simplest dinner around. Saute some onions and garlic with fennel seeds, cook the sausage in the same pan, add some spinach leaves and wilt them. Toss with pasta, serve with some grated cheese. (We have some asiago on hand that will be very nice with this.) Sylvia and I are going over to the grocery store in a little while to pick up some spinach and some artichokes to serve on the side. (I asked if she wanted artichoke hearts and she said, "I want the outside part of the artichoke, the kind you scrape off with your teeth.")
Apple-blackberry gratin
(recipe based on one found in this week's NY TimesMagazine)
I was thinking of posting some of my own memories from ten years ago; and I was also thinking of posting links to some of the excellent commemorative writing I see elsewhere. But ultimately I find I cannot commit myself either to being a part of the media frenzy around this date or to distancing myself from what was after all an important moment in my life and in the world around me. Instead let's just be quiet and listen to some music.
posted morning of September 11th, 2011: 5 responses
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of
you,
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.)
We had a great time last night watching More or Less I Am -- such a great idea for a show, and put together pretty flawlessly and on a shoestring budget... I was struck throughout the poem (which I have not read since high school, IIRC) by how strongly and explicitly Whitman invites the reader into his head and vice-versa. I kept thinking of how a second-person pastiche might start out,
You celebrate yourself, and sing yourself,
And shall assume what you assume;
For every atom in yourself is yours is me is you.
Interesting... there were a enough spots in the poem where the poet identifies himself with the reader, the act of identification seems to be a primary theme of this poem. I ought to spend some time with it.
There would be no point in trying to compare it to this other blue, the blue of America: even if all the world's seas flowed into one sea and all the earth were a single mountain, the blue which was dampening his feet would never be the same as that of his eyes, as that whose gleam he had sought out from the bell tower of the cathedral in Rikeja, from the tall houses of Sibenik, forty years ago.
Brooklyn Rider
