Although I have done it all these thirty years or more, although I live my life surrounded by other people who are always doing it, still I think that there are few activities so worthy of inspection as the reading of novels.
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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.
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 pulperÃa: "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
I have been wondering about porotos -- it seems to be a Chilean word for "beans" or maybe just for food. Still not sure what preparation porotos burros is (or is it just "stupid beans"/ "just plain beans again"?); but in the course of looking around the net today I found a couple of recipes for porotos granados, a dish which appears to consist of whatever vegetables are around plus beans and winter squash, cooked up together into a stew. I'm game, and so were Ellen and Sylvia; so I made up my own version of porotos granados for dinner tonight. It was tasty! Herewith the recipe I followed, a rough compromise between the different ones I found online and what ingredients were to hand:
Porotos granados
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
(still not certain about "sunshine" there for "sol"...) -- This came just two pages past a darker image:
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.
A journey through labyrinths of identity, of degradation and oblivion. Donoso's opus magnum, says the back jacket
(rubbing my fingers in antici-pation, as Frankenfurter might say) -- on Bolaño's recommendation, that to call Donoso the best Chilean novelist of the century would be to insult him.
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
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' PoesÃa 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.
Opportunistically lying in wait and grinning, giggling lamely at the ashy glow of the painted wall in the streetlamp and suddenly hear a dead man walking round the corner and the dying fall
You're making up your mind and nervous, humming inanely snatches of the anthem of your good old school out west; forgotten the words and meanings subtle meaninglessness, your time has not yet come so you play the fool
And suddenly crumpling and falling, lifeless, playing a wrinkled fool, to an audience of jaded friends
You're running now frantic feel the rhythmic pace and all the scenery's the same just one repeated shot flickers past and you could swear you've been out here before Mr. Hitchcock; and this stupid mistake will not be your last
not the last of such creatures entrusted and painted and lined
with precious gems, heirloom for a generation
of bureaucrats --
you switch back now and look him full in the face
and suddenly you find you cannot recognize this familiar caricature, this crudely sketched archetype of disquiet, or you do not want to (and so you fail to), unfamiliar expression you know so well, could trace it out in the dark you reckon soft ivory fingers on imaginary skin and so you stare into his absent eyes and identify yourself with his absent character and longing
And you so long to be there, to be present.
posted afternoon of November 18th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Reading aloud
