"Darwin in 1881" (Gjertrud Schnackenberg)

...with all his miracles

Reduced to sailors' tales,

He sits up in the dark. The islands loom.

His seasickness upwells,

Silence creeps by in memory as it crept

By him on water, while the sailors slept,

From broken eggs, and vacant tortoise shells.

His voyage around the cape of middle age

Comes, with a feat of insight, to a close,

The same way Prospero's

Ended before he left the stage

To be led home across the blue-white sea,

When he had spoken of the clouds and globe,

Breaking his wand, and taking off his robe:

Knowledge increases unreality.

He quickly dresses.

Form wavers like his shadow on the stair,

As he descends, in need of air

To cure his dizziness.

Down past the shipsunk emptiness

Of grownup childrens' rooms and hallways where

The family portraits blindly stare,

Haunted by each others' likenesses...

I bet phenomenologists make fabulous lovers

"This is what we are doing when we define sensation as co-existence or communion. The sensation of blue is not the knowledge or positing of a certain identifiable quale throughout all the experiences of it which I have, as the geometer's circle is the same in Paris and Tokyo... Sensation is intentional because I find that in the sensible a certain rhythm of existence is put forward... Thus a sensible datum which is on the point of being felt sets a kind of muddled problem for my body to solve. I must find the attitude which will provide it with the means of becoming determinate, of showing up as blue; I must find the reply to a question which is obscurely expressed... As I contemplate the blue of the sky I am not set over against it as an acosmic subject; I do not possess it in thought, or spread out towards it some idea of blue such as might reveal the secret of it, I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it 'thinks itself wtithin me,' I am the sky itself as it is drawn together and unified, and as it begins to exist for itself; my consciousness is saturated with this limitless blue."  --Merleau-Ponty

up all nite

Email record of my last ever coursework-induced all-nighter:

>On May 14, 2006, at 11:05 PM, RH wrote:

I JUST CITED JUDITH BUTLER!
NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAAAAAAA
NA NA NA NAAAAAA
HEEEEY JUUUUUUUDDE

>On May 14, 2006, at 11:23, CELE wrote:

nice. I just snuck in the truly lyrical Bergson on "the inexorable logic which reality applies to the correction of dreams."

>On May 14, 2006, at 11:34, RH wrote:

If academia were a Nickelodeon children's show, every time someone cited Judith Butler, "Hey Jude" would suddenly play at deafening volume (that's what I was going for). And they would get a bucket of green slime dumped on their head. Then everyone would nod ruefully and chuckle.

>On May 14, 2006, at 11:44, CELE wrote:

i promise to pack slime into seminar if you'll let me douse you when you cite jude. i absolutely recognize the automatic soundtrack phenomena. in our fantasy seminar room, as you may already have suspected, "Clan in Da Front" would start and the Wu Tang Clan would bust through the wall like the Kool Aid Kid anytime someone references "safe in their alabaster chambers."

>On May 14, 2006, at 11:53, RH wrote:

yeah, you've got me doing that now every time i see that poem. damn it. How close are you to done?

>On May 15, 2006, at 12:02, CELE wrote:

i'm on page 19, i have about two more ideas to cover then i have to write an intro and conclusion. then i have to read it over and realize how incoherent it is, panic, fix some footnotes, decide i don't care, read it over again, catch twelve typos, decide to sleep instead of edit, nearly miss the 9 a.m. deadline, and by noon o five i hope to be buzzed somewhere sunny.

how about you?

>On May 15, 2006, at 12:13, RH wrote:

page 15. shoot me.

>On May 15, 2006, at 12:54, CELE wrote:

kay, but by tomorrow you will have written two seminar papers in the time it took me to write one. chew on that, slugger.

i really want to work more coach-style epithets into my vocabulary. chief. but maybe i should just work harder at getting more vocabulary onto page 19.

>On May 15, 2006, at 1:16, RH wrote:

slap more butts.

>On May 15, 2006, at 1:43, RH wrote:

ike a coach, you know. football players. all those tight ends.

>On May 15, 2006, at 2:12, CELE wrote:

yes, tight ends, awesome. i knew this coach thing was a good idea. but you have to explain to people thats what i'm doing, cause if i slap ass and then mumble something about coaching, it might not go over.

10 points for me, i just referenced Wile E. Coyote in a paper on Dickinson. Do you think Cams even knows who that is, let alone that he has a penchant for running off of cliffs before he's realized it? This is crucial to my reading of "I stepped from plank to plank." Maybe the more pressing concern should be why a looney toon has become a pivotal intertextual referent for my reading. I might be in trouble. ya reckon?

>On May 15, 2006, at 3:02, RH wrote:

perhaps the answer lies in Dr. Gene Ray's TimeCube:
http://www.timecube.com/
context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ray

this man is batshit crazy. he also has the most emphatic writing style on the planet.

>On May 15, 2006, at 3:54, CELE wrote:

so. tired. I think all this writing on Dickinson is turning me into her--I haven't left my room for hours, and all I do is ponder Eternity (i.e. how long it is taking me to finish this damn paper). I wonder if she, too, had a spiralling jello pudding habit.

>On May 15, 2006, at 4:12, RH wrote:
The civil rights aspect of this story is, I will admit, alarming but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN WE PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE HAVE A "PIRATE VS. NINJA EVENT" PLEASE. Also please note the last paragraph of the article, possibly the most important one.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7279844/did/12303788/

>On May 15, 2006, at 4:21, CELE wrote:

but oh my god, but which would you be? how are you supposed to pick between being a ninja and a pirate? that's like asking me to pick between ... something awesome and something kickass. it can't be done. except that i'm hoping our expensively-trained federal agents would not be so quick to run down a suspicious looking man in pantaloons and a ruffled shirt slit down to his navel. although, come to think of it, why were they so freaked out about a bandana? the old bandana disguise went out with train robbing. you don't see many dudes on COPS these days covering up with a hankie. no no, pantyhose are way more masculine. ok now i've convinced myself that ruffianage and effeminate accessory articles go hand in hand, so naturally we should kneel on any and all ruffled shirts we see. and we should have a pirate/ninja party.

>On May 15,2006, at 4:48, CELE wrote:

Literary term that ought to describe a mode of dancing:
Ekphrastic.

When I'm done this paper, I'mna get ekphrastic up in here. Please lord let me finish this paper someday and praise you with my ekphrastic skillz. Then, at 9:05, I'ma make myself a big old lazy morning breakfast. Eggphrastic!

OK that was terrible. If my room came with a penalty box, that's where I'd go. I'd go, curl up... in the nice... warm... soft... penalty box...

>On May 15, 2006, at 5:04, RH wrote:

here is a desktop-size picture of custard:

http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/media/images/custardbig.jpg

marginally sublime

If nothing but posting is getting done this afternoon, I place the blame squarely on Melville's all but unreadable Confidence Man. So I can't take credit for Hadley's discovery (email excerpted below), but i want to share it cause I know at least a couple of you will get the same tingly joy I did from this scene of the collision of three great texts (Emerson's, Porte's, and our marginalist's):

"I love library books because I love marginalia. I especially love marginalia when it is as compelling as that which appears in the library's copy of Joel Porte's "Emerson and Thoreau: Transcendentalists in Conflict." The informal annotations in question are cheekily written in pen, all caps. 'FRAIDY ESCAPISM it begins, followed up by - and this is reference to Hawthorne - SELF-POSSESSED NEUROTIC. And then I was hooked. Who was this reader whose hostility toward transcendental thought prompted him (or her) to call Emerson a SCHIZOID HERMIT? Who, despite his or her outrage over the content of the book, kept reading long enough to level the charge of MONKISH HANDJIVER (my favorite new insult) against Emerson's audience? Should we take this as a cautionary tale? Will we too one day find ourselves adding emphatically AND MAKE PEOPLE CRINGE AT YOUR SIGHT to Emerson's dictum: "Now and then a man exquisitely made can and must live alone; but coop up most men, and you undo them." Or is this an undergraduate lashing out at the TA who, like the artists he or she hates (SIMPLY INTROVERTS), dared make him or her read secondary literature? Or was this you, Cristie? .....
....... or Cara?
............ or maybe Rob, working out SC-related aggression?

In any case, I must return to my SELF-SERVING PHILOSOPHY. If any of you monkish handjivers would like a drink tonight, do call. xoxo H"

biodomes and the future of science

Second floor porch, BBQ smoke.

Rob: Remember biodomes?  Whatever happened to the biodome as a utopian project?

Jake: There's still a lone, renegade monkey on the loose in the last biodome.

Simon: And he's probably organizing the other monkeys, building a race of feral biodome superchimps ready to march out of the dome one day...

Jake: No, it's a "lone" monkey.  There's no monkey sex going on in the biodome.

Dewayne: But  it'd still be interesting to think of how many things a monkey could successfully copulate with.

Science is wasted on scientists.

july and dreaming of canoes again

The attributed titles of the Journals of Lewis and Clark are begging to be made into an epic cycle of Great American Pop Songs. Sufjan Stevens eat your overly precious, hummy little heart out. I'm seeing albums of bright and brash and un-chastened hooks that can live up to the challenge L+C laid down. How fast would I pay up for the tracks on:

We Set the Prairies on Fire
The Fragments of Many Carcasses
Poor Starved Devils
We Set Out With the Party
Persuaded That It Was an Indian That Had Shot Me
(and, naturally), Captain Clark Thought Himself Somewhat Bilious and Had Not Had A Passage For Several Days

scrapbooking II

More travel journal transcription:

We got to Saida in southern Lebanon, and half-heartedly wandered the souq. But after three weeks, we’ve had enough souqs, and since we have nothing to buy, we walk back to the center of town. Of course, when shopping fails, there’s always brutality for passing the time: we decide to try to make our way all the way south to Al Khiam, the former occupied prison on the Israeli border. So we find the gendarmerie and ask where to get the permissions we’ve read we’ll need in order to visit the southern border lands. There are eight policemen in the one cool, cement room, and our inquiry spurs all eight to action. We stand in the doorway, trying to look intelligent, while they discuss us as if we’re not there. It is decided that two officers will escort us to where we need to go. We are swept into an even larger than normal SUV and taken to the local army station outside of town. Several suspicious glances and two telephone calls later, the guard at the gate admits us and directs us to the powers that be—in this case, four uniformed men and one guy who just seems to be hanging out for the day. Again our passports must come out, their details transcribed, extraneous men with evidently no connection to our request must be invited to take tea and have their turn to inspect us. At last, we’re given a slip of paper with the army station’s telephone number on it; that is all—no stamp, no ticket, no note. We thank them and head back out to the street, where we hail a cab (yet another vintage Mercedes) and haggle with a young, slick- and sandy-haired taxi driver. But he and Ta don’t understand each other, and so he has us get in and drive with him back to town, where he pulls up outside a small café with a front garden full of old men smoking. For the third time that afternoon, we’re beset by men, this time pressing their faces into the car’s windows, brokering our request. One kind-eyed older man asks us in English what we want, and Ta answers in Arabic. He then “translates” for our driver, adding at the end (Ta would later tell me) “you realize she’s speaking Arabic, don’t you?” This broken conversation continues, punctuated by the commentating and correcting of five other men who’ve gathered around the car. We get him down from $70 to $45, and he lets his “brother” (“and take me, I’m your sister!” shouted one of the old men) come along for the ride. We’re off. Our driver drives like an angry man, or a young man trying to impress two foreign girls with his fearlessness of hairpin turns. Or both. We make it alive to the checkpoint, where we’re asked to step out of the car. My stomach lurches: there is no other house for miles, everyone has a weapon but us, and even our driver looks a little bit daunted. Without taking his eyes off of us, the head officer calls the number we’ve handed him. After a few words, he hangs up, and looks at us carefully in silence. He waves us on, on into what proves to be the most beautiful country I’d seen in Lebanon: steep mountains crisscrossed with goat tracks and sloping green fields. We are in the heart of Hezb’allah territory, against the recommendations of our State Department, and the only record of where we’ve gone are the photocopies of our passports beside the pot of tea at the army station. We pass the ruins of Beaufort Castle, another Crusader stronghold, crouched at the top of a sort of butte with just one razor-edge line of approach along a ridge, run like a starving spine from the valley floor. We shoot through another series of switchbacks, slow down through a small town, and arrive at Al Khiam. A stout man trundles out to greet us and takes us perfunctorily through the site: three complexes of buildings, whitewashed and low. First, without looking at us, he walks us past solitary confinement chambers, utterly bare; 8’x 8’ group cells for twelve men with a single, seatless toilet. Then the torture sites: here, a wind-arm telephone with two looped wires—for your fingers, he gestures, then looks hard at us, to make sure we’ve understood. Here, in this courtyard, a solitary wooden post for hanging prisoners, sometimes upside down, for days or, for two local boys, until death. There, in that corner, men made to kneel until their knees shredded, and then salt put in the wounds—yes, do we understand? We passed through these blank spaces quickly, trying to indicate that we understood, or wanted to—though there was nothing to see, unless you count this tracelessness that dead men leave. Our tour was over in ten minutes, and so, helplessly, we took pictures of the murals someone had painted on an exterior wall after the Israelis abandoned the prison. Ta bought a Hezb’allah keychain, and I bought a baseball hat. Our guide gave us a pamphlet with the names of the men who had been imprisoned there, and underlined his own name on the list. Our taxi driver and his brother met us outside and showed us where, on the hills across from us, Israeli soldiers looked at us, looking at them, from their observation post. Our driver was happy now, jaunty. He gave my camera to his “brother” and made him take a picture of the three of us against the backdrop of mountains and the soldiers watching our backs. Our driver in a good mood was more dangerous than before on the turns, but we made it back to Saida, and then Beirut, without a mark on us.

Zahma

No car here ever truly dies. Every taxi is a resurrected Fiat, bristling with soldered wires and wires that go nowhere, innards stripped down to metal frames and door handles jacked from washing machines. Cairo's streets are full of these mummified cars: semi-preserved shells and raw mechanics reluctantly sparked to life.  Their native tongue is honking--but beyond its powers of expression, the horn may also substitute for brakes.

There's no such thing as jaywalking in these streets, because there's nothing besides jaywalking. On this day I walked from the Mosque of Ibn Tulun to the Mamluk cemetery, and had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about traffic lanes and lights. I may as well have waited for the Red Sea to stop and let me cross. It may work for Moses, but for the rest of us mortals, we have to say a prayer and dive into the mass and the mess and the glorious noise.