"Chaos from start to finish"

"You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong."

- American Pastoral (1997)

Dream Song 224

Eighty

Lonely in his great age, Henry's old friend
leaned on his burning cane while his old friend
was hymned out of living.
The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow
bowed to them with his thoughts—it's hard to know them though
for the old man sang no word.

Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let's guess.
Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses
of the picnics of rising youth.
Gone all slowly. Stately, not as the tongue
worries the loose tooth, wits as strong as young,
only the albino body failing.

Where the smother clusters pinpoint insights clear.
The tennis is over. The last words are here?
What, in the world, will they be?
White is the hue of death & victory,
all the old generosities dismissed,
while the white years insist.

(1968)

826 DAY

Happy 8/26 day! Please go HERE to support 826 writing programs.

or go here

Las Afueras

Paula Peysere is a poet who writes for "El Interpredor" (Male's magazine). I found her book in my house.

ADDENDUM: I just spoke w/ Seba and apparently Paula Peysere is also an itinerant hair-cutter who cuts hair 1 Friday every month. This Friday she will be cutting hair here on calle Arganarez. I plan on attending.

This is her haircut blog. Scroll way down to see Male's haircut.

Porquesta toca manana

Llega temprano, por favor, y no podes hablar (fyi):

pOrqUestA ---- Baño Sonoro

¿ por qué es tan difícil escuchar ?

¿ por qué empiezan a hablar cuando hay algo que oir ?




¿ qué hay que oír ?


será una experiencia acústica única para cada par de oídos
vamos a necesitar bastante de su silencio
------------------
sábado 22 de agosto- 21 hs puntual puntual
departamento único de asuntos intuitivos e irregularidades básicas
entrada $10 (el vino lo invitamos nosotros)
capacidad limitada por favor confirmar asistencia hasta el viernes 21
esquina triangular sobre Guatemala entre Uriarte y Darragueyra . portón negro de garage. tocar timbre.

frente a la plazoleta

A Land Apart

It's probably not news to most of you in New York, but a new neighborhood has fastened itself to the Brooklyn community (though not to the landmass). This development is perhaps the final step in the gentrification of Brooklyn, as young, white people create communities that even THEY cannot join.

J/K, though, it looks really cool and I'm sure the people are great, &c, &c. Plus, this is probably what the future of Brooklyn looks like, what with sea levels rising and all.

Notice I didn't use the word "hipster".

Joel Salatin: A Good Farming Story

Though there are doubtless dozens of such interviews already in circulation, I particularly like this version of Joel Salatin's philosophy on farming and food. He has quite a talent for distilling the complex issues of small farms in the US into a digestible moral philosophy. Impressive.


Morsels:
"The food industry, I'm convinced, actually believes we don't need soil to live."

"The food industry views everything through the skewed paradigm of faith in human cleverness rather than dependence on nature's design."

"...a culture that views its life from such an arrogant, manipulative, disrespectful hubris, will view its own citizenry the same way--and other cultures."

"The Jeffersonian ideal of the agrarian intellectual is about as culturally American as it gets--and I suggest as revolutionary today as it was in his day, when breaking from royalty and all its worldviews was as different as breaking from globalization, and its worldviews is today."

Bolsa

Yesterday Anna and I went for some cafe con leches after our IUNA (art school) initiation. When we left the cafe I left my bag (w/ journal, book and used film) on the chair next to me. I didn't realize that I'd forgetten it until I was sitting eating a choripan in some parilla nearly 25 blocks away. I spent 4o nerve-racked minutes walking back to the cafe. When I finally got there, the barista had set my bag (my bag!) on the wooden counter in front of the espresso machine. I thanked him profusely and then, as I turned to leave, this guy, this salty, 70 year old guy, turned to me and said: "If you don't have a brain, at least you have legs."

America, this is quite serious

La voluntad de equilibrio

El Placer

Para poder dormirse, intenta recordar
todas las veces que estuvo en París.
Cuando olvida alguna, muere un animal
doméstico, o se seca
una planta en la terraza.

Ahora necesito viento, diría
si dominara el francés o cualquier lengua
moderna, para no pensar, para al menos
mantenerme en pie hasta el próximo
capítulo. Si me contaras otra mentira...

No importaba nada que se hicieran novios
y se ahogaran en el río,
pero me recomendó por escrito
que me concentrara en el libro y dejara
de mirar a la lectora de enfrente,
que se acariciaba el pelo como si se fuera a ahogar.

Pleasure

To fall asleep, she tries to remember
all of the times she was in Paris
When she forgets one, a pet dies
or a plant on the terrace shrivels up.

Right now I need the wind, I would say
that if I had mastered French, or some other language
I could stop thinking, or, at least, I could remain standing until the next
chapter. If you told me another lie…

What her boyfriend’s did mattered little,
if they drowned in the river, for example
but she did, once, advise me in a note
to concentrate on my book, and to stop looking
at the other girl across from me
who was stroking her hair, like she was about to drown.

- Mariano Peyrou (2000)