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JOURNAL: Zeitgeist Watch

read the rolling stone piece and make your peace with it.

One day closer too.
So it goes.

 

 

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JOURNAL: Zeitgeist Watch

via Global Guerrillas by John Robb on 3/22/09

Matt Taibbi's article captures the zeitgeist:  The Big Takeover  (read the whole thing).

NOTE: a central theme of this blog over the last five years has been that nation-state is caught in the grip of two aggressive groups of super-empowered global guerrillas -- the global barons of financial capitalism attacking from above and tribes/gangs/terrorists thrusting from below.   The results of the early returns indicate that the nation-state is losing its fight with these groups.  

 

 

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Growing sentences

Oh Oh Oh my goddess. This is the way to fame and fortune for the poor old retired technical writer.

 

 

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Growing sentences

via johnaugust.com by John on 3/19/09

I linked to this in Off-Topic, but it's worthy of some attention on the front page as well. Jason Kottke reposted a set of instructions by James Tanner for turning any normal sentence into a David Foster Wallace super-sentence.

Since screenwriting is an art of brevity, it's a nice change of pace to see just how overstuffed a sentence one can write.

Following Tanner's instruction, we start with a simple 10-word sentence:

John wanted to play ball, but he sat on the couch.

1. Use them in a compound sentence:

John said he wanted to play ball, but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

2. Add rhythm with a dependent clause:

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball, but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

3. Elaborate using a complete sentence as interrupting modifier:

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames.

4. Append an absolute construction or two:

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, toes flexing at the most perilous virtual encounters.

5. Paralell-o-rize your structure (turn one noun into two):

When asked by his sister, John said he wanted to play ball — he told her where to find his mitt and shoes — but instead he sat on the couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and toes flexing at the most perilous virtual encounters.

6. Adjectival phrases: lots of them. (Note: apprx. 50% will include the word 'little'):

When asked by his little sister, a ginger-haired cherub with little butterflies on her jean shorts, John said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and second-best athletic shoes — but instead he sat on the faded orange couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrilling and/or perilous virtual encounters.

7. Throw in an adverb or two (never more than one third the number of adjectives

When asked by his little sister, a ginger-haired cherub with little butterflies on her jean shorts, John said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes — but instead he sat on the faded orange couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on the ottoman, calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult virtual encounters.

8. Elaboration — mostly unnecessary. Here you'll turn nouns phrases into longer noun phrases; verbs phrases into longer verb phrases. This is largely a matter of synonyms and prepositions. Don't be afraid to be vague! Ideally, these elaborations will contribute to voice — for example, 'had a hand in' is longer than 'helped', but still kinda voice-y — but that's just gravy. The goal here is word count.

When asked by his little sister Bella, a ginger-haired suburban cherub with two make-believe horses and little yellow butterflies on her jean shorts, John definitely said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes — yet seemed unaware that the white New Mexico sun was crossing the sky and sinking below the foothills as he sat on the faded orange velvet couch and played videogames, his left foot resting on a month-old magazine which was in turn resting on the ottoman, his calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult showdowns with level bosses and their virtual henchmen.

9. Give it that Wallace shine. Replace common words with their oddly specific, scientific-y counterparts. (Ex: 'curved fingers' into 'falcate digits'). If you can turn a noun into a brand name, do it. (Ex: 'shoes' into 'Hush Puppies,' 'camera' into 'Bolex'). Finally, go crazy with the possessives. Who wants a tripod when they could have a 'tunnel's locked lab's tripod'? Ahem:

When asked by his little sister Bella, a ginger-haired suburban cherub with two make-believe Lipizzaners and little yellow lepidopterae on her Old Navy jean shorts, John definitely said he wanted to play some ball — he told her where to find his well-oiled Nokona mitt and, specifically, his second-best athletic shoes (the Nikes) — yet seemed unaware that Albuquerque's ghost-white sun was charting its ecliptic path across the sky and sinking below the foothills as he sat on the faded orange velvet couch and played Fallout 3, his left heel resting on the face of Kristen Stewart, who graced the cover of a month-old Entertainment Weekly which was in turn resting on Pottery Barn's cheapest ottoman, John's calf and hairy toes flexing at the most thrillingly perilous and/or maddeningly difficult showdowns with the Super Mutants of Vault 87 in pursuit of the Geck, a device he wasn't sure he even wanted.

Thus, 10 words become 151. And absurd, but that's the fun.

Some sample sentences to try on your own.

• Mary's car would not start. Her sister was not surprised.

• Tom liked cheese. Eating too cheese much hurt his stomach.

• The lawn was brown. Tom didn't know how to fix it.

If you decide to try it for yourself, post the final product, or leave a link in the comments if you're showing your work.

 

 

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Incarnation and Icon

This is the rationale for http://originalfaces.tumblr.com

C. S. Lewis Till we have faces

Van Morrison till you find your original face

Desert Fathers conception of growing a soul as movements within paradox. The movement between kissing the icon and kissing your neighbor during the passing of the peace.

 

 

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Incarnation and Icon

via Peter J. Leithart by Peter J. Leithart on 3/18/09

David VanDrunen of Westminster West offered an interesting Christological defense of iconoclasm in an article several years ago published in the International Journal of Systematic Theology.

Christology, he argues, does not support the conclusion that we may make pictures of Jesus, but the opposite.  Because Jesus is still the Incarnate Son, because He is still fully human, He has all the specificity of true humanity.  He has specific facial and bodily features, and we don't know what those are.  Any picture of Jesus is in fact a picture of someone else.  Even if we happened to stumble on a depiction of Jesus that resembled Him, we wouldn't know.

But VanDrunen is missing something.

The eternal Son is still incarnate as the specific man, Jesus the Christ.  That's true.  And it's true also that this Jesus has specific features that we don't know.

But Jesus has a triple, not a single, body.  His natural body is in heaven, but He has given us a Eucharistic body and a corporate body on earth.  He's left behind His body as food, and His body as the church.

The second of these is particularly important.  When Jesus separates sheep and goats, the standard of judgment will be what each one did to the least of Jesus' brothers, which is something done to Jesus.  We feed Jesus, clothe Jesus, visit Jesus, minister to Jesus, by serving the least of these.

Because Christ is the totus Christus, His face is not unknown to us.  We see His face in the face of His brothers, our brothers.  And that means that we can depict Jesus with any of the faces that are in fact His face to us.  And this justifies, too, the practice of depicting Jesus in culturally specific ways.  Jesus can be depicted as a black man (or an Asian, or a South Sea Islander), because  some of His brothers are black.

None of this, however, justifies veneration of icons.  We are to serve and bow before images of Jesus, but the images of Jesus we are to serve are the living, breathing, stinking, often troubled and often troubling images that sit down the row from us at church.

 

 

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Moore's "What Are Years": How Does This Poem Be?

yes

 

 

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Moore's "What Are Years": How Does This Poem Be?

via Harriet on 3/18/09

In the midst of the energetic discussion around my recent "Listening to Poetry" post, I happened to come across the following extraordinary poem again. It was in a wonderful format, an illustrated anthology called Parallels: Artists/Poets published by MidMarch Arts Press, accompanied on the facing page by an abstract charcoal sketch by Claire Heimarck. I found myself staring face to face with the poem, and I couldn't stop re-reading it —in part because, as far as I can tell, it belied everything I had been saying.

W.H.Auden and Marianne Moore

My post was about listening to poetry, reading it with the musical part of the brain. But really, it was about ways that poetry takes us into "the zone"—that place of oneness of being that is so hard to describe but that we recognize when we are there.

Moore's poem was taking me into the zone, but not in any of the ways I had been describing. Certainly the rhetorical stringencies and the idiosyncratic idiom, playing off of the syllabic constraints, are part of what's going on—but how much does that really tell us? What makes Moore's poem vibrate and hum in its own beingness, feeling while behaving and continuing while surrendering, steeling its form straight up, just in the way it itself describes?

John Ciardi asked, "how does a poem mean?" while Archibald MacLeish said "a poem should not mean, but be." But I have a different question about "What Are Years": "how does this poem be?"

What Are Years?

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in it's defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity.

 

 

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New from Andrei Codrescu

fan fan fan fan. Is it hot in here?

 

 

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New from Andrei Codrescu

via Possum Ego by Dale on 3/18/09

Now here's some Dada I can dig.... Andrei Codrescu announces:

My new book, The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess, was just published by Princeton University Press.... I don't know about you, but I think that the 21st century cannot do without Dada; this book is not another study of Dada! it is a practical guide to the Dada life. Order now from Cottonwood Books and we will send you a signed book. The first fifty-one books will also come with a special Exquisite Corpse gift. The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world-all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse-a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution-lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future ideologue over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, I've created my own Dadaesque guide to Dada-and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as "eros (women)," "internet(s)," and "war." Throughout, it is written in the belief "that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources."

Royal Praise:
"This highly original, beautifully written, and charming book is vintage Andrei Codrescu. No one else has written anything remotely like it. One is carried along by the author's sheer energy and drive, his good humor, his ability to laugh at himself, and his own truly Dada personality. The Posthuman Dada Guide will introduce Dada thinking to a whole new readership."--Marjorie Perloff, author of The Vienna Paradox

"No other book has treated the relationship between the artistic and revolutionary avant-gardes as originally and provocatively as Codrescu's. This is both an immensely illuminating essay of intellectual history and a disturbing meditation on absolute ideals turned into alibis for tyranny. Magically blending sarcasm and gravity, Codrescu invites us to engage in an emancipatory laughter as an antidote to morose scholasticism and dogmatic obscurantism."--Vladimir Tismaneanu, author of Stalinism for All Seasons

 

 

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Jack Kerouac's Golden Eternity Realized

 

 

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Jack Kerouac's Golden Eternity Realized

via Issa's Untidy Hut by Issa's Untidy Hut on 3/19/09

Well, I had a W. S. Merwin poem all ready to go this morning, but there is a typo and I don't have the book at hand, so I'll have to check it out when the book is in hand.

So, it's time to punt.

Ed Baker commented on a recent post when I talked a bit about Jack Kerouac's Tristessa, urging folks on to his The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (You know that I'm listening, eh, Ed?). I've been wending my way headily through: here is section 29 of a book made up of tiny meditations, koans and prose poems (as the back cover touts, rightly):

------29

Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are
the true sins, and sin is only a conception of ours,
due to long habit. Are you generous and are
you kind, those are the true virtues, and they're
only conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond
sin and virtue, is attached to neither, is attached
to nothing, is unattached, because the golden
eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one
mold. The field has curves but it is one field.
All things are different forms of the same thing.
I call it the golden eternity — what do you
call it, brother? For the blessing and merit
of virtue, and the punishment and bad fate
of sin, are alike just so many words.

Jack Kerouac

For those who feel that this is a little too much philosophy and not enough poetry (you are out there, you know), the good news is I found my copy of the Book of Haikus I was searching for (see Tristessa link, above) on the recent anniversary of Jack's birthday. So there — or, rather, here:

Ah the birds
-at dawn,
my mother and father

You paid yr homage
-to the moon,
And she sank

Bach through an open
-dawn window—
the birds are silent

All three poems on two facing pages of the book opened at random: that's poetry, friends. Perhaps I should misplace Merwin (and Jack, come to think of it) a little more often.



***********************************************************



I had the calendar marked for the 19th as the birthday of jazz master Ornette Coleman. In double checking before posting, I see his birthday was actually March 9th, not the 19th, so it seems the serendipitous mistake is the theme of the day. As a college professor of mine used to say (I believe he said it at least three times): once for the intelligent and aware, twice for the intelligent and unaware, and three times for the unintelligent and unaware. Well, I don't have to be hit over the head more than three times to go with the flow - today the mistake is the truth, so let's celebrate Coleman's birthday today. Enjoy.

best,
Don


PS Ruminated and typed to the delicate, forthright word-picking of Jolie Holland. Ain't it all beautiful, eh, Ed?

 

 

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(title unknown)

 

 

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(title unknown)

via Silliman's Blog by Ron on 3/13/09

Michael Davidson reading (MP3)

& talking with Charles Bernstein (MP3)

§

Charles Bernstein's "Morality"

§

Tim Griffin on Rae Armantrout

§

Talking with Norma Cole

"Why I am not a translator, take 2"

§

Notes on Conceptualisms

§

Allen Ginsberg: Mind-Writing Slogans

§

Talking with Michael Schiavo

§

Noah Eli Gordon on Andrew Joron

§

Tisa Bryant's Unexplained Presence

§

Merrill Gilfillan's
"A Nap by the Kickapoo"

§

The secret anthology

§

Nate Mackey's
Song of the Andoumboulou 1 to 7

§

Samuel R. Delany
at the Philadelphia Free Library
March 18

§

Collected vs. selected
in Olson & O'Hara

§

James Longenbach & the line

§

SUNY Buffalo gets funds
to digitize tapes

§

Citation as explanation:
Louis Zukofsky & Walter Benjamin

§

Two books by Ed Baker
(one with Cid Corman)

§

The First 100 Days
poem-a-day
project
has reached the halfway mark

§

Ronald Johnson, visionary

§

Reading report: Futurism

§

Oulipo in New York

§

"the poetry of the stones"

§

Close reading flarf, part 12

Part 12b & 12c

§

One less indie publisher

§

Yet another plausible
portrait of Shakespeare

§

The Best of Contemporary
Mexican Fiction

§

It's e-book week

§

The Shelley Memorial Award
goes to
Gary Young

§

The 5 rules of book cover design

§

Whatever became of Bill Barich

§

"My lunch with M.F.K. Fisher"
& Jessamyn West to boot

§

Poets who don't read
& other problems

Reading vs. writing

§

In the office with Franz Kafka

§

Alissa Valles' Orphan Fire

§

The Journals of Grace Hartigan

§

John Zorn at Yoshi's SF

Zorn & Richard Foreman
in the Astronome

§

Johnny Magic

§

What are intellectuals good for?

§

Kierkegaard the post-avant

§

Perry Anderson's
The Origins of Postmodernity

 

 

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Collapsitarian

How's 'bout a calvinist total depravity version? And the nobility of suffering, and the incarnational reality of suffering and dying gods...

 

 

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Collapsitarian

via Possum Ego by Dale on 3/11/09

I found this entry on Collapsitarianism via John Robb's always-insightful blog. Kevin Kelly writes:

The idea of progress has been slowly dying. I think progress lost its allure at the ignition of the first atom bomb at the end of WWII. It has been losing luster since. Even more recently the future has become boring and unfashionable. No one wants to live in the future. The jet packs don't work, and the Daily Me is full of spam. No finds the Future attractive any longer.

The only thing left to believe in is collapse. That's not boring! The end of civilization would be terribly exciting, and unlike any future we could imagine, probably more likely. Dystopias are a favorite science fiction destination now.

We all are collapsitarians these days.

Zizek (somewhere in his expanding vastnesses) says something similar, noting how thirty years ago there would be passionate discussions on the Left about the future, but now, he asks, where have those conversations gone? No one offers thrilling visions of a future.

It is exciting to think about collapse—and the freedom—and hardship this would bring. I think there are very real climate and resource indicators to suggest that some kind of collapse is certainly possible, but the psychology of collapse, and the desire for it, compel me to think about my own attention to the gloom-n-doom fringes of contemporary culture. It's been a long time since I read Freud, but does anyone still talk about the death drive? Collapse, biologically, belongs to everyone's individual future. Perhaps the fantasy of the collapse of civilization provides a way to sooth the ego's horror of death. If I go, it all goes!

But Collapse is also itself a vision of restoration. If systems, and not only bodies, fail, some promise remains in the rearticulation of narratives of adventure that have become stale in the contemporary, cubicle-fated West. I've been looking at the folklore of the colonists who settled Texas. That corn pone world offered serious considerations of, say, how to move bodies through space, or how to track an enemy, or what to eat when there was little to be had. The lack of narratives of adventure makes life thin and uninviting in the present. Perhaps one reason for the post-War growth of Creative Writing departments had something to do with a need for adventure. Poetry promises to move us forward into new possibilities. Our other contracts with pre-Collapsarian life are fragile, delicately maintained, practicing attention to morals and manners in a world of boredom, where meaningful labor is rarely achieved. Instead, we contribute to the system's ongoing need to expand, satisfying its needs based on growth at any cost over more human needs to reveal our experience through stories and images.

On a related note, mass murders announced in Alabama and Germany today. Lone gunmen. Adventurous perversions. Maybe it's better to ask: when did the Collapse begin?

 

 

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