meme

i found out something new.

that apparently is something old.

arrival

today, there was a knock at the door.

so the soap went to answer it

he almost fell over when he saw who it was!

his son, albert!

they spent some time catching up. after supper, there was another knock at the door.

who could it be, everyone thought--

sweet baby pears! it was rhonda, his daughter! the whole family was back together again.

they spent the evening catching up and watching tv.

we talked about the man suit on tuesday in the class i'm teaching.

what the students wanted to talk on: the index

what i wanted to talk on: states of being and the reification of metaphor (which kw was just talking about as a trademark of the fabulists)

what we talked about, mostly: the index

we picked a gorilla part from the index and only read the poems that pertained to it. i think every time i read this book from now on, i will choose a category from the index and just read those poems--that way, my experience of the book always changes (in a more selective way).

the other thing we did was each pick a poem we were excited about. everyone read their poems at the same time. it was a whole room full of man suit noise!

next tuesday, we get to watch wings of desire!

reading time

this is my favorite picture. my grandfather and i. i'm little. and i love him.

i've been out of control ordering books. books for classes and comps.

the class i'm taking is about how modernity is a paradox. and not likely to make sense when constricted to time. we're reading things like candide, flaubert's tales, fleurs du mal, freud, rilke, cortazar, sebald, and lots of philosophy: rousseau, kant, hegel, nietzsche, husserl, sartre, etc.

i'm also taking a tutorial with e. on land use and such. we are reading the granite pail, paterson, a handmade museum (which i'm teaching as well), and susan howe. 

and i've been making lists for comps. my fabulist list looks like this (but may change some):

Madeleine Is Sleeping, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Under the Glacier, Halldor Laxness
The Streets of Crocodiles, Bruno Schulz
The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams
Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
Trampoline, Kelly Link
The Thin Place, Katherine Davis
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, Grace Paley
Sixty Stories, Donald Barthelme
The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler, Italo Calvino
Tin House, Issue 33: Fantastic Women

ParaSpheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction: Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories

The Cuckoo, Peter Streckfus

Secondary Sources:
Fabulation and Metafiction, Robert Scholes
The Fabulators, Robert Scholes
Post Modernist Fiction, Brian McHale

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre 

here is another picture i like. my dad and i and some magic white person bending over.

cabinets of curiosities

something from nick bantock

i've been getting to read so many good things for the class i'm teaching this quarter.

one thing is a book called cabinets of curiosities by patrick mauries.

in it, he says this:

“for the aim of any collection is to halt the passage of time, to freeze the ineluctable progress of life or history, and to replace it with the fragmented, controllable, circular time frame established by a finite series of objects that can be collected in full. . . . while all collection are concerned with the dialectic between disappearance and survival, cabinets of curiosities elevated this obsession to a higher and more rigorous level. Not only did they bring together objects that had eluded or survived the test of time-in itself a cause of wonder- but they also brought together hybrid, luminal objects (suspended between art and nature, death and life), so investing them with new value, new power and new meaning. Like the hero of the Edgar Allen Poe story, the objects in the cabinet of curiosities seem to oscillate perpetually between life and death, returning to life in death, and occupying an eternal no man’s land between the two” (119).

the story of the magic show

last night, my very dream came true and pontiac and i went to the magic show.

a lot of beautiful things happened there. the man above was the host. he was pretending to be david copperfield in this picture.

this woman was so pretty and flexible.

 

this is *sabastian. his patter included rubber bands and information about houdini.

and then this magician came along and changed my life. here he is telling us how he feels connected to someone in the audience. but who?

it turns out it was me! i couldn't believe it.

we were so connected he knew everything happening inside my head!

he said if i concentrated really hard, i would be able to move this marker. i had already investigated it to assure the audience that it had no hidden problems. i even drew and x on my hand with it. everything about the marker was regular. and then i moved it with my thoughts and the energy in my hand! he also took my arm and showed it to the audience and then i had to close my eyes and count how many times he touched my arm. so i did. and then he asked me and i said three and the audience lost their breath together. pontiac says he didn't touch my arm at all.

the last thing he made me do was inspect a ring he handed to me. when he did this, i could see a string coming from his mouth, so i knew a trick would happen. and then he spun the ring in the air and even though i knew a string was around it, he still did all of this stuff that would be impossible even with the string! and then he made it land on my finger! i was amazed.

*story about the lemon and the magic show

in the beginning of the magic show, before it started, sabastian was walking around telling us cool things and showing us his rubber bands and i told him about the lemon. i said, do you think any lemons will disappear tonight, and he said no, why, and i said, i brought a lemon along in case one disappears and then i can find it in my pocket and everyone will be amazed that it got to me because no magician was ever even near me--it will be astounding. i think this lemon is the reason i got to have a part in the magic show because sabastian knew how terribly i wanted to be a magician. the only trick i know is about the police and some farm animals but i couldn't remember it and so i couldn't show him and then i felt like a horrible magician.

the end.

summer was warmer

 

 

 

the molebone tree

green mountain falls

we helped rob move his things into a mountain apartment. it was so cold my digits began to hurt whenever i was outside. this is where he is living.

a little place called green mountain falls, 10 miles or so outside of colorado springs, population 773 in 2000.

above is the lake. it has a gazebo. you can ice skate here! and below is a tiny restaurant area.

this is the restaurant rob lives above.

it has a big fireplace. a woman said it was the second biggest in colorado . . .

 

it also has a bar that isn't in use and a lot of animals by the ceiling

 

i don't know what happened to its eye

here is one of rob's bicycles. and here is a picture of the stairs we had to climb to bring his things inside

here is a picture of when matthew went on the roof. it was snowing.

and then i started taking pictures of a broken television we found inside

 

 

 

laura jensen

i found out recently that laura jensen has a blog (thank you, ts!).

she counted birds on thanksgiving.

here is a poem that i love by her:

the poorsoul

the poorsoul steps from its habitat of leaves,
and it must be singing a song. without the song
you would only walk away, chanting onlies
to only the wind, only little sighs by the water,
only your neighbor.
soon you will be leading every traveler
to the right saloon.
the poorsoul steps ffrom its habitat of leaves,
and there must be snow. without the snow
you would say, "there, i thought it was
something living, and it has no shoes."
there must be summer, when the nights in gloves
wrap days around the feet of the poorsoul.
there must be a song, and snow in summer.
we would never stand there long in the cold.

my week with d

i've been hanging out with d'count all week

in the whole universe of dogs, he is the best dog that ever existed. we visited with friends:

and had an america's next top model finale party:

his favorite girl is on the left. this is what he looks like at the party:

his is watching so intensely, but his favorite girl loses. he was totally devastated. and so was she.

and then we visited the dog park so he could be happy again.

we finished up the week by eating a big dinner with friends and at the end of the night, he joined the food finder's network:

 

here are the first notes i was making about his life when i thought he would have his own blog, but i guess he wasn't that into it:

here is some information about d'count's (aka count chocula) first day:

he woke up.

we played a game called mole getter blues. basically, i throw an animal (maybe a hedge hog, but i call it a mole) and he retrieves it. then he gets the mole getter blues.

he ate some.

he had some sex in him that needed to get out, so he tried having it with the air. but it didn't work. and then we went for a walk. and then he went to his house for some alone time.
  

In the middle of the night, while asleep, he fell off the bed and I woke up and helped him back up.

And the second day:

Today has been less adventurous. He got invited for a date to see wolf 3 at arda’s, but we were making chili and he said he would have to have this date on a different night.

He slept at his house for a while and I finished up with Nietzsche.

And then we walked and he smelled a lot of things.

Now he has been eating a long bone.


all in all it was the best week ever. d'count makes me so happy. and my heart feels in a million pieces because he's going home today.

and here is the best song for the week. oh, it's the one called animals. i have loved this song all along and i just found out roger plays guitar on it!