9 October 2019: the ace of roses/panthers
9 October 2019—Wednesday
I have to confess that I have half written a few posts but chickened out about posting them, since they felt undercooked. And the longer I go without posting, the more anxiety surrounds it. So to shake off the cobwebs, a bit of bibliomancy with the books in my bag.
Let me question be:
How best to use the limited time I have to make my writing into something useful my community?
And my methodology:
Flip until it feels right to stop and point at the page, sliding my fingertip until I hit something inadvertently pertinent to my question.
1. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin:
“Envy eats you like a worm in an apple. Let’s let out the worm.”
2. Giulia Bencivenga is a maniac, Giulia Bencivenga:
“The only way forward is through infinite sets/Of holes.”
3. Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, Laura Hyunjhee Kim
The intention to become an artist is manifested by a blobsession: a desire to harmonize synesthetic experiences, filter the artosphere, and ultimately catalyze the blobosphere into a world where other humans share meaningful experiences as well.
4. The Descent of Alette, Alice Notley:
“ ‘We will draw cards,’ I said,” “ ‘for who does it” “The one who
draws” “the highest card” “performs the act’” “The man handed me”
“a deck of cards” “It contained” “the two suits of” “roses”
“& panthers” “Red roses &” “black panthers” “ ‘Which is the
higher suit?’” “someone asked” “ ‘The highest suit” “is a third suit”
“always,’ I said,” “ ‘& this deck” “contains that suit:” “the
composite suit,” “roses/panthers,” “half & half’” “Then I myself
“drew the highest card,” “the ace of” “roses/panthers” “ ‘ I will
do it,’ I said” “ ‘You want me, don’t you,” “to kill the tyrant?”
“I will kill him” “but it won’t happen” “quite yet” “I have to
journey first” “farther down” “into this darkness’”
5. Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane Alison:
“How about sentences that try to reflect human thought, with its fumblings, pauses, corrections?”
6. The Divine Comedy 1: Hell, Dante Alighieri, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers:
For there of a sudden I saw three shapes arise,
Three hellish Furies, bolstered all with blood;
Their form and bearing were made woman-wise;
Vivid green hydras girt them, and a brood
Of asps and adders, each a living tress,
Writhed round the brows of that fell sisterhood.
And, knowing well those handmaids pitiless
Who serve the Queen of everlasting woe:
“Behold,” said he, “the fierce Erinyes.
There on the right Alecto howls, and lo!
Megaera on the left; betwixt them wails
Tisiphone.” And he was silent so.
They beat their breasts, and tore them with their nails,
Shrieking so loud that, faint and tremulous,
I clutched the poet; and they, with fiercer yells,
Cried: “Fetch Medusa!”, glaring down on us,
“Turn him to stone! Why did we not requite—
Woe worth the day!—the assault of Theseus?”
“Turn thee about, and shut thine eyelids tight;
If Gorgon show her face and thou thereon
Look once, there’s no returning to the light.”
Thus cried the master; nor to my hands alone
Would trust, but turned me himself, and urgently
Pressed my palms close and covered them with his own.
7. Voice’s Daughter of a Heart Yet to be Born, Anne Waldman:
“Thoroughly attuned nights. Vestals. Way beyond childhood. Gestures indicate desire and not waste time. Identify yourself. I am dithyramb! they shout, back from the dead, power in a chorus: WE WANT…WHAT’S THERE, AND TO SHED INNOCENCE, OCCUPY!”
How would you interpret this assembly?