Caterina.net

I undertake odd projects, investigations into Oulipian limitations or other outré inventions, plans, performances, purposes. I put into play lipogrammatic limitations, leaving umpteen other letters untouched. It is otiose pabulum, isn't it? Ugly pedantic patter, pedestrian, laughable, unlovely, unnatural, insipid palaver (unsurprisingly penned lacking our lexical internuncio, our OED pal.) Oy! Outcome: overwrought purple prose.

Poetasters, inkslingers -- please post other lipogrammatic passages. OK?

A project of Derek Beaulieu of House Press in Canada.

There exist only two known photographs of Blanchot, who was a recluse. Other things known about him: he was tall and thin and ate very little. He was a friend of Levinas and Bataille. He was often ill.

• An obituary.
• A bibliography with some excerpts from his writing (many of his books were translated by Lydia Davis.)

Thus begins Ian McEwan's creepy first novel The Cement Garden, written in 1978. The book tells the story of an English family that lives isolated from the rest of the world in a crumbling house that resembles a castle. The neighborhood around it has been razed to make way for a suburban development that never came to pass, though delapidated prefabs list on overgrown lots. In the distance loom modern high-rise towers, and though their father attends work and the children attend school, all their relatives are dead, they have no friends and no one ever comes to visit them.

First the father dies suddenly, and soon after the mother takes to bed, suffering from a mysterious illness, and dies a lingering death. Only the children remain -- Julie, who is 17, Jack, who is 15, and their younger siblings Sue and Tom. Jack, from whose perspective the story is told, is a revolting, sullen, pimply teen who masturbates compulsively. The children struggle to keep their world together, and untoward, nasty things transpire -- things that, in their loveless world, have a perverse logic of their own. An interloper, Julie's 23-year-old boyfriend Derek is a professional snooker player and the closest thing to the 'normal' in the book. He, of course, threatens to undermine their precarious togetherness by exposing their horrible secrets.

There was something about The Cement Garden that was similar to another book I'd read recently, The Confusions of Young Torless. In both books there is a group of four children living in isolation from both their parents and from the rest of society, acting out the compulsions of adolescent sexuality and the perversity of children. Torless, Jack and their companions are the last representatives of a failing, impotent aristocracy declining into decadence. The telling of the two tales were quite different -- while Jack is mostly cruel, affectless and unreflective, Torless examines his every action and decision with lapidary minuteness, analysing each and every psychological frisson.

A film was made of The Cement Garden which was apparently quite good and faithful to the text -- though eliminating the final paragraph in which (SPOILER WARNING) sirens are heard in the distance, the standard filmic expression of order and rationality prevailing over crime and evil. I thought that last paragraph was a bit of a betrayal too. McEwan has been winning a lot of prizes lately, most recently the National Book Critics Circle Award, and I'd thought to investigate, having never read any of his work before. Now I'm reading Enduring Love.

It's a rather grisly day on Caterina.net:

-- From Martin Amis' essay in today's Guardian on the war with Iraq.

Think that the AAA is this benevolent organization that helps you when you have a flat tire? Think again! If you are a member of AAA, you should be aware that one of the things that AAA does is lobby against any and all forms of public transportation that do not also benefit cars, and has for decades. This year the federal government will spend 4x as much on laying down highway as it will on public transportation. Read this! If you read AAA's deceptive "Public Transportation" statement it says that they believe every time you need to go somewhere you should bring 2 tons of steel with you: "The fact remains that travel by automobile meets the transportation needs of most Americans, most of the time. "

It's always good to remember how much a car pollutes:

If you want to leave AAA, but enjoy the same benefits, join The Better World Club. I was reminded of the evils of AAA by this article in the NY Times on plane pollution. If you fly a lot, you should consider offsetting the damage with some contributions -- $11 per domestic flight and $22 per international flight -- to American Forests who will plant a tree for every dollar donated.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Attention Modernist furniture aficionados. Have a look at this beautiful set of nesting tables at Frank Smith Ooooh? Ahhhh? You betcha. And made here in BC.

I was struck by the epigram on a glosa* called "Stone Baby" in Sandy Shreve's book of poetry Belonging:

Stone babies are also called "lithopaedia", and there are only known to have been four.

Not for the squeamish: photos of an operation removing a stone baby.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*Glosa: Any poem expanding on the theme presented in the introductory stanza and usually repeating one or more lines of the opening in subsequent stanzas. Based on the Spanish form the mote, of the 14th century in which a line or short stanza, called the cabeza which set the theme of the poem. Following stanzas were built from phrases or lines of the cabeza which were often used at the ends of lines like a refrain. (from ahapoetry)

What I didn't realize was that the entirety of Steve McCaffrey's Carnival is online at Coach House Books. As well as the entire Martyrology by bpNichols.

Look.

From the latest issue of The Paris Review, an interview with Richard Powers.

I've been on a manic book-buying binge lately, and the online bookstores I hit tend to be these, in this order:

• Powells, because they ship free to Canada with orders of $50 or more (and I always have orders of $50 or more, or wait until I do) They always stamp GST PAID on the box too, so you don't have to pay taxes and penalties.
• Abe Books -- based in Victoria, BC, and thus are more likely to carry things from Canadian bookstores. (There is often an extortionate tax on buying things in the U.S. which you have to pay at the post office. This often exceeds the price of the books you've bought.)
• Daedalus Books which always seems to have a good supply of remaindered art books and quasi-academic books.
• Labyrinth Books, which specializes in Scholarly and University Press books.
• Seminary Coop Not as good of a selection as the above, but still has stuff you'd never find at Amazon.

I've also decided that When I Am Rich, I will start a press like Coach House Books, which specializes in outré Canlit (back in the 70s if you looked at their logo with a loupe it read "Printed by Acid-Addled Hippies" or something like that) Exact Change, which brings out-of-print books back into print (with lovely new designs). They publish surreal, fey and curious books, and it was started by Damon and Naomi of Galaxie 500 and Damon and Naomi. Another fine bookselling enterprise is McSweeney's Books, which is able to fund unremunerative but worthy projects such as bringing out the 6-volume, 3,500 page Rising Up and Rising Down, William Vollman's treatise on violence.

Paul asked what books I bought recently. Here is a list:

• The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus. Seems to be universally lauded. I read the first 10 pages or so at 6 AM this morning, after I read
• How the Blessed Live by Susannah M. Smith. I should know better than to start reading a book at 1:30 in the morning. I was up until 5 finishing it (it is not long).
• Seven Pages Missing by Steve McCaffery. The site says: "In two massive volumes, Steve McCaffery, Canada's most challenging, experimental and innovative poet/critic amasses the best of his previously published and ungathered work." I bought both volumes.
• Fathomsuns and Benighted by Paul Celan. It was about time I acquired more Celan. If anyone knows anything about good alternative translations let me know.
• Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew by John Felstiner. Having just seen The Pianist by Roman Polanski, the holocaust and Celan's experience of it is much on my mind.
• From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabes Reader translated by Rosemarie Waldrop. I know almost nothing about Jabes; I suspect I will like him, but this is a shot in the dark.
• Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s edited by Mark Wallace and Steven Marks. Given the other books listed here, this purchase should make good sense.
• Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology by Stephen Wilson. This book was mentioned in an article by Darren Wershler-Henry and sounded intriguing.
• Lucy Orta:Process of Transformation by Lucy Orta et al. Orta was trained as a fashion designer and her work is often in the form of clothing and tentlike structures. I saw this book in Paris last year, and coveted it.
• Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science by Christian Bok. After interviewing Bok last week, I wanted to read some of his critical work. I tried to get my hands on this book at the library, but they didn't have it.
• The Four Books that are in Print of Christopher Dewdney. This purchase also an outgrowth of the Bok interview, as Dewdney was a great influence on Bok's first book Crystallography, another book I was trying to find. (It's listed for $150 on abebooks.com, but Bok said they were typesetting a second edition this week.) I'm just thrilled with Dewdney. He writes a species of poetic scifi, shot through with Burroughsian paranoia.
• Dark Spring by Unica Zurn. Zurn was a bit of a nutbar, and Hans Bellmer's lover -- I can understand how being in a relationship with the guy who made those horrible/revolting/fascinating poupées could drive you out of your mind. Dark Spring sounded interesting and was brought out by Exact Change, so why not?
• I now have to run out the door, so I'll just list the rest without links or commentary:

Maps of the Mind by Hampden Turner, C (because I've been wanting this for a while)
Bayamus and Cardinal Polatuo: Two Novels by Themerson, Stefan
Adventures in 'Pataphysics by Jarry, Alfred
Maldoror and Other Writings by Lautreamont, Comte De (because I lost my copy)
Undying Love Or Love Dies by Toufic, Jalal (at Paul's suggestion)
Les Enfants Terribles by Cocteau, Jean (at Demian's suggestion)
Three Paths to the Lake:Stories by Bachmann, Ingeborg

When I say binge, I'm not kidding. So now I get to hear from you. What have you bought lately?

(Thanks Eric)

• Code Poetics by Dominic Fox
• Conchology by Gabriel Gudding

And some I haven't linked to before:

• Million Poems by Jordan Davis
• fait accompli by Nick Piombino
• Cahiers de Corey by Josh Corey
• Ich Bin Ein Iraqi by Camille Roy

This fellow is preparing for maunam, the vow of silence. Does anyone know the significance of his sewing calamansi to his chest?

I've been trying to find out more about vows of silence. A friend of mine was roommates with a silence artist in Barcelona.

A piece about Trappist Silence.

On Alamut today Kenny writes in with a post of a post from this everything2 entry (I reproduce it here only because Alamut doesn't have permalinks, tsk tsk):

In spite of being a compulsive life-recorder (in text -- I hardly ever take photographs as longtime Caterina.net readers may have surmised by my never-changing photos page), I shuddered to think of what an even more complete record of my life might look like. I thought of these two things:

1. A nightmare that the experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton once related in which he dreamed that he was the heir of a fantastically rich family, and the parents had had, and were having, their entire life filmed, every moment of every day. He would inherit their vast fortune, if and only if he agreed to spend every minute of every day watching the film of every moment of every day of their lives...

2. The part of A Changing Light at Sandover where James Merrill writes of how he lost his camera:

And, following a tangent angling off of the mention of Hollis Frampton above, may I present an interesting tidbit written by Mr. Frampton (with which I disagree, but which is interesting nonetheless):

Friend of a friend Robert Tat has just opened up a gallery in San Francisco, selling 19th and 20th century photographs. I love how smoky and mysterious these photographs are. He has also amassed a collection of vernacular and found images. Lovely!

I am so glad that someone (Spencer Selby) assembled a list of Experimental Poetry Magazines. There are some Canadian ones missing (Raddle Moon -- is Raddle Moon defunct?, Dandelion(updated now)...) and some have sites that aren't linked to (Shark) but wow! There are so many there I haven't heard of. (Thanks Fredrik!)

I was seeking some information on The Laments -- mythological or legendary figures, generally women, who wailed at the gravesides of the recently dead -- but Google returned to me this lovely piece called The Ten Laments: Technology and Education in Ancient China. Written in the 13th century, it laments people's lack of interest in books and learning, and shows how we always believe things were better "in ancient times", when in fact things are not in decline, just the way they've always been:

I remember reading a 3,000-year-old Egyptian inscription which said, "The youth of today are unruly, belligerent, and do not listen to their parents..."

Also, does anyone remember reading an article in The New Yorker in the past two or three years, in which a philosopher or historian propounded this theory that we live in the age of "nothing special", i.e. that we live in a time that is not that much different than any other time, and that our predictions should be predicated on the preceding? I can't remember the guy's name, or find the article (amidst all the piles and piles of NYers I can't bear to throw out until they put the damn archives online.)

The passage below is from the preface of the Pierre Joris translation of Paul Celan's Threadsuns. Celan was describing his poetic strategies during the same period he was composing Threadsuns:

I worry about Dos Pesos' winter-dull dog's life. So many hours spent watching me stare into a blue-lit box, not enough hours spent digging up stanky, savory bones, sniffing redolent dog-bums, gamboling merrily. Cold, rain, too much reading, idly flicking through webpages. Bad time to be reading Cioran. I am bored too. I have exhausted my inner resources.

Come Spring, I tell him, no meadow shall escape our riot. Dos Pesos looks at me, wags his tail half-heartedly, snoozes on.

From the Buffalo Poetics Listserv:

Yesterday in Victoria, waiting for my ride, I was killing some time in a Big-Box Book-Selling Retail Establishment, and was surprised to find Poetry Plastique, the catalogue from a 2001 show at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, curated by Charles Bernstein and Jay Sanders, and comprised of concrete & visual poetry, "concrete" in the sense of tangible, "visual" in the sense of retinal --retinal-conceptual word-art, with tricklings-in of film, land art, book art, typewriter art & what have you, also including old timey favorites such as A Humument, Carnival, and a lovely plexiglass piece by John Cage called Not Wanting To Say Anything About Marcel*, created on the occasion of Duchamp's death -- as well as new stuff by a whole clod of experimental poets (including Christian Bok, whose interview I am meant to be finishing this week, in spite of having been detoured by travel, distractions and endless David Foster Wallace-style asides such as this one...)

So, naturally, I bought it.

Last night, unable to sleep as usual and up reading as usual, I came across an essay by Nick Piombino (who has an excellent weblog, click 'n' see) in which he writes about the work of D.W. Winnicott, 50's psychoanalyst:

Piombino goes on to relate his process of redefining his poetic and theoretical work by studying the visual arts, and by working in collage -- the collage pieces appearing in Poetry Plastique. He writes:

Jumping back and forth as I do between word and image, I've worked a lot in such a 'conceptual holding environment', but the idea of this thought-locus had remained unarticulated, in its own 'conceptual holding environment' (which I visualize as a kind of Cathedral of Erotic Misery/Hall of Mirrors/Funhouse, dizzying flashes of past, sense and nonce....).

Back to work.

----------------------------

* And while you're stopping by the Cage piece, why not admire these Lithographs based on geologic maps of lunar orbiter and apollo landing sites by Nancy Graves?

A linksome link from Language Hat: The names of the nine planets in a couple dozen languages, including, as Steve pointed out, Uzbek: Quyosh, Utorid, Zuhra, Yer, Oy, Mirrikh, Mushtarij, Zuha.

Play is life, as some companies claim.

I was interested in finding out more about the ideas of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, whose ideas of "transitional objects" and "holding environments" I'd recently learned of (see Tuesday's post). Some quotes:

I also found an interesting article about the uses of Winnicott's Potential Spaces in creativity by Michael Szollosy, which looks at the theory of potential spaces and their use as a locus of creativity in a depersonalized, postmodern world. There are more passages about play there:

Another thing that Szollosy wrote caught my eye:

These symbolic spaces are something I've been thinking a lot about lately, especially as regards The Game Neverending. Online games and communities can be fantastic "potential spaces" or "holding environments" for collective creativity, but they can also be territories where aggressive fantasies can be acted out without fear of consequences, by people who feel safe in the anonymity of online personae.

I received an email yesterday from Julian Dibbell, and was reminded to reread his essay A Rape in Cyberspace, as it is pertinent to issues which may arise in the game. The essay, if you haven't read it, concerns a rape that occurred online in a well-populated living room in LambdaMOO, and how the community sought to define the nature of the crime, the proper punishment and all the knotty problems surrounding its virtuality. He writes about the erosion of the distinction between the symbolic and the real:

Symbolic or Real? Fantasy or Actuality? Play or Life? As Catherine MacKinnon and Patrick Naughton can attest, this is the great metaphysical question of our age.

• Dear Raed, a blog in Baghdad. (thanks Estee)
• Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Iraq
• Back to Iraq, and independent reporter in Northern Iraq
• Bloghdad, William Saletan's blog on Slate
• Iraq Journal from Democracy Now.

Happy 30th Birthday Stewart! Hip hip hooray! In a world of points, you are a line. In a world of lines, you are a plane. Arrow collar, cellophane.

Bounce high!

Stewart's not the only one who got fancy new things today. I went down to the Apple store and picked up a new Titanium Powerbook, which I'm very excited about. My Dell laptop was rendered completely unusable when I passworded the damned thing and promptly forgot the password. I'd never passworded that computer before. What was I thinking? In any event, I live in a wireless house, but haven't been mobile for a year and a half. Joy!

Woobaby, the old Pyra Mac, has been sending out those I'm going to die soon signals, so it was time to back her up and replace her. Apple souped up the new 12" and 17" PowerBooks, but not the 15". The guy at the store said there was no plan to ship new configurations of the 15" any time soon.

The wind churns English Bay into a greeny froth, and bends umbrellas inside out so they resemble palm trees tied up for transit. I like the wind.

I took Stewart out to Ouest for his birthday on Friday night, and then on Saturday spent most of the day playing with my new computer, transferring all the files to it from Woobaby. We went out for brunch, then worked in the afternoon, then ate dinner at an Indian place on Commercial, both of us shivering and wearing our coats after drinking our mango shakes. We rented movies, and watched Moulin Rouge. I read a story in the new Ingeborg Bachmann book I bought, Three Paths to the Lake.

Today we went to Lynn Canyon with Dos Pesos, and Stewart showed me around North Van, which I hadn't seen much of before (suburban, not much to it). Now Stewart is out looking for semolina flour, so he can make pasta with the Atlas pasta maker Eric gave us, and I am working on my article. I also rented Dancer in the Dark, which I never saw when it was in the theatres. Maybe we will watch it later. I'm going to Mexico on Tuesday. The wind has died down, and now there is only the sound of fire, cooking and the tapping of my keyboard.

Last year I read something in the neighborhood of 105 books, averaging 2 books a week, which is nothing compared to the number of books read last year by America's biggest readers, though lot of them seem to be reading pulp. Except Condoleeza Rice. Condoleeza Rice has read War and Peace in Russian.

Last November a brief notice in Libération announced that the contents of André Breton's apartment at 42 rue Fontaine were going to be sold in auction this coming April at CalmelsCohen in Paris. There are hundreds of amazing pieces for sale. The apartment where he lived had apparently been kept completely intact during the 36 years since his death by his wife and daughter.

I am enamored of this piece by Victor Brauner, Nous sommes trahis (1934) (maybe because I have a fondness for big-eared dogs?) and this Dorothea Tanning. Lots of collaborative drawings, and cadavres exquis.

I am leaving early early tomorrow morning for Mexico for four days. Not sure if there will be posting opportunities down there, but if there are, I will do so. Everybody's trying to make me afraid to fly, but I have to confess that I'm not.

If you sniff some Hawaiian Tropic Cocoa Butter, and rustle your houseplants to replicate the sound of ocean breezes in palm trees, you may just be able to feel like you're in Mexico too. ¡Caliente! Dos Pesos and Stewart are both jealous. But though I'll be gone for 4 days, if you look at it closely, it's really only 2 days in Mexico, with a full day of travel on both ends. ¡Ay!

Howard Dean.

Intermission and Signal + Noise present:: RAW ON

Date: 29 Mar 03, Saturday
Location: IMHQ 1009 E. Cordova St.
Time: 10:00pm (doors open at 9pm)

A full evening of sound-based performance art, Raw On will feature an array of works by local artists promoting their own 'brand' of experimental activism. Raw On performances will thrust experience to unknown and novel ends by imposing limits on everyday activities.

And one of the performers, Steve Calvert, sent a note out today with a special request:

See, if I display this on my homepage:

I get $1,000 with which to buy...more blogshares. Blogshares is a 'fantasy stock market for weblogs' in which weblogs are valued by their incoming links. GNE is going to have an economy, and so I want to see how this one works.

• Friday night I arrived at YVR, and the immigration hall was full of people who had just disembarked from a plane from China. A disconcerting number of people were wearing face masks to fend of SARS infection. Whenever anybody coughed, an electric frisson thrilled through the room.
• Using the stainless steel, hand-cranked Atlas pasta machine that Eric gave us, we made some ravioli.
• Because of our pasta-making endeavors, we missed RAW ON, mentioned below, and the chorus of toothbrushing that was promised. Probably the only chance I'll have in my lifetime to ply my talents in a toothbrush orchestra. *Sigh*
• Saturday morning, went to Capers where we had some coffee and a croissant, and then did some extremely slow shopping, sniffing the ayurvedic soap, and pinching the garlic naan.
• Worked.
• I finished a piece on Superpowers that Derek had requested for the Fray, which I'd actually written last week, but neglected to send before leaving for Mexico.
• Started watching Dancer in the Dark by Lars Von Trier, starring Bjork. He's the director of Breaking the Waves, and this looks to be another gut-wrencher. Fell asleep 1/2 hour in.
• Went to the Macaroni Grill for brunch. It is in a large mansion near our house, and we'd been meaning to check it out. Very average and overly expensive bruch. We won't be going back.
• Worked.
• Stopped in the gallery at Emily Carr and saw a bunch of art of a sacreligious/religious nature that was, for lack of a better description, pretty cool. Bought Shark 3 and nest magazine at the bookstore there.
• Went to see Yellow on Thursdays, at Performance Works on Granville Island, by Seven Sisters amiga Sara Graefe.
• Read Shark 3 and nest magazine. Had some great ideas for the Wail, etc. piece (no longer called Wail, etc.) which I neglected to write down, and have consequently lost.
• Read Three Paths to the Lake by Ingeborg Bachmann. Chris in Hamburg wrote to tell me that Bachmann and Celan were lovers, which I didn't know, and also to recommend Summerhouse, Later by Judith Hermann, as well as a pile of other books.