Hunger spice

Book of fasting

Running sneaking into the pool Brian Jamaica

Downhill

It isn't the fancy flying it's the fruit

Rome. Bus window for revenge run its! Trying to keep up

New Yorker notes, March 16th, 2015 issue

The article on Sappho in this week's New Yorker is worthy of its subject. Daniel Mendelsohn builds masterfully toward some incredible moments. The last lines of the essay: "Where, exactly, does the "Old Age Poem" end? Was it a melancholy testament to the mortifying effects of age or a triumphant assertion of the power of beauty, of the "finer things" -of poetry itself- to redeem the ravages of time? Even as we strain to hear this remarkable woman's sweet speech, the thrumming in our ears grows louder."

I was reading Werner Herzog's incredible book of reflections on the making of Fitzcarraldo, CONQUEST OF THE USELESS, and came across a mention of Vargas Llosa. Where had I just seen that name? Oh yeah, in this week's New Yorker. So I went back to read that article and stopped in my tracks when I read, "Mad Peru hurt Vargas Llosa into fiction long before it pushed him toward politics. In fact, his pursuit of the first probably assured his failure at the second, since, as he himself has argued, "good literature always ends up showing those who read it...the inevitable limitation of all power to fulfill human aspirations and desires."

Streets of Coolidge

I was very sad I couldn't make Coletti and Coolidge's reading tonight, especially not to hear Deep Code live. The morning of the reading I was walking down 4th St with Anselm Berrigan, after finishing touches on my book, and ran into Clark and Susan Coolidge waiting to cross Ave B. Serendipity. We talked for a minute, notably about the action figure Butthead that I saw hanging on his wall in Petaluma when we went to visit him there 15 years ago. He told us Beavis and Butthead saved him that year. As we were leaving I apologized that I wouldn't be able to make the reading, because I had to take my mother to the airport. They both laughed, which was great.

Vargas Llosa

I should start a new blog just listing synchronicities. Just ran across the name Vargas Llosa in Werner Herzog's reflections from the making of Fitzcarraldo (given to me by Anselm Berrigan) called conquest of the useless. Earlier today I skipped over an article in the New Yorker about the same man. So obviously I have to go back and read it.

And I should start another just for dreams.

8 pt. mission for conjugal acceptance

New personal goal

I want to be beloved of my wife most of all. Even if it means giving up some of my own dreams. (Though never entirely. They should dovetail!)

Here's the first part of my plan. To groom myself to Jony Ives perfection.

I think this came to me in a dream. 8 step program.

Like, start by shaving myself, carefully.

2. Lotion! Better and better and better. Gen's brothers would be the best to ask. Matthew. Both Matthews!

3. Fashion, endless variations.

4. Daily workout for at least an hour.

5. Business strategizing for one solid hour.

6. Cooking dinner (cutting edge)

7. teeth whitening

8. Step up my barber.

barnes treasures

Top five highlights from the Barnes Foundation collection in Philadelphia.

7.  Cezanne's Leda and The Swan painting, the way she is listlessly in the power of the swan, the swaths of rectangular blues making up the roundness of her body.  

6. Picasso's sublime painting, Peasants.

5. Van Gogh's Postman. The way the swirls in the beard matched the wallpaper. The way the uneven eyes showed the sympathy of and for the man. The way it wasn't a portrait of someone rich or royal.

4. The never-before-seen Rousseau paintings, especially the poetic narrative of "The Unpleasant Surprise."

3. De Chirico's Swan. The psychedelic cartoon swan amidst the bland workaday table.

2. The spatial hallucinatory effects of Rubens, "The incarnation as fulfillment of all the prophecies."

1. Titian's panoramic landscape in "The Sleeping Shepherd" and especially the boy waking up in the middle.