Byatt in Blue

The 2009 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prize is being awarded to A.S. Byatt.

The 11th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival takes place April 22–26, 2009. Byatt will be launching her new novel, The Children's Book.

(The festival website has not yet been updated.)

Closing Lessing

I finished it, by the way, the other week. All 34 stories (a couple of them called novellas) in 655 pages. Brilliant.

I almost wish there were more. I mean, I know there are more out there, but, I mean, at hand. But not really, because it was emotionally exhausting.

Here are some highlights:
How I Finally Lost My Heart
Our Friend Judith
Dialogue

And how I came to this book in the first place.

I realize now that most of these stories are fairly depressing. The problems of class, the meaninglessness of political life, the common plight of dutiful women. But oh so gut-wrenchingly real. Grappling with identity through it all.

If The Golden Notebook still scares you, even with all the fascinating commentary it provokes, ease into Lessing by reading her Stories.

Now we are six

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

— A.A. Milne



You couldn't be cleverer on our walk to school this morning.

Happy birthday, kid.

The alienation effect

On Auster — the games and connections, the intertextuality:

Why does Auster do these things? In some ways, one might liken his narrative games to Bertholt Brecht's "alienation effect." Brecht held that an actor should play his role from a distance, almost tongue-in-cheek, as though commenting on the part rather than losing himself in it. He felt that even the backstage activity should be made obvious to the audience. The point of theater, to Brecht, wasn't for the spectators to lose themselves in the play, but to consider the issues it raised, reflect on the interactions of the characters, think about different possibilities and outcomes. Auster himself has emphasized that he is fascinated by "certain philosophical questions about the world," in particular aspects of identity and human psychology. His art, in its serious playfulness, aims to heighten our awareness of life's overall unreality, to recreate on the page some of its wondrous serendipity and strangeness.

The visceral symphony

Stanislaw Lem, in the introduction to his Imaginary Magnitudes, a collection of fictitious introductions to nonexistent books, covers a lot of ground. A lot.

He speaks to the glut of information and entertainment at our disposal and the need to have this knowledge or art mediated. This necessity is tempered by the recognition that an introduction to any work is often merely the babble of "some authority's sham commitment to a book." Art has lost its authenticity, and we need a new priest-intermediary to find our way back to it, viscerally, naturally. Lem promises to return art/knowledge to the people, to an unmediated purity, while acknowledging the Introduction as a genre of literature in itself.

Lem justifies himself:

[...] I am right to present an Introduction to this short Anthology of Introductions, for I am proposing prefaces that lead nowhere, introductions that go nowhere, and forewords followed by no words at all.

But with each of these initial moves I shall reveal to you an emptiness of a different kind and a different semantic color, changing according to a typical Heidegger spectral line. With enthusiasm, hope, and much to-do I shall open the altar and triptych doors, and announce the inconostasis with its holy gates; I shall kneel on stairs breaking off at the threshold of a void — a void not so much abandoned as one in which nothing has ever been or ever shall be. This gravest possible amusement, this simply tragic amusement, is a parable of our destiny, since there is no device so human, nor such a property and mainstay of humanity, as a full-sounding, responsibility-devoid, utterly soul-absorbing Introduction to Nothingness.

This is the third book of Lem's that I tackle this year. I continue to be drawn to his work even while it's immensely taxing on my poor little brain.

What do I gain from this? According to Lem, "Supreme liberty [...] for eternal enjoyment."

He may be right.

Seizing firmly the second Wednesday of November

I don't know how to read poetry.

I have a copy of Ballistics, poems by Billy Collins, and it's delightful.

But at this moment I'm unable to determine whether I've read the whole of this slim volume cover to cover. When first I unwrapped it, I opened it to the beginning and began. And so it went for quite a few pages. But then I wanted to share something, which I did, which reminded me I wanted to check something else. So I flipped some pages, and the title of some as yet unread poem caught my interest. Then I worked backwards a little. Over the next few days I carried the book around and would start reading at whatever page I opened it to (can't do that with a novel).

I think I've read most of it now. But I feel as if a part of the book has been lost on me. For one thing, the book is divided into 4 parts, and I can't begin to formulate a reason for this. While I see connections between a number of the poems, I don't see any logic in the progression from one to the next, why some are grouped together with others. I don't presume to call the structure artificial, but it seems to me that it's constricting (deliberately?) the organic nature of the poetic romp.

Then there's the where.

Have you read poetry on the metro? It feels weird. Like people are looking at me. This slightly paranoid feeling makes it hard to focus, to feel it, to enjoy it fully. (Do you wonder what I look like, Billy? I wear a suit, and slutty boots, and I ride public transportation.)

Poetry at bedtime? Doesn't work for me. I need something a little softer and more sustained. Skipping through poems is the opposite of restful (invigorating!), and to leave it at one simply is not enough.

I like a poem with my morning coffee, I've decided. Between having decided what to pack for Helena's lunch and actually doing so.

Also while cooking supper.

Anyway. I quite like Billy Collins. He's very funny. I can't even tell you what kind of poetry he writes — sonnets? free verse? I have no idea. It doesn't rhyme, but it has rhythm, and it has form on the page.

I think he's postmodern, but I'm not sure that's a term usually applied to poetry, nor that I've correctly done so. The author features as character in these poems, with a self-awareness regarding the act of writing.

I quite like "Vermont, Early November" (much as I like Vermont in early November), in which there's "nothing worth writing about really" and seizing the day is just a little too ambitious, so the author (and I imagine him writing this precisely a year ago) is

determined to seize firmly
the second Wednesday of every month that lay ahead.

It's something I can relate to.

I've had extensive conversations with Helena about the poem about the little piggy who had roast beef.

Collins is calling on me to glance back at Philip Larkin, and look for Paul Valéry's abandoned poems, which you've brought to completion.

My favourite poem in this collection is "Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant."

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour soup is
here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold he Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book — José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out — is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his arresting sentences.

And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches —

Something so very poignant in this. Something beautiful. The author becomes the subject of the poem he might've written and realizes it's altogether different, and better.

So, no, I don't know how to read poetry. But I am starting to learn to enjoy it.

I like Billy Collins. Funny. Quietly joyous. Makes me feel calm inside, that isn't life funny, but everything's going to be alright. Good with coffee.

Cat blogging

Earlier this evening my cat managed to post not one, but two blog entries.

Blank they were. Straight shooter? Or symbolist?

He does not know how to spell the vibrations of the motor in his throat, his belly.

Never much of a lap cat, tonight he is determined to assert his position of authority over the laptop.

But what does he have to say to you, I wonder?

What's the joke?

A bus nosed to a standstill; half a dozen people got off; a man passed and said: "What's the joke?" He winked, and she realised she had been smiling.

Well-being, created because of the small familiar busyness of the street, filled her. Which was of course why she had spent so long, an hour now, loitering around the foot of the tall building. This irrepressible good nature of the flesh, felt in the movement of her blood like a greeting to pavements, people, a thin drift of cloud across pale blue sky, she checked, or rather tested, by a deliberate use of the other vision on the scene: the man behind the neat arrangements of coloured vegetables had a stupid face, he looked brutal; the future of the adolescents holding their position outside the music-shop door against the current of pressing people could only too easily be guessed at by the sharply aggressive yet forlorn postures of shoulders and loins; Ada, whichever way you looked at her, was hideous, repulsive, with her loose yellowing flesh and her sour-sweat smell. Et cetera, et cetera. Oh yes, et cetera, on theses lines, indefinitely, if she chose to look. Squalid, ugly, pathetic . . . And what of it? insisted her blood, for even now she was smiling, while she kept the other vision sharp as knowledge. She could feel the smile on her face. Because of it, people going past would offer jokes, comments, stop to talk, invite her for drinks or coffee, flirt, tell her the stories of their lives. She was forty this year, and her serenity was a fairly recent achievement. Wrong word: it had not been tried for; but it seemed as if years of pretty violent emotion, one way or another, had gelled or shaken into a joy which welled up from inside her independent of the temporary reactions — pain, disappointment, loss — for it was stronger than they. Well, would it continue? Why should it? it might very well vanish again, without explanation, as it had come. Possibly this was a room in her life; she had walked into it, found it furnished with joy and well-being, and would walk through and out again into another room, still unknown and unimagined. She had certainly never imagined this one, which was a gift from Nature? Chance? Excess? . . . A bookshop had a tray of dingy books outside it, and she rested her hand on their limp backs and loved them. Instantly she looked at the word "love", which her palm, feeling delight at the contact, had chosen, and said to herself: Now it's enough, it's time for me to go in.

— from "Dialogue," in Stories, by Doris Lessing.

Do you know this feeling? I've been living it for months. There are days I think I must be going crazy. This sense of well-being — it's completely unreasonable. I can't say it has anything to do with love, exactly, but the same could be said of this story's nameless protagonist.

(A few weeks back, a woman caught my attention in the metro. She was smiling, near laughing, to herself. A happy relief from the usual blank stares of the daily commute, but also unsettling, unnatural. I realized that most days I'm just like her.)

How reassuring to find someone who knows exactly how I feel, even though she be a figment of Doris Lessing's imagination.

I am swimming through this collection of stories, and indeed, each next one is better than the last.

(Have you read "To Room Nineteen"? Oh, my god!)

The Golden Notebook Project is under way, by the way, and though I won't be reading along, I do intend to follow the commentary.

Go read some Doris Lessing.

Pawns

Helena is in chess club.

Chess is not part of her regular curriculum but is offered as part of the after-school program:

The "Challenging Mathematics" program is based on extensive research and field-testing. It focuses on problem-solving as a strategy for developing an understanding of mathematical concepts.

The goal of the series is to develop judgement and the ability to reason in children, to foster an ability to explain why and how when it comes to their solutions to problems and to develop their self-confidence as well as their own efficient strategies for solving problems.

[Source: Chess'n Math Association, Canada's National Scholastic Chess Organization]

I hesitated to sign her up, thinking it might be too demanding, and too early to be cultivating her geek factor. But it's never too early to learn to solve problems! She is joined by a boy from her class, and their instructor seems well-equipped to inspire a kind of discipline in them. (My own efforts to show Helena the actual starting positions of all the pieces always ended up in a procession of Helena's devising, of characters greeting the king and queen and riding away on horseback, in an orderly fashion.)

It is by far the most (academically) challenging aspect of the kindergarten experience, and the only one that demands homework. We have problems diagrammed on paper that we transfer to a board in front of us. (Initially identifying the pieces out of order. Now testing the rules of the moves: in a given diagram, how many pieces can a given piece capture, or how many squares can it safely move to.)

She wants to play a game proper. I know it will be only a few moves before she feigns disinterest in order to disguise her frustration. She will pack it in and silently resolve to be better prepared another day.

We open.

I blink and she's in tears — deep, sincere, sad sobs. "C'est pas juste!"

That she's only 5? doesn't know all the rules? that we're unfairly matched?

No.

That the pawn can move only straight ahead, one slow square at a time. The pawn advances to the end, and for what? It's not fair, when others can move farther, in different directions. Poor, stupid pawn! What good is it?

It's a weird and proud moment for me, to see in my daughter this glimmer of existential speculation, social injustice.

I try to rationalize. The pawn is important to the security of others. If it is smart enough to survive, to endure the journey to the other side, the pawn can be anything you want it to be.

We are laying the groundwork for the battles ahead.

One surely ought to stay in character

More stories. I can't get enough of these stories. Just one more, I think, before I return to some of the weightier tomes I have on hand, but just one more leads to another, and then another. And each next one is my new favourite.

Doris Lessing is amazing! Clever, but not too clever. Simple and very complicated at the same time. Real, very real, yet that stark reality is expressed and framed in imaginative ways.

Here's another snippet that struck me:

A mutual friend, Betty, had been given a cast-off Dior dress. She was too short for it. Also she said: "It's not a dress for a married woman with three children and a talent for cooking. I don't know why not, but it isn't." Judith was the right build. Therefore one evening the three of us met by appointment in Judith's bedroom, with the dress. Neither Betty nor I was surprised at the renewed discovery that Judith was beautiful. We had both often caught each other, and ourselves, in moments of envy when Judith's calm and severe face, her undemonstratively perfect body, succeeded in making everyone else in a room or a street look cheap.

Judith is tall, small-breasted, slender. Her light brown hair is parted in the centre and cut straight around her neck. A high straight forehead, straight nose, a full grave mouth are setting for her eyes, which are green, large and prominent. Her lids are very white, fringed with gold, and moulded close over the eyeball, so that in profile she has the look of a staring gilded mask. The dress was of dark green glistening stuff, cut straight, with a sort of loose tunic. It opened simply at the throat. In it Judith could of course evoke nothing but classical images. Diana, perhaps, back from the hunt, in a relaxed moment? A rather intellectual wood nymph who had opted for an afternoon in the British Museum Reading Room? Something like that. Neither Betty nor I said a word, since Judith was examining herself in a long mirror, and must know she looked magnificent.

Slowly she drew off the dress and laid it aside. Slowly she put on the old cord skirt and woollen blouse she had taken off. She must have surprised a resigned glance between us, for she then remarked, with the smallest of mocking smiles: "One surely ought to stay in character, wouldn't you say?" She added, reading the words out of some invisible book, written not by her, since it was a very vulgar book, but perhaps by one of us: "It does everything for me, I must admit."

"After seeing you in it," Betty cried out, defying her, "I can't bear for anyone else to have it. I shall simply put it away." Judith shrugged, rather irritated. In the shapeless skirt and blouse, and without make-up, she stood smiling at us, a woman at whom forty-nine out of fifty people would not look twice.

— from "Our Friend Judith," in Stories, by Doris Lessing.

The Golden Notebook Project starts November 10, an experiment in close reading, from The Institute for the Future of the Book. It's not so long ago (3 years?) that I read The Golden Notebook for the first time myself. In its way, it was the subject of my own experiment in close reading, and quite apart from the power of its content, The Golden Notebook changed the way I read.

(It also has the distinction of being one of only two books not properly shelved or stacked, sitting in my desk drawer, unless you call that an organizational class of its own, because it's still waiting for me to deal with it.)

Barack Obama lists it among books significant to him. Surely he is staying in character to say so. (What does that say about the man? That he's a feminist? He understands what it is to have a romanticized vision of a political life? That he understands what it is to compartmentalize the facets of one's being, to be fragmented, and sees the necessity, and the way, of consolidating the whole?)

Many people are daunted by the novel's reputation. I was. But it's brilliant.

Read it when you're ready for it. In the meantime, I heartily recommend Doris Lessing's Stories.

Some dumb poem

[Here's some dumb poem I wrote months ago and carelessly stashed in a dark closet full of neglected writings (the Drafts folder) and stumbled across quite recently while cleaning my electronic house, and which I can actually stand to reread. (So, it's finally come to this!?: me, posting my third-rate angst-masquerading-as-verse on the Internet...) It makes me smile, even. Ahem.]

I encountered Poetry years ago, in my youth,
but we didn't much hit it off
— we saw the world in a very different light.

I ran into Poetry again this summer,
and there was a spark between us.
We've been inseparable,
rain or shine.
Poetry's with me when I go for ice cream
and when I do my laundry.

Some days I wish Poetry would let up a little,
but I give in to Poetry's exhaustive demands:
you're going the wrong way,
look harder, read this, try playing some music,
look up, way up,
"You gotta shake it up a little."

There are days Poetry drives me crazy
and I wish Poetry would leave me alone.
But then Poetry whispers in my ear
and
I
melt.

Simpling and sapping

It suddenly occurred to me that I was looking at the whole phenomenon quite inaccurately. My (or perhaps I am permitted to say our?) way of looking at it is that one must search for an A, or a B, or a C or a D with a certain combination of desirable or sympathetic qualities so that one may click, or spontaneously combust: or to put it differently, one needs a person who, like a saucer of water, allows one to float off on him/her, like a transfer. But this wasn't so at all. Actually one carries with one a sort of burning spear stuck in one's side, that one waits for someone else to pull out; it is something painful, like a sore or a wound, that one cannot wait to share with someone else.

I saw myself quite plainly in a moment of truth: I was standing at a window (on the third floor) with A and B (to mention only the mountain peaks of my emotional experience) behind me, a rather attractive woman, if I may say so, with a mellowness that I would be the first to admit is the sad harbinger of age, but is attractive by definition, because it is a testament to the amount of sampling and sipping (I nearly wrote 'simpling' and 'sapping') I have done in my time . . . There I stood, brushed, dressed, red-lipped, kohl-eyed, all waiting for an evening with a possible C. And at another window overlooking (I think I am right in saying) Margaret Street, stood C, brushed, washed, shaved, smiling: an attractive man (I think), and he was thinking: Perhaps she will turn out to be D (or A or 3 or ? or %, or whatever symbol he used). We stood, separated by space, certainly, in identical conditions of pleasant uncertainty and anticipation, and we both held our hearts in our hands, all pink and palpitating and ready for pleasure and pain, and we were about to throw these hearts in each other's face like snowballs, or cricket balls (How's that?) or, more accurately, like great bleeding wounds: 'Take my wound.' Because the last thing one ever thinks at such moments is that he (or she) will say: Take my wound, please remove the spear from my side. No, not at all; one simply expects to get rid of one's own.

— from "How I Finally Lost My Heart," in Stories, by Doris Lessing.

Superheroes

Everyone should have superheroes at work.

Poets on which I've stumbled

So I'm wondering about the book I ordered — the book of poetry (what has gotten into me?): has it shipped yet? when will I get it? And I discover: no, it has not been shipped. But the publication date was days ago! What kind of shoddy customer service is this?! It occurs to me to check the publisher's website; maybe publication has been delayed.

And I stumble across this name that rings a bell. A bell-ringing name. Peter Cole. And I remember that he was supposed to be speaking at Concordia this week, and I'd thought about going. According to the publisher of his latest work, that would've been the other day. And I curse. But according to Concordia University's website, it's this day. So I plan an extra long lunch break in order to be able to check it out.

Peter Cole is a 2007 MacArthur Fellow, and he has amazing hair. Really. I can't get over the hair. Check out this picture — the hair is... is... remarkable.

He's a great speaker. The 20 or so of us in attendance were captivated. He's perhaps better known as a translator. He was sincere in explaining the pleasure (as opposed to the problem) of translation, and talked mostly about what it is to live in a space between languages. His fluency in another language and living in another culture created a crack in his English, through which light was introduced, transforming his own poetry.

He addressed some of the difficulties that arise when you're both poet and translator.

On the perils of being a translator: In gaining familiarity with various forms and voices, one may become nothing more than a technician. In breathing another's atmosphere, one may starve one's own poetry.

But ultimately, the acts of translating poetry and writing poetry — that mystical place to which one is transported — are for Cole indistinguishable.

"Improvisation on Lines by Isaac the Blind," from Things on Which I've Stumbled, begins like this:

Only by sucking, not by knowing,
can the subtle essence be conveyed—
sap of the word and the world's flowing

that raises the scent of the almond blossoming,
and yellows the bulbul in the olive's jade.
Only by sucking, not by knowing.

I like this poem, but, on the whole, the poems Cole read (recited, performed?), those he'd written as well as those he'd translated, did not speak to me.

I don't remember the last time I heard poetry, other than inside my own head. Or watched it unfold (that is, I see poetry revealed to me everyday; I mean the recitation of a poem). This was a strange experience.

Cole's voice took on a different timbre; he assumed a persona. The speaking of the poem was a deliberate and affected act. I've witnessed this at many readings. With poetry, it is more pronounced. I'm not convinced it should be this way.

(I firmly believe the words should speak for themselves. How can any writer, particularly poets, convey the breathing, the tone, the rhythm, the sum total effect they intend their work to have if not by relying on the words themselves. But attend any reading and it's clear the authors have intentions incompletely conveyed on paper.)

When Cole became a Poet reciting his verse, he removed his glasses and held his book like it was Yorick's skull. His right hand punctuated the verse, describing every beat of his orchestration, driving or being driven by the words, reluctant even to break rhythm by turning a page, rising in crescendo and slurring legato, urging his inner resources for more, to hold, to ease away.

Cole must be a marvelous teacher. He spoke candidly and with humour in response to all questions put to him. On practical matters, like learning another language, getting published, collaborating with authors to perfect a translation; on different schools of thought, in poetry, translation, linguistics (Cole takes some leeway in translation — essence more important than the words); on life — for example, there's no sense in working at translating poetry you don't feel.

Everything is translation after all. We translate every bit of our external world into the context of our own exeperience.

So this maybe is genius. Stumbled upon.

Story after story

For someone who claims not to be a big fan of short stories, I sure have read a lot of them lately. These collections since mid-August:

Carlos Fuentes: Happy Families
David Foster Wallace: Oblivion
Daniel Handler: Adverbs
Sana Krasikov: One More Year
Théophile Gautier: My Fantoms

I have found that short stories make for excellent reading:
— while waiting for my morning coffee
— in the bathroom
— on the morning métro commute
— at lunch
— whenever I need a break from my workday
— on the evening métro commute
— while watching the stove
— while the girl splashes in her bath
— while pretending to watch hockey
— at bedtime

Short stories provide a kind of instant gratification that I seem to be craving lately. Certainly I needed these bursts to balance some of my other long and slow reading. They're easy enough to start — and finish! — in the interstices of plodding days.

Currently, I'm midway through Dumas's The Last Cavalier, but earlier this week, reading in an overcrowded train about plots to assassinate Napoleon, I suddenly felt both lost and under siege. So I set it aside, to wait for the smoke to clear. And I turned to Doris Lessing's Stories.

I love the feel of this book — its physical presence. It's new in the catalogue of Everyman's Library. I have a couple other books of this imprint, and they're a real pleasure to read and to carry. If you didn't know:

Everyman's Library pursues the highest standards, utilizing modern prepress, printing, and binding technologies to produce classically designed books printed on acid-free natural-cream-colored text paper and including Smyth-sewn, signatures, full-cloth cases with two-color case stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, and European-style half-round spines.

The Everyman's hardcover has peculiar, but perfect, dimensions. Weighty, but somehow in its compactness perfectly weighted. It just feels good!

So I'm reading Doris Lessing again. I've never felt compelled to search out and read in its entirety her oeuvre, and I'm starting to wonder why not. I've immensely enjoyed everything of hers that I've read, and while I truly to believe her work to be Important, my interest in it has been very reasonable — I have not obsessively hunted down obscure or out-of-print works, nor have I compulsively snapped up her latest releases. When I read her, I am pleasantly surprised and reassured to find that it is good. And I am fortunate to have this leisurely but strong relationship with an author, relieved that it is unlikely I will run out her books to read for many years yet to come.

In 1969, Doris Lessing was written about in Time Magazine:

Fans of British Novelist Doris Lessing talk about a composite character called the Lessing Woman in much the same way as people once talked about the Hemingway Man. The Lessing Woman is a formidable female. She hasn't been to a university but she has read everything and remembers it. Her ideals are high and unsullied. She works (or has worked) at lost political causes. Although she loathes marriage, she gamely raises children and endures domestic woes. She cooks well, keeps a spotless house (except when depressed) and does excellent writing, research or secretarial work. She is any man's moral and intellectual superior, and she rarely hesitates to tell him so.

I can't say I've ever heard anyone called a Lessing Woman, though I know a few. I don't think I qualify myself — I'm less political, more naturally maternal, and my house is far from spotless. But there are days I think it's something to aspire to.

The stories were drawn from collections previously published in 1957, 1963, and 1972. They are bleak, in quite a beautiful way, and very real.

Here's one Doris Lessing story (not in the collection I'm reading) I found online: "A Mild Attack of Locusts."

I'll share more about the stories in this particular collection as I progress.

Artful and quizzical

(Via.)

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Traditional, Vibrant, and Tasteful

10 Islamic, -4 Impressionist, 5 Ukiyo-e, -9 Cubist, -5 Abstract and 4 Renaissance!

Islamic art is developed from many sources: Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine styles were taken over in early Islamic architecture; the architecture and decorative art of pre-Islamic Persia was of paramount significance; Central Asian styles were brought in with various nomadic incursions; and Chinese influences. Islamic art uses many geometical floral or vegetable designs in a repetitive pattern known as arabesque. It is used to symbolize the transcendent, indivisible and infinite nature of Allah.

People that like Islamic art tend to be more traditional people that appreciate keeping patterns that they learned and experienced from their past. It is not to say that they are not innovative personalities, they just do not like to let go of their roots. They like to put new ideas into details and make certain that they will work before sharing them with others. Failure is not something they like to think about because they are more interested in being successful and appreciated for their intelligence. These people can also be or like elaborate things in their life as long as they are tasteful. They tend to prefer geometric patterns and vibrant colors.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Debt

The 2008 Massey Lectures are under way. Margaret Atwood speaks about "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth."

These are not lectures about how to get out of debt; rather, they're about the debtor/creditor twinship in the broadest sense — from human sacrifice to pawnshops to revenge. In this light, what we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.

She presented part 4 of the series the other night here in Montreal. (When I first heard tell of it weeks ago, the event was already sold out.)

The lecture, titled The Shadow Side, [. . .] took on the subject of debt in the philosophical and literary sense, with references to Machiavelli, Charles Dickens and, most thoroughly of all, William Shakespeare. (You didn't have to be a seer to guess Shylock would show up somewhere. Her rigorous analysis of how anti-Semitism is rooted in historical concepts of debt was breathaking [sic].)

The lectures will be broadcast on CBC, November 10–14. Or you can read them.

Supper

On arriving home after a hard
day's work I find
myself standing dutifully
at the stove, right hand
tending the meat
in the skillet, left hand
holding open Baudelaire,
my nose in it.

And I think:
something is not
right with this picture.

Substitute
Les Fleurs du Mal
for a pinch of salt.

The flesh of the world

If you call yourself a poet, don't just sit there. Poetry is not a sedentary occupation, not a "take your seat" practice. Stand up and let them have it.

It's been a rough couple weeks at work. After eating lunch at my desk Friday, I need fresh air. An impromptu afternoon stroll takes me to the bookstore.

I miss browsing in bookstores. The bookstores I know here on the whole simply aren't conducive to it. I go with a mission usually, for "research" or a specific purchase. Some lunch hours I may spend more time there, scanning the bargain bins, but methodically, with only the pretense of leisure. It dawns on me that I may have shut myself off from an introduction to many fine and interesting books, pretty ones that shine cleverly at the cocktail hour, but deep and secretive ones too that leak their mysteries into the last bottle of wine some time after midnight when the jazz records come on.

So I... I don't know what I'm doing there Friday. I'm angry and distracted and tired. And I pluck off the shelf, I know not why — I guess because it's black and red, slim, the title psst-ing at me — Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Poetry as Insurgent Art, and I start to read, and smile. I feel all giddy inside.

Here's the thing. I'm a poet, I'm realizing. I mean... I don't actually write verse. But. No, I'm off to a bad start. How can I explain...?

I think I'm having a midlife crisis. That is, something is crawling over me, or bursting out of me, or seeping through my pores. Part of this is a physical function of age: I'm at, or nearing, my sexual peak, chronobiologically speaking, and the time bomb of the biological clock is pulsing, pounding, through my heart, my head.

This is a lustiness beyond the physical, that has yet to be sated. I am hungry — all my senses together screaming for more! And I am vibrating! Every fibre of my being — my physical body, yes, but I mean my neurons, my heartstrings — vibrating! Singing! My God, do you have any idea how much I love crunchy leaves?!!

Am I crazy? Or is this the noise of a cocoon rustling around me, flaking away?

(Diagnoses welcome.)

And it happens that I've discovered poetry. And I think these things are connected. And Ferlinghetti has me crying Yes! Yes! with every proclamation. Like I am being called to arms. Though I'm not sure my arms are literary ones. And I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this information exactly. But it's being made clear to me that this feeling, this experience, this crisis, is not a disintegration, but au contraire a synthesis, at a molecular level, of body and mind too long separate.

Instead of trying to escape reality, plunge into the flesh of the world.

Political science

A vote for science. Watch. Learn.

(Via.)