http://imagejournal.org/page/journal/articles/issue-16/fentress-essay

I like this, too.

Because I've been thinking about what myths dictate how I live my life.  And because these reminds me of my childhood.

(jessereno)

The story of the future as told by his mind?  San Francisco?

(theoellsworth)

Beautiful!

(teeshamoore)

A wizard in his way.

(timothyely)

Table of Jupiter

Black Maps

Diagraming Fate

"Poetry, of course, has many names in many languages.  Its English name comes, as you know, from Greek, from the verb [peio, peiein]which means to do or to make.  In early Greek, peiein isn't a word used for feeble-bodied creatures sitting at desks with pencil and paper; poein is what capenters and ironworkers do.  It's the verb the Homeric poets use to talk about making a sword of a ploughshare or building a house."

--Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning

more Blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.

Exuberance is Beauty.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Enough!  or Too much.

W.B.

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives.

Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.  Good is the passive that obeys Reason.  Evil is the active springing from Energy.

Good is Heaven.  Evil is Hell.

The Voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:

1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz: a Body & a Soul.
   
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
   
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

But the following Contraries to these are True:

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
   
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
   
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
   

It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Shame is Pride's cloke.

(the list goes on...)

This is mostly a continuation of my interest in the list of Incongruities.  My friend made a list inspired by Shang-Yin's.  Hers reads like this:

Disparate items that match perfectly

One cerulean ankle length sock and one magenta pink

Basil ice cream

Vegetarians buying (used) leather

A mati from your grandmother's rival

I'm not sure if Blake's are incongruities in the same sense, though they are for the same purpose: to denounce/undermine/contradict expectation.  

A good poem conveys irony, or at least carries a perfectly timed tension.  Maybe a good poem produces some sort of revelation--emotional or intellectual--within its reader.  The poem is like a quick route to surprise; a condensed phenomenon.  Lists of Incongruities remind me of collages of one-line poems.  They are pleasurable to read; partly because they are so visual (when I read "basil ice cream" I immediately imagine what basil ice cream might look like), and partly because they're another reminder that life is made up of contradictions.  

...

I've met a few people who communicate the same feeling.  They avoid the inclination of adopting the "legit" life that is molded into the contours created by order and reason.  Instead of writing lists about contradictions, they are the lists.  They have a dramatic effect on the lives of those who meet them, who merely come into brief contact with them--and sometimes on those who only see them once, in passing.

***

As for the crotchety old man who yelled at me on the trail: I passed him again yesterday and we said "good morning" at the same time.  I was really on top of it--I made sure to greet him right as we were passing each other, so that the timing would be perfect, and the interaction would go smoothly.  I was hoping he wouldn't remember me from last time.  He didn't give any indication that he did, and I felt relieved immediately afterward.  Then I began to feel uneasy and to regret that I'd said anything.  Was it all necessary?  For "good" feelings?  Would he have turned around, chased me down, and given me a lesson in etiquette if I had only walked on by?

Miscellany (Li Shang-Yin, translated by E.D. Edwards)

Incongruities
A poor Persian.
A sick physician.
A Buddhist disciple not addicted to drink.
Keepers of granaries coming to blows.
A great fat bride.
An illiterate teacher.
A pork-butcher reciting sutras.
A village elder riding in an open chair.
A grandfather visiting courtesans.

Shameful
A pregnant nun.
Wrestlers with swollen faces.
A rich man suddenly poor.
A maid offending public opinion.
A son in mourning getting drunk.

No Alternative
Drinking wine when ill.
Attending meetings in hot weather.
Beating children without explanation.
Being ceremonious when sweating.
Being cauterized when in pain.
Abusing one's concubine at the behest of one's wife.
Receiving visitors in hot weather.
Applying to resign on account of old age.
Entertaining guests in a miserable temple.

The essay continues; lists of: Resemblances, Vexations, The Name Without Reality, Indications of Prosperity (flower petals), Disheartening, Dismaying, Desecration of Scenery (to weep when looking at flowers), Unbearable (the sound of music when in mourning), Hard to Bear, The Power of Suggestion (seeing water cools one), Bad Form, Contemporary Crazes, Things Gone Awry (looking at beautiful flowers and not reciting poetry), Unlucky (to go to the toilet or let down one's hair in the light of the sun or moon).

4. morning bike ride down Mill Creek: an old man with a dog, who I believe I've seen before, said "good morning" as we passed each other. I'm not sure why I didn't reply; I may have still been processing his face. Then he turned around and yelled, "GOOD MORNING!!" in a cranky, aggressive voice. I felt bad--kind of stung. Thought about walking through Oxford w/Grandfather & all the passerby's who ignored his greeting. We were awkward with each other every time he was shunned. Both embarrassed.

(photo by Dena)


(from Hannah's tumblr)

coincidences from the past three weeks:

1. @ a coffee shop in Austin--I borrowed a lighter from the man who was sitting next to me on the porch and we started to have a conversation. Among other things, he told me he is a carpenter who lives between Austin and Marin County. He had returned to Austin recently after building a barn for some folks in California's wine country. His cell phone interrupted us. He answered it, spoke briefly to his friend on the other end, then hung up and told me that I should go see his friend's band play that night at Flipnotics, another local coffee shop (I had told him that I hadn't listened to much live music over the summer; it just wasn't my focus. Sacrilege in Austin). The phone call had been from a friend who hadn't contacted him in over four months. Friend's name is Sick; he plays guitar for a band called Sicks Pack. I heard Sicks Pack for the first time two years ago, at a small, hideaway bar in Austin. I was there by chance. A friend had been invited by a boy she barely knew and she asked me to come along. I didn't enjoy the bar, but I was blown away by the band (wild bluegrass, great performers). I followed them for a while, then forgot about them a year later.

On that night two years ago, after the band had finished, Shaym called me, for Luis, against Luis' wishes. I went over to their house, Luis and I met, discovered that we had many strange, seemingly significant things in common, and prescribed our meeting to fate (I did, at least, with more conviction). Over the next two days, I kept telling the story of the strand of precise, random events that led to our meeting.

After the man at the coffee shop told about Sicks Pack's upcoming show, another young man came out of the coffee shop and asked my friend for a lighter. He asked me to name my favorite chapter of Ulysses, the book I was reading for a summer class on Joyce. He had taken the same class with the same professor two years ago.

2. Sleeping in the same bed as Adrienne, having the same dreams.

3. I wrote a short story after an uncomfortable interaction with an old acquaintance. This was the first piece of fiction I've tried to write in many months, and it ended up being at least partially truthful. Anyway, how could my emotions transcribe themselves into something more tangible?!--I had no idea what I was feeling, so I wrote about different things that I ended up relating to each other in certain ways. The great motif was bones. The next day I went to the first session for the writing class: organic form and hybridity. In her introduction to the class, the professor coincidentally referenced many of the things I had written about, the most surprising being a dead rabbit and Alice in Wonderland.

Before I wrote the story--a day or so before--Adrienne had shown me some drawings by Arthur Rackham, an artist whose name I hadn't known. When I told her about the intersections between my short story and my professor's lecture, she confessed that she'd just discovered a series of drawings (paintings?) Rackham made for an edition of Alice in Wonderland! Crazy...

4. Everything is Illuminated:

A boss at a former job played Devotchka constantly at work. I was disconnected from the band until this summer's road trip to Walla Walla, when Adrienne and I heard "How It Ends" on one of Michael's mixes. "How It Ends" was my favorite song by the band (maybe their most commercial? not sure), and I was so surprised to hear it--I think it came on somewhere in the middle of Arizona. Adrienne became a fan of the band and started listening to them regularly after we settled our things in Walla Walla. At some point during the past week, maybe during Alex's visit, someone mentioned the book, "Everything Is Illuminated." Maybe it was the writer's other book--Or, actually, Adrienne mentioned the book because she had recently watched the movie version of "Everything is Illuminated." After the movie, she watched a trailer for the movie, which used Devotchka's music. Later in the week Matthew sent me a text message from Austin asking if I thought he should read "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." This, completely out of the blue; I don't think I've ever expressed interest in Jonathan Safran Foer or his writing...