farewell Barbara Guest--

Wild Gardens Overlooked by Night Lights


Wild gardens overlooked by night lights. Parking
lot trucks overlooked by night lights. Buildings
with their escapes overlooked by lights


They urge me to seek here on the heights
amid the electrical lighting that self who exists,
who witnesses light and fears its expunging,


I take from my wall the landscape with its water
of blue color, its gentle expression of rose,
pink, the sunset reaches outward in strokes as the west wind
rises, the sun sinks and color flees into the delicate
skies it inherited,
I place there a scene from "The Tale of the Genji."


An episode where Genji recognizes his son.
Each turns his face away from so much emotion,
so that the picture is one of profiles floating
elsewhere from their permanence,
a line of green displaces these relatives,
black also intervenes at correct distances,
the shapes of the hair are black.


Black describes the feeling,
is recognized as remorse, sadness,


black is a headdress while lines slant swiftly,
the space is slanted vertically with its graduating
need for movement,

Thus the grip of realism has found
a picture chosen to cover the space
occupied by another picture
establishing a flexibility so we are not immobile
like a car that spends its night
outside a window, but mobile like a spirit.


I float over this dwelling, and when I choose
enter it. I have an ethnological interest
in this building, because I inhabit it
and upon me has been bestowed the decision of changing
an abstract picture of light into a ghost-like story
of a prince whose principality I now share,
into whose confidence I have wandered.


Screens were selected to prevent this intrusion
of exacting light and add a chiaroscuro,
so that Genji may turn his face from his son,
from recognition which here is painful,
and he allows himself to be positioned on a screen,
this prince as noble as ever,
songs from the haunted distance
presenting themselves in silks.


The light of fiction and light of surface
sink into vision whose illumination
exacts its shades,


The Genji when they arose
strolled outside reality
their screen dismantled,
upon that modern wondering space
flash lights from the wild gardens.

 

very good Charles Taylor on the third volume of Taylor Branch's Martin Luther King biography--

"Against the current certainty on the right and the left that the other side is beneath contempt, not worth talking to -- an attitude that leaves no possibility for real change and reduces democracy to majority tyranny, no matter who is in power -- we have King's belief in the ability of people and their country to overcome the worst in themselves. In his vision empathy is not appeasement but the beginning of change. In his introduction, Branch quotes the last words of Mickey Schwerner, spoken to the Klansmen who held a gun to his head: "Sir, I know just how you feel." That's the challenge this story throws down to us. How can any less be expected of those of us who don't have a gun to our heads?"

 

"Damage done by the Asiatic Exclusion League to the boarding houses of T. Kato and H. Hayashi, 230 and 236 Powell Street
8 - 9 Sept. 1907 / Vancouver, B.C"

from

Framing Canada--lots and lots of searchable pictures...

 

Aguas de Marco-- enchanting embedded b & w Quicktime (via robot wisdom) of Ellis Regina with "Tom" Jobim singing one of my favorite songs around 1970. Think of it is a belated Valentine.

interesting 1974 Clive James on the successes and failures of Sandy Denny--

"Here, had she but known it, was a straight message from the Muse: the text of "Tam Lin" should have told her that the language of the past is too alive to be copied, and can only be competed with by the language of the present. As it happened, she went on to attempt a contemporary folk language composed mainly of archaisms, and so was unable either to extend the resources of the modern song or add to the heritage of the ancient one -which was composed, in its time, not out of scholarship but out of the language of the day. Swarbrick�s excellent edition of "Tam Lin" (there are dozens of versions, but his is of exactly the right length and dramatic structure) has the continuous linguistic interest by which a strophic song can gain from its repetitive form, and inversions like "as fast as go can she" fall with a naturalness that no modern writer can possibly match. She sang the song with dazzling attack, as alive to its theatrical force as she was deaf to its lesson..."

 

looking forward to seeing Hank and Ciff Robertson in the 1964 Gore Vidal scripted campaign drama The Best Man tonight at 10:30 Pacific on TCM...

 

the new Doppelganger magazine has a memoir by Peter Quartermain, a portfolio by Jason McLean, a piece by Chris Brayshaw and a new section of "Big Trees in Seattle"

 

the winter issue of Fascicle has lots of work by the likes of Lee Ann Brown, Brenda Iijima, etc etc including this poem by Brenda Coultas from "The Abolitionist's Journal"--



"The Bluegrass State



Although they are called the Bluegrass
state, they are better known for their
weed. You can buy any kind of drug in
most factory parking lots.
There are drive thru liquor stores and
dry counties in Kentucky.
They have bluegrass music and a radio
show called Old Scratchy records. Bill Monroe and the Shady Boys lived there.

Daniel Boone brought the first slaves to
Kentucky.
Kentuckians roller-skate in old tobacco
barns and frequent the "World's Largest
Thrift Shop" in Louisville. Everyone
strips tobacco in Kentucky.
They know barbecue and horses in
Kentucky.

Wendell Berry, a poet, is from
Kentucky.
The shakers built a round barn in
Kentucky.

For heaven's sake, Kentucky is all that
separates us from Tennessee.

My husband tells everyone we are going
to Kentucky because people get very
excited about this idea called Kentucky.

I was a member of the Owensboro,
Kentucky Junior Coin club.
Johnny Depp and Richard Hell went to
high school in Kentucky.
I've never been to Rough River nor
Goldie's Opera House in Owensboro.

I attended the reburied of native
American graves in Kentucky.
There is a Paris, Kentucky. and a Paris,
Illinois.
Lilly Tomlin and Bobbie Ann Mason
are from Paducah.
Ashley Judd is from Ashville, Kentucky.

There are underground coal mines in KY
and strip mines in Indiana.
I like the strong labor unions of
Kentucky where everyone sits on
porches.
WC Handy was born in Henderson
where they fought to keep super Wal-
mart out.
John Jay Audubon lived with his slaves
in the wilds of Kentucky.
Josiah Henson escaped from
Yellowbanks (Owensboro) Kentucky.

Edgar Cayce and bell hooks are from
Madison.
I stayed at Land Between the Lakes
once, a huge man-made lake in a dry
county, near the Eddyville prison.

I had my collarbone set in Kentucky.
My mother had a hysterectomy in
Kentucky.

I know a man who calls it K-wacky.
They grow their fingernails
long and gouge out eyes. Brothers and
sisters and first cousins marry each
other. No one is a virgin. They bite off
ears and lips in barroom brawls in
Kentucky.

Disclaimer: I am sorry about all the
beans I spilled on Kentucky. You should
know that some of my family members
and friends are Kentuckians. "

good writer Lee Siegel has a nice flash slide show about sculptor David Smith

 

Nanaimo Beat is a very good new blog devoted to "what is really going on" in Nanaimo civic affairs (which our toothless papers mostly ignore), including the sleazy downtown development deals, etc. Something like this has been desperately needed for years.

 

than you Daph for hauling Vol. 2 of the big Hershel Parker Melville biography home from work...

 

the excellent "Roots Listening Room" has the 1937 Library of Congress recordings (including "The Hog Went Through the Fence, Yoke and All") of Kentucky Fiddler
Luther Strong...

"It seems that there had been a legendary Owsley County fiddler named Moab "Dude" Freeman, who was something of a vagabond. He wandered around eastern Kentucky like a hobo, even traveled out west and back, and was considered one of the finest fiddlers to ever live in that region. Donald said Strong played more like Freeman than anyone he ever heard, and he was sure that was where Strong learned to play. He said Strong had an extra long bow "and used every bit of it." Rumor had it that he put pennies under the feet of his bridge to get a keener sound, but Donald said he was there when Strong began that practice. He said they were at some local fiddlers' contest, and Strong said he couldn't compete because the bridge was too low on his fiddle and the strings rubbed on the fingerboard. So Donald suggested placing pennies under the bridge to raise it up. It worked well, Strong went on to play "Sally Goodin'" and win the contest, and he liked the pennies so much, that he just kept them there, saying, "It's just like Baby Bear, it's just right." But who knows? They say he was bad to drink from time to time, and a tale went around that when the Library of Congress came around in 1937 to record him, he had no fiddle at all, and they had to haul him out of jail and have him play on a borrowed fiddle."

Micheal Dirda reviews Javier Marias' "Written Lives"--

"Rilke does not have the face one would suppose him to have, so delicate and unbearable was he in his habits and needs as a great poet. . . . His face is frankly dangerous, with those dark circles under deep-set eyes, and the sparse, drooping moustache which gives him a strangely Mongolian appearance; those cold, oblique eyes make him look almost cruel, and only his hands -- clasped as they should be, unlike Conrad's indecisive hands -- and the quality of his clothes -- an excellent tie and excellent cloth -- give him some semblance of repose or somewhat mitigate that cruelty. The truth is that he could be a visionary doctor in his laboratory, awaiting the results of some monstrous and forbidden experiment."
 

actor/director Tommy Lee Jones namechecks Donald Judd & Dan Flavin--

"I would often sit around the monitor while things were being set up and ask different people if they thought there was any emotion in geometry. And they would say, "What?" And I would say, "Do you have any feeling for triangles? Hexagons?" There's a geometry to the film that I find very pleasing. I think Judd's work is highly intellectual and deeply emotional. And of course the influence of Flavin is obvious in the lighting, but nowhere more so than in the scene at the clinic where the border patrolman gets cured of his snakebite."

from metafilter--Bombsite Boudicas "Ken Russell's 1955 Photo Essay on London's Teddy Girls"


 

Robert Forster in "Medium Cool"


here's the schedule for the Worldbridger Film Series showing at our Malaspina College--


February 2006

UNDERGROUND
DATE: Thursday, February 02 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



MADE IN CANADA
DATE: Thursday, February 09 2006
Showtime: 7:30 PM



THE GLEANERS AND I
DATE: Thursday, February 09 2006
Showtime: 8 PM



2046
DATE: Thursday, February 16 2006
Showtime: 7:30 PM



Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News
DATE: Thursday, February 23 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception
DATE: Thursday, February 23 2006
Showtime: 8:15 PM



Expressing the Inexpressible: Sherin Neshat
DATE: Thursday, March 02 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



YES
DATE: Thursday, March 02 2006
Showtime: 8 PM



BEING CARIBOU
DATE: Thursday, March 09 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



HAITI:THE UNTOLD STORY
DATE: Thursday, March 09 2006
Showtime: 8:30 PM



SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER... and SPRING
DATE: Thursday, March 16 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



GENGHIS BLUES
DATE: Thursday, March 16 2006
Showtime: 9 PM



REVERB
DATE: Thursday, March 23 2006
Showtime: 6:30 PM



MEDIUM COOL
DATE: Thursday, March 23 2006
Showtime: 8:30 PM



RYAN and ALTER EGOS
DATE: Thursday, March 30 2006
Showtime: 7 PM



CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
DATE: Thursday, March 30 2006
Showtime: 8:10 PM  

Antonia Zerbisias gets the whole cartoon flap about right--


"Which makes me wonder who the real hate-mongers are: those who are cut off from modern communications technology and are more easily subject to the machinations of ignorant clerics — or those that should know better and who claim to be morally superior."

another poem from John Newlove

POEM WITH RAVENS


Dease Lake to Watson Lake
November 1985



And with a penetrating silence
and with solitary gestures,
an oil drum among the pines,
and with good gravel roads
and with an understanding of itself
that is not to be understood
and with pines
and with cheeseburgers
and with mock log cabins
and with real ones
and with an acceptance of the inside world
that is to be understood
and is not solitary or a gesture
and with an understanding of light
and with pines and pines
refusing to leave home,
one bowing gracefully like a geisha,
and with comfortable immensities
and with a quiet pride kidding the outsiders
gently and gently and gently and gently
and with pines and with pride
and, yes, with snow, we must mention snow
where colour itself seems a type of wealth
and with danger and with pines
and with serenity and with calmness
and with pines and with pines and with pines
and with humans, always with humans ....
 

& from the bottom of p. 50

VANCOUVER

Give me back the green fat
fields of the place where I learned
to be human, and the flooding rivers --
take away these dolorous mountains
this ever-watching, garbage soaked ocean!

re-reading for the first time in some time the late John Newlove's 1965 "Moving in Alone" (the 1977 Oolichan edition with the black & white portrait and the pages falling out)--on the top of p. 50--

KAMSACK

Plump eastern saskatchewan river town,
where even in depression it's said the wheat
went thirty bushels and was full-bodied,
the river laying good black dirt each year:
but I found it arid, as young men will.

a Happy New Year of The Dog, which I forgot that I was. And according to this also a Leonine and an Earth Dog, all of which seem good & I'm married to a Horse which is also recommended.

 

Back Home

Back Home, originally uploaded by johnygluebag.

nice postcard of the southern tip of Newcastle Island--I like that you can see so much of its shape under the water...

finally found a copy of the THOUSAND RECIPE CHINESE COOKBOOK by Gloria Bley Miller at Value Village last night. Recipes seem very clear and do-able...

"Pork and Seaweed Soup, Squab Soup and Ginseng Root, Abalone Soup, Ten Precious Soup, Cold Sherry Chicken, Pickled Mustard Cabbage, Basic Stir-Fried Pork, Stir-Fried Pork with Spinach and Carrots, Deep-Fried Roast Pork Squares with Crabmeat, Stir-Fried Curried Beef, Stir-Fried Beef and Rice-Flour Noodles, Braised Duck with Mushrooms, Red-Cooked Shanghai Duck, White-Simmered Roast Duck with Tangerine Peel, Stir-Fried Chicken and Bamboo Shoots, Stir-Fried Chicken with Pineapple and Lichee Fruit, Braised Ginger Chicken, Chicken Velvet, Drunken Chicken, Deep-Fried Fish Squares Szechwan Style, Simmered Crabs with Pork, Stir-Fried Scallops and Onion, Pan-Fried Bacon-Wrapped Butterfly Shrimp, Egg Foo Yung, Ham Egg Foo Yung, Pork Filling for Omelets, Steamed Eggplant, Stir-Fried Snow Peas and Mushrooms, Food of the Forest, Stir-Fried Peastarch Noodles with Shrimp and Pork, Rice-Noodle Nests with Poached Eggs, Fried Rice, Egg Roll Skins, Won Ton Skins, Sherry-Honey Marinade for Barbecued Pork, Stock-Soy Marinade for Barbecued Spareribs, Peking Meat Sauce for Noodles, Sugared Walnuts, Spiced Roasted Peanuts, Sweet Pineapple Tea, Bird's Nest Soup, Winter Melon Pond, etc."


 

end of an era--
Western Union -STOP- Ends Telegram Service


A history--

"The American public in its readiness to accept that which is novel, smart, modern, accepts the telegram as socially correct--something to be expected when one has friends who are up with the times. Invitations to social functions, greetings on an anniversary, best wishes of the season--all are delivered by Western Union on specially designed blanks which add a high note of distinction."




 

farewell Moira Shearer star of Powell/Pressberger's "Red Shoes" and "Tales of Hoffman"
 

Aki Kaurismaki update--

"It has been four years since the completion of Kaurismaki's last feature film.
"Has it really been that long?"
There is a telling pause.
"Back in the day, I used to make three films a year, now it is one in three years, or in four. The old vim and vigour of youth has been blunted."
That earlier pace was way too fast, Kaurismaki admits: all the "messages" have just about been passed. What is left is telling stories.
"Then again, it is better to do it when you are young, because later it is too late. You are only young once, as Henri Murger headed the final chapter of his Scenes de la Vie de Boheme." The book was the source both for Puccini's opera and Kaurismaki's own film from 1992.
Kaurismaki ponders long and hard in silence.
"No, it can't be four years. What's happened to all the years in between?"


 

(Katy Jurado)


fine, elegiac Charles Taylor on the new Peckinpah box--

"None is more affecting than Slim Pickens in what is perhaps the finest scene Peckinpah ever filmed. Gut-shot in a raid on Billy's hideout, Pickens' sheriff, Colin Baker, wanders off into the distance as Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" plays on the soundtrack. Following at a distance, his wife (Katy Jurado) is unable to bring herself to intrude on his final moments. As Pickens sits on a rock, he exchanges a fond look with her, but his eyes seem made anew, as if only in this dimming moment could they take in all the wonders of the world. What he sees--the darkening sky, the slowly rushing river in front of him--has the effect of life slipping through his fingers. This exquisitely lyrical sequence, maybe the screen's finest image of the passage into death, is one Peckinpah had been working toward since Ride the High Country. The respectful remove from which Katy Jurado watches her beloved husband die is the same distance from which Peckinpah had long given witness to the deaths of his aging heroes--not close enough to deprive them of their dignity, but close enough to make us feel the holes in the world where they were."