xxxix. the mystery of things, where is it

Posted on by

The mystery of things, where is it?
Where is that which never appears
To show us, at least, it’s a mystery?
What’s the river know about it and what, the tree?
And I, being no more than they, what do I know about it?
Whenever I look at things and think what men think of them,
I laugh like a brook freshly sounding off a rock.

Because the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning at all.
This is stranger than all the strangenesses,
And the dreams of all the poets,
And the thoughts of all the philosophers—
That things really are what they appear to be
And that there is nothing to understand.

Yes, here’s what my senses learned all by themselves:
Things have no meaning – they have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

(Fernando Pessoa, writing as Alberto Caeiro, p. 97 in Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown’s edition of The Keeper of Sheep.)

now i must go to the bank

Posted on by

“The next accurate information we obtained was from C. R. W. Nevinson, who had met him at a luncheon with Grant Richards, Firbank’s publisher. Nevinson had once divined in him an amusing character. He described his appearance to us, I remember, and related how after the meal Firbank, rising willowly to his feet, observed, ‘Now I must go to the Bank.’ ‘But they are all shut. You won’t be able to get in!’ objected Richards; to which Firbank, displaying his long, unmuscular arms and thin fingers, replied anxiously, ‘What? Not even with my crowbar?’ ”

(Osbert Sitwell, pp. xi–xii in his introduction to the New Directions edition of Ronald Firbank’s Five Novels.)

may 19–may 21

Posted on by

Books

  • Paul Metcalf, Merrill Cove
  • Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller (trans. Michael Bullock)
  • Jean Ricardou, Place Names: A Brief Guide to Travels in the Book (trans. Jordan Stump)

Exhibits

  • “Ernesto Neto: Anthropodino,” Park Avenue Armory
  • “Ray Johnson: . . . Main Ray, Ducham, Openheim, Pikabia . . .,” Richard L. Feigen & Co.
  • “Leon Kelly: An American Surrealist,” Francis M. Naumann Fine Art
  • “Alice Neel: Nudes of the 1930s,” Zwirner & Wirth
  • “European & Russian Photomontage, 1920–1940,” Ubu Gallery

anyone can know about it nowadays

Posted on by

“And it’s just the same with the inner life of man. Anyone can know about it nowadays. How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don’t know my murderous impulses through C. G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Proust, Spain through Hemingway, Paris through Ernst Jünger, Switzerland through Mark Twain, Mexico through Graham Greene, my fear of death through Bernanos, inability to ever reach my destination through Kafka, and all sorts of other things through Thomas Mann? It’s true, you never even have to read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends who also live all their experiences second-hand.”

(Max Frisch, I’m Not Stiller, trans. Michael Bullock, p. 158.)

may 14–may 18

Posted on by

Books

  • Chloe Aridjis, Book of Clouds
  • Walker Percy, The Moviegoes
  • W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images

Exhibits

  • “Franz West: To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972–2008,” LACMA
  • Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

this page is the final print, music added

Posted on by

“Because a novel – these words – is shared experience, a clumsy but sometimes funny conversation between two people in which one of them is doing all the talking, it will always be tighter and more luminous than that object called living. There is something so insipid about living that to do it at all requires heroism or stupidity, probably both. Living is all those days and years, the rushes; memory edits them; this page is the final print, music added. But for an instant imagine the process reversed, go with me back through the years, then be me, me all alone as I submit to the weight, the atmospheric pressure of youth, for when I was young I was exhausted by always bumping up against this bug lummox I didn’t really know, myself. It was as though I’d been forced into solitary confinement with a stranger who had unaccountable tastes, aversions, rhythms.”

(Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, pp. 176–7.)

may 11–may 13

Posted on by

Books

  • Paul Metcalf, Mountaineers Are Always Free
  • John Ruskin, Præterita (and Dilecta)
  • Erik Anderson Reece, A Balance of Quinces: The Paintings and Drawings of Guy Davenport
  • Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty

Films

  • Gold Diggers of 1935, directed by Busby Berkeley
  • Gasherbrum – Der leuchtende Berg (The Dark Glow of the Mountains), dir. Werner Herzog
  • Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten (Ballad of the Little Soldier), dir. Werner Herzog
  • Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker (Precautions against Fanatics), dir. Werner Herzog

Exhibits

  • “D.I.Y.”, Maya Stendhal Gallery
  • “Black & White”, Stellan Holm Gallery
  • “Alice Neel: Selected Works”, David Zwirner
  • “Charles Ray: Ink Line, Moving Wire, Spinning Spot”, Matthew Marks
  • “Momus with Aki Sasamoto: Love is the End of Art”, Zack Feuer Gallery

oh ruskin

Posted on by

“225. In blaming myself, as often I have done, and may have occasion to do again, for my want of affection to other people, I must also express continually, as I think back about it, more and more wonder that ever anybody had any affection for me. I thought they might as well have got fond of a camera-lucida or an ivory foot-rule: all my faculty was merely in showing that such and such things were so; I was no orator, no actor, no painter but in a minute and generally invisible manner and I couldn’t bear being interrupted in anything I was about.

Nevertheless, some sensible grown-up people did get to like me! – the best of them with a protective feeling that I wanted guidance no less than sympathy; and the higher religious souls, hoping to lead me to the golden gates.”

(John Ruskin, Præterita, Volume II, Chapter XII, p. 405 in the Everyman’s edition.)