100 Things

100 Things About Me

1. When I was at school, the nuns were trying to teach me cursive script. Mine kept leaning backwards; towards the left margin. I went home on the weekend and practiced for hours and hours, teaching myself to lean towards the right. When I wrote correctly at school, the nun thanked Jesus that it was fixed, and made no comment on the work I had done. This was the first time I remember feeling as though I had suffered a great injustice.

2. I am a very fast and competant knitter. Partly because of this, I find complex knitting patterns very vexing, as they always ask for you to count stitches. As a result, I never knit anything, although I enjoy it.

3. I have two cats. Black and white "tuxedo" cats, both boys, brothers, named Smith and Jones.

4. I spent my childhood in Ireland. I was born in Australia, moved as a small child to Ireland, and stayed there until we moved back to Australia again, when I was just turning 15. I have just recently reached the age that I have spent more years in Australia than in Ireland.

5. I have three sisters and one brother.

6.

Bosch

The Garden of Early Delights

Heironimous Bosch

Some details.

Poppies

This is a year of poppies, our land
was overflowing with them when I returned
between May and June, and got drunk
on a wine so sweet, so dark.
From cloudy mulberry to grain to meadow,
ripeness was all, in a gentle
heat, a slow drowsiness
spread throughout the green universe.
Now at life's midpoint, I've seen
grown-up sons go off alone
and disappear beyond the net of flights
the swallow keeps to in the spent glow
Of stormy evening,
and the pain gave way
naturally to the lights of home,
of another dinner in air refreshed,
by hail unleashed in the distance.

Attillio Bertolucci

Frogs

The Red Eyed Tree Frog

Jesse Bernstein

A BERNSTEIN POEM

"Come Out Tonight"

Forecast in chrome and plastic. Tyrants breathing alloy of slavery, planet hunger, versions of Jackie O. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight? And the stars whisper like old blood at the edges of the body of night. She stood with one hand on the phone for four hours, poised as though only a few seconds had passed. I watched her through the crack between the shade and the sill. She waited for a forecast in human trembling, together with other important women. Come, come, come out tonight. The world suffers for her: The clock hurries like a terrified animal, then stops, dribbling saliva. She has eaten chicken pie and bubblegum. For a month the Luftwaffe lived on raisins. Same with the French, after the war. Jackie O. received fresh oranges from John Kennedy. Silly girl. She cannot put down the telephone receiver. She is waiting to receive my body of work. She wants to take it in her ear. A mottled flush builds under her cheeks. She eats Xmas candy while she waits. The telephone rings and rings. I am not at home. I am with Jackie O. We are eating oranges from the President. We are alone on the roof of a Park Avenue penthouse. Picture of Marilyn Monroe in my back pocket molded by heat and sweat to the shape of my buttocks. You are gripping the phone smiling, eating candy, crying. I am with the important women, now. I am secretly an important man. Hang up the phone. I can't dance with you, anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie O. She will be taking it in her ear, the body of my work. In the Planetarium. You will receive a forecast. I will always be more important than you. You will never be important enough. You will never be on the whip-hand of slavery, never be the one to wield hunger against humanity. Heaven will never be an extension of your body. Your body will always belong to someone else. The picture of Marilyn Monroe flutters across the roof, steaming, shaped like me. Shaped like my ass. The sky is filled with oranges during the war. We eat them. The president is alone in a room. He is unimportant. As we eat his oranges the sky grows blacker. The moon ripens and turns red. It rots and is swallowed by the darkness. You are still by the phone. It is ringing and ringing, dead. Sherry, Sherry baby, won't you come out tonight. It is completely dark. The earth freezes. You put down the receiver and go to the window. Come, come, come out tonight.

A Girl Writing - Henriette Browne (1829-1901)

The Lovesong of J. Aflred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . 10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 [They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"] Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . . I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet–and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say, "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all." And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all." 110 . . . . . No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old . . . I grow old . . . 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Dante's Griffin

The Griffin is a hybrid creature with the features of an eagle (wings and head) and a lion (body). Griffins were depicted in ancient Egyptian art (the myth is likely eastern in origin), and, as actual creatures, were thought to live at the northern limits of the world. They are included among unclean birds in the Bible (Lev. 11:13; Deut. 14:12), and Isidore of Seville, an early medieval encyclopedist, says Griffins are "fierce enemies of horses" and, he adds, they "tear men to pieces" (Etymologiae 12.2.17). Dante's Griffin pulls a gorgeous two-wheeled chariot bearing Beatrice at the end of the elaborate procession in the terrestrial paradise. The chariot is yoked to the neck of the Griffin, whose wings (stretching high out of sight) and other aquiline features are gold in color, while his hind quarters are a mixture of white and deep red. Of multiple symbolic meanings that may be attached to this Griffin, its Christ-like role--"one person in two natures" (31.81)--is the most obvious. Dante dramatizes this incarnational symbolism when he has the Griffin's image, reflected in Beatrice's eyes, miraculously alternate between a complete eagle and a complete lion, while the creature itself remains fixed in its hybrid form (31.118-26).

http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/purgatory/10terrestrialparadise.html

Unto the Griffin's breast they led me with them,
Where Beatrice was standing, turned towards us.

"See that thou dost not spare thine eyes," they said;
"Before the emeralds have we stationed thee,
Whence Love aforetime drew for thee his weapons."

A thousand longings, hotter than the flame,
Fastened mine eyes upon those eyes relucent,
That still upon the Griffin steadfast stayed.

As in a glass the sun, not otherwise
Within them was the twofold monster shining,
Now with the one, now with the other nature.

Think, Reader, if within myself I marvelled,
When I beheld the thing itself stand still,
And in its image it transformed itself.

While with amazement filled and jubilant,
My soul was tasting of the food, that while
It satisfies us makes us hunger for it,

Themselves revealing of the highest rank
In bearing, did the other three advance,
Singing to their angelic saraband.

"Turn, Beatrice, O turn thy holy eyes,"
Such was their song, "unto thy faithful one,
Who has to see thee ta'en so many steps.

In grace do us the grace that thou unveil
Thy face to him, so that he may discern
The second beauty which thou dost conceal."

O splendour of the living light eternal!
Who underneath the shadow of Parnassus
Has grown so pale, or drunk so at its cistern,

He would not seem to have his mind encumbered
Striving to paint thee as thou didst appear,
Where the harmonious heaven o'ershadowed thee,

When in the open air thou didst unveil?

So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes
In satisfying their decennial thirst,
That all my other senses were extinct,

And upon this side and on that they had
Walls of indifference, so the holy smile
Drew them unto itself with the old net

When forcibly my sight was turned away
Towards my left hand by those goddesses,
Because I heard from them a "Too intently!"

And that condition of the sight which is
In eyes but lately smitten by the sun
Bereft me of my vision some short while;

But to the less when sight re-shaped itself,
I say the less in reference to the greater
Splendour from which perforce I had withdrawn,

I saw upon its right wing wheeled about
The glorious host returning with the sun
And with the sevenfold flames upon their faces.

As underneath its shields, to save itself,
A squadron turns, and with its banner wheels,
Before the whole thereof can change its front,

That soldiery of the celestial kingdom
Which marched in the advance had wholly passed us
Before the chariot had turned its pole.

Then to the wheels the maidens turned themselves,
And the Griffin moved his burden benedight,
But so that not a feather of him fluttered.

From, 'A Treasury of Chinese Poems: Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907)

(trans. Lee Meeng Kim)

Peach Blossoms Creek

The Bridge Beyond
Faint and Hazy as if
Flying towards the sky.
On the west side of the cliff
I ask a fisherman the way
To the ripping stream where
Peach blossoms fall all day
And which side of the river
Is the Hermit's cave.

Zhang Xu, c. 711.


Bid Farewell to Xin Jian at Lotus Pavillion

In cold rains,
I followed the river's course
And entered the city at night,
I saw you off at dawn
So sad was I of your departure
Even Chy Mountain seemed forlorn,
Should my folk ask you about me,
Pray give them this message
of mine,
'Like ice in a jade vessel,
My heart has remained
Ever so pure and sublime.

Wang Chung Ling (698-757)


Spring Palace Song

What am I waiting for?
Day after day
I come home alone.

I yearn for a better place to stay.

But fear you won't find my place.

Wonder who can really help me.

Bosom friends are hard to come by

And I am fond of solitide.

May as well go home
And close my garden gate
behind me.

Meng Ho Ran (689-740)