Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Noticing 4 [ from July / 2010 ]

RESPIROMETER

"Since we have had the telephone removed, the interrupted spirits of the household have begun again, or we hear again their story telling.  In these counsels of objects, animals and ourselves, these concentrations and exfoliations of language, we have our source.  When silence blooms in the house, all the paraphernalia of our existence shed the twitterings of value and reappear as heraldic devices."

             -Robert Duncan, Letters
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The Voice of the Turtle, John Fahey
‘For lo, the winter is past, and the rain..’
Playin’ Possum, Maureen Tucker
Bo Diddley rhythm ‘in b/t diapers’
New Generation, Albert Ayler
‘I lowly strive to keep thy law, to bow no knee to the Baals with what jewels, ...’
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Peter: “Not just the redness of red but the alienated, uncanny sensation of recognizing yourself in the mirror & then sensing that recognition percolate with dissonance.”

“By extension, we might propose that narcissistic melancholy is divine gnosis.”
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“I am a worm
that I may learn what earth is”

               -Pam Rehm, Gone to Earth
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The Swan’s Rag, first issue
‘For I lull nobody..’
Joys & Perplexities, Lou Harrison
‘The swinging dance lifts words to melody..’
Selected Poems, Stephen Jonas
‘ah would that
                                      life were the long-
       est side Getz
                                              ever cut & Death
                                                                          an ex-
                        tended play’
*******
“Do you know what hu means? No, you don’t.  You don’t know what it mean.”

                 -Sun Ra, Hambone 19
*******
how
Thomas Creech died and his lines
(out of Idyllium VI):
“in a wild Amaze, / Look so’er the Flood; and whilst by Shores he strays, / His shadow in the quiet Water plays” thinking O’Leary on “Falconress”/”Narkissos” and Scholem’s Kaballah
*******

“habits either are or turn to diseases”

           -Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
*******
Cento Nuptialis, Ausonius
‘simile ut dicas ludicro, quod Graeci ostomachion vocavere’
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Preston:  “arval fond”       “the eyes of my minde helde her beames”

                                   -Ralegh, the Ocean to Cynthia
*******
“Plato, as you may remember, gives a hint that, like all other visible things, the very trees—how they grow—exercise an aesthetic influence on character.”

             -Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism
*******
Touch Yourself for Art, CAConrad
‘Take notes, there must be a concentration in note-taking in your pleasure-making.’
Mock Orange, Joseph Massey
*******
Pausanias, I.ii.3, transd. W.H.S. Jones:
“But Hesiod & Homer either failed to win the society of kings or else purposely despised it, Hesiod through boorishness and reluctance to travel, while Homer, having gone very far abroad, deprecated the help afforded by despots in the acquisition of wealth in comparison w/his reputation among ordinary men. And yet Homer, too, in his poem makes Demodocus live at the court of Alcinous, and Agamemnon leave a poet w/his wife. Not far from the gates is a grave, on which is mounted a soldier standing by a horse. Who it is I do not know, but both horse and soldier were carved by Praxiteles.”
*******
“The life of the Dodder Vine [Cuscuta gronovii] reads like a horror story.  A mysterious seed is carried to a faraway place by an unsuspecting bird, animal, or person, where it falls to the ground and germinates.  Taking root, it sends up a shoot that develops into a climbing vine that twists itself in tight coils around other plants.  Containing no chlorophyll or leaves from which to produce food from sunlight, it sends out suckers that penetrate the flesh of its host plant, robbing its benefactor of needed nourishment.  From here, it climbs onto additional plants, creating a tangle many feet long. Eventually, the roots and lower portions of the vine dry up and die, as it now parasitizes everything it needs from the other plants.”

-Leonard M. Adkins, Wildflowers of the Blue Ridge & Great Smoky Mtns
*******
Someone named Gail Cleere writing:
(in A Magnificent
Old Conflagration)
“This time around, the mysterious wanderer
can hardly slip in and out
unnoticed.”
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