(R)evolution

Dance, most joyous of the arts—

Two and a half years ago some young men on the corner of 90th and MacArthur (Oakland, CA) reminded us that the trajectory of any art is always a distillation of its past.

TFTD

Mother, father—always you wrestle inside me. Always you will.

— The Tree of Life

Avengerology

Weakness is more interesting than strength.

Beauty is always unspent.

To be self-aware is to be other-unaware.

The dominatrix surrenders to her responsibility to dominate.

We respect the hero because he fights our mutual desire to watch the world burn.

A society pays for military progress with its intelligence.

What makes banter funny is its sadness.

A woman's legs render power, wealth, and narrative irrelevant.

When the heavens open, listen to the stars. Preferably one with an Academy Award.

A man in a suit is interesting insofar as he fails to be his suit.

To be violent is to commit suicide.

Lips are a window to the soul.

The common man is a child in need of protection.

Insects embody both the past and the future.

Heroes are slaves of their heroism.

Suffering's recompense is shawarma.

Music is redundant.

TFTD

There is a tale of necessity within every vulgar story.

— Amelie Rorty, "Spinoza on the Pathos of Idolatrous Love and the Hilarity of True Love"

Tuesday

I choose the flawed apple,
Literally. Art Pepper explains
California. Cigarette smoke, drifting
Through the bathroom window, sanctified

By its illegality, unlocks

Belmont, the sun’s throne.

Tuesday permits the dissipation

Of love. Let the vibration—Adderall,

Pilsner Urquel—reinforce the memory,

Now sacredly vague, of fixing

Brad’s computer under his

Desk. And the vast affection

Of Friendship. Later,

Sam, not yet two, runs

Naked through the living room.

Our eyes—Scotch-laden—

Widen. The world, too.

The Forgetful Reader

My morning reading is random, whimsical—whatever happens to catch my eye between bedroom and bathroom. This morning: "The Lost," a short essay by Bolaño, constructed as a single paragraph, about the Chilean poet Rodrigo Lira and, more generally, about suicide.

The essay is an exquisite example of Bolaño's finely honed recklessness:

The best thing about Latin America are its suicides, voluntary or not. We have the worst politicians in the world, the worst capitalists in the world, the worst writers in the world. . . . . Our discourse on wealth is the closest thing there is to a cheap self-help book. Our discourse on poverty is an imaginary discourse in which the only voices are those of madmen speaking of bitterness and frustration. We hate the Argentines because the Argentines are the closest thing in these parts to Europeans. The Argentines hates us because we're the mirror in which they see themselves for what they really are—Americans. We're racists in the purest sense: that is, we're racists because we're scared to death. But our suicides are the best.

As with the rest of the essay, some of this seems true to me and anything that doesn't seem true I've  forgotten.

Because reading isn't like life: in life we forget the moments of truth and remember the lies; in literature we forget the lies and remember the moments of truth.

This contrast is true largely because in literature everything is invention, so the reader creates moments of truth for himself. A good reader, a reader who permits a writer to write, collaborates in the process of creating truth from a writer's bravery. Bravery is always—like the last line above—a bit absurd; but through laughter, through delight, the reader transforms that absurdity into truth. The absurdity is forgotten; the truth remains.

So the fundamental problem for the writer is not to be truthful but to be brave.

But of course there's nothing more difficult in writing than being brave. The last line of "The Lost" explains, at least in part, why: "The cowardly don't publish the brave." The brave risk an audience of one. And only a madman writes for himself.