Is it too late?

I haven't written in a long time. Anyway, the previous post seemed to provide such a nice little ending: not literal but obvious enough to appeal to my kitschy notions about art. (God, a pop song nearly had me in tears yesterday. I would say which one but that would only add to my embarrassment). But I hate to read a blog and see an haunting post from six months or a year ago, followed by a cessation of communication. It always seems like a suicide note. So I choose to continue this semblance of a narrative where I left off. It may be stuttered or stammering (I like the parenthesis and the semi-colon; they allow me to indulge my digressions while still demarcating the narrative itself), but you can chalk that up to laziness or artifice, whichever you prefer.

So where to begin anew? How about some artwork? Here are some works by Leon Bakst (1866-1924), costume designer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes dance company.


My girl Ida Rubenstein as Helen of Sparta.


And here as Cleopatra.


Vaslav Nijinsky in L'après-midi d'un faune.


Sketch of a model from 1905.


Oil of a dancer in costume.

The sheer variety of Bakst's work is amazing; these are just a few costume designs and a sketch. You should see his set designs (Just do an image search for "Bakst" and you will be blown away). To the modern eye some of it may appear to be garish, art nouveau Orientalism that was dated even in its time. But it's ballet, and it's fabulous, so enjoy it.

2/15

Man and woman seated at table, facing each other, in public space (bar or cafe).

Woman: So you believe in being straightforward. At all times. You won't even pretend to consider it? For the sake of decorum?
Man: No. Better to be consistent and truthful all the time. Then everybody knows where you stand. For example, if I asked you to sleep with me, you would say...
Woman: [Pauses, shrugs]
Man: That's your cue to say, 'Not in a million years,' or something to that effect. And then I would know where you stand. Wouldn't waste time trying to sleep with you.
Woman: And what if I did want to sleep with you?
Man: [...]
Woman: [Shrugs again]
Man: Well, I would think that the audacity of my question would render any such feelings moot for the time being.
Woman: [Getting up from table] You're probably right. But that disproves your original point. Sometimes subtlety is necessary. Sometimes even decorum comes in handy.
Man: [Paraphrasing Woody Allen] Don't you wish life was really like this?
Woman: [Shrugs and exits]

Des choses qui m'ont distraite, dans aucun ordre particulier

I try to avoid references to specific art or artists when I'm creating the autobiographical narrative that I use to make sense of my life (in fact if it were possible I might try not to create a narrative at all, and instead strive for some kind of universal, non-temporal meaning, but I digress). It seems to degrade both the art (in that attaching it to specific periods of my life suggests that what it meant for me in a given moment is somehow authoritative) and the narrative (I should come up with my own way of expressing what these moments mean). Nevertheless it seems unavoidable to incorporate some of the things that occupy my mind when I try to put everything in some kind of comprehensible order. I suppose that's what this is about, in part.

Yada yada.

But since I've been so lazy lately I thought I would show a few things that reflect the past few months of my life, in no particular order of course.

[Break]

The lovely Anna Karina, whom I came to know from Pierrot le fou.

" Unholy
I feel sick and unholy
My soul don't want to know me
I've been living like dirt
Hey lover
I've been touched by another
I guess I'm blowing my cover
I guess I'm blowing my life
Oh save me
Nothing's right for me lately
I was wrong but don't hate me
I've been doing it for myself "

[Break]

"Okay Gracie. Now do you think you could make the word 'went' for me? As in 'Gracie went home'?"

Gracie grabs her letter magnets and moves them into position. Three letters. W-E-T.

"Okay Gracie. But that says 'wet,' like 'the floor is wet.' I think you need one more letter in there."

Gracie giggles and reaches for her N. I know she has trouble pronouncing this word, so I'm impressed by her ability to sound it out, and I tell her so with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.

"Good job, Gracie! Now do you think you can make the word 'tar'? Do you know what tar is?"

Gracie shakes her head. I don't exactly know what tar is either. How can I explain it to a six-year-old? I fumble over words as I try to describe a street-paving scene, a thick, gooey substance. I think I manage to convey a sense of it.

Next we have 'bar', then 'bark' (Gracie smiles, tells me about her cousin's dog, and demonstrates its bark for me), and finally, 'spark'.

She's a sweet kid, and completes her tasks without too much trouble.

[Break]

If Joanna were a character that I had invented, what would she be like? And what would she do? Would she have adventures in the vein of Tintin or Nancy Drew? Or would I take the more modern route and chronicle the excruciating minutiae of her life in the most pedestrian fashion? Would she write her own narrative with humor and energy or would the weight of listlessness flatten her prose? If she were anything like me... well, I hesitate to go down that road. Painfully meta.

Kinks

I think if I were an inanimate object, I would be a bookmark. Today I look around my room and I feel like the bookmarks surrounding me really capture my essence. More so than my toiletries, my clothes, the various knick-knacks I've collected, and certainly more so than my books (look at how many of them sit unread or unfinished, pieces of paper or cardboard marking the exact spot where interest gave way to apathy weeks or months ago). I've never really been one to keep photos anyway. If I did you can guess where they would probably end up. Today my bookmarked books remind me of myself: half-finished, they underscore my inability to really follow through on anything significant, perhaps too obsessed with possibilities at the expense of reality. Here, science fiction; there, a biography of Caesar; a French notebook that I never devote enough time to; Spanish vocabulary gathering dust. And then there's the heavy stuff that I don't even know why I keep; I hope it's not just a ruse to impress half-imagined guests. I hope that's not me. Bookmark as fraud.

Sludge

On Charlie Rose the other night I learned a bit about the sea squirt. A panel of experts was discussing the fundamental link between the brain and locomotion, and one professor adduced the squirt as evidence of this. Apparently, during their larval stage, the little guys have little brains and swim around, but eventually, when it is time to grow up, they find a good rock to attach themselves to, and proceed to digest their own brains as they won't be of any use to the mature, unmoving sea squirt.

It's been over a year now since I moved back in with my mother, and I'm starting to feel like a sea squirt myself. Digesting your own brain isn't as pleasant as it sounds.

(Well, it has its points.)

[Making concessions to the sludge.]

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

The portrait of Tolstoy on the right was my first encounter with the work of this Russian photographer (1863-1944), who in 1909 or so set out on a mission to document the Russian Empire in color. His technique involved three separate exposures using different color filters, which had to be recombined later to create a full color print. He also had a portable dark room with which he travelled around Russia, taking pictures of people and landscapes. Because of the long exposure times necessary, all of his photos of human subjects were posed. However, they are exquisitely detailed and intensely colorful, and I find it fascinating to look at such vibrant images from 100 or more years ago. They come from a time and place that are in some ways very difficult to imagine, but they also show signs of modernization, and at times it is hard to believe that they are so old.

Pretty peasant girls.

Jewish children studying with their rabbi in central Asia.

Uzbek prison.

Alim Khan, last emir of Bukhara.

Bridge over the river Kama.

On parables

Yesterday was a dark and rainy afternoon which seemed like the perfect time to relax and reflect but I never got around to it. Today is quite dreary and gray but just a tad too bright and the drama of downpour has been replaced by a tedious drizzle.
Lately I've been thinking about parables a lot. I recently bought a volume of Kafka's short stories in which I encountered a very brief piece that I thought was so cryptic and sweet I just decided I'd reprint it here:

"Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: 'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid all of your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost."

When I read this I just had to smile. I find the genre so compelling, I think, because of it's ability to pack so much meaning into so few words (almost like a poem in that sense), and because a well executed parable or allegory or fable or whatever you want to call it somehow points toward the incomprehensible, the void of signification, but at the same time communicates a sort of pre-lingual sense of awe. Its paradox is that in dissecting the impossibility of transcendence (of transcendental meaning), it at least points to where meaningfulness might be found (might have been found) if such a thing were possible.

I think this piece really spells out the paradox, but it does so in such a playful way that doesn't seem to conform to the conventions of the genre. After all, transcendence (death) is serious business. And Kafka, a writer known for his depictions of angst and alienation and despair (see sketch above), here seems more interested in wordplay and wit.