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 Today is quite dreary and gray but just a tad too bright and the drama of downpour has been replaced by a tedious drizzle.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.

Modifications

As you may notice, I've decided to spruce up my blog a bit with some artwork. It makes for a more fetching appearance, n'est-ce pas? Now, I'm no connaiseuse, and I'm not sure what draws me to these works, but they are some of my favorite paintings, so I thought I would go ahead and tell you a little about them. The nude at the head of the page is Valentin Serov's portrait of Ida Rubinstein, Russian ballerina and international star. Serov is an interesting figure: the son of an influential music critic and composer and his erstwhile student, his early portraits displayed a realism coupled with impressionistic tendencies while his later work took a decidedly modernist turn, as evidenced by this portrait from 1910. I admire Ida a great deal; she has a rare beauty I think: not traditional, but with a certain stoic elegance. I'll show you a photo of her as well:
See what I mean? She actually attracted the attentions of numerous artists over the course of her career, including the American Romaine Brooks, with whom she had an affair and who used her as a model for numerous works. I really like this work of Brooks', La jaquette rouge, also 1910 (a year before she began her relationship with Rubinstein), which I found at Sexuality & Love in the Arts with the following caption:

"I love [this] painting because it is of an 'in between' moment. The 'model' or 'woman' may simply be standing near a dressing screen, waiting a moment before getting dressed or before moving to undress to hold a traditional 'classic' pose. Brooks may have perceived this moment to be as beautiful and memorable as anything that was more commonly posed."

The model's slightly inclined head, her pensive expression, her hands folded behind her back, everything about her pose suggests a complete lack of self-consciousness, a being-lost that belies her nudity, or perhaps renders her more naked. And of course, I love the way the muted browns and tans of model and background set off the brightness of the titular red jacket. Quite lovely all around.

But let me get to the other pictures. In keeping with the balletic theme, the next work is Edgar Degas' Dancers at the Barre, 1888. Pastel, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, this one has been up for a while, and I just really love the blending of the colors and their overall intensity. I also thought that the warm tones would contrast nicely with the cooler tones of the Rubinstein piece (I've alternated between warm and cool going down the list, with the last picture being a bit of a compromise).

Next one down is van Gogh's Pair of Boots, 1887. If you haven't read Fredric Jameson's essay Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, you should get your hands on it. Jameson takes this painting to be a paradigmatic modernist work, and contrasts it with Andy Warhol's paradigmatic postmodern take on footwear, Diamond Dust Shoes.

I'll finish with another Serov. This one is called Girl with Peaches, also from 1887, at the beginning of his career. Simply put, I adore this painting. The way the bright light slants through the windows, the little girl's expression, her beautiful hair, the plate hanging on the wall, the peach clutched in her hands. Absolutely gorgeous. If any of you are ever in Moscow, please go see this for me. (I wish I'd had that outfit growing up too!)

Au revoir, longs cheveux!

La mujer sigue diciendo "Bye-bye, long hair" when I tell her I want it cut short, down to three inches on the top and even shorter on the sides, like a boy. I had wanted to shake things up and I had heard that a haircut was the easiest way to implement a radical change in one's life. Now, watching my jet-black locks fall away, I had to question the wisdom of such a choice, on two levels:

1. Is a radical change to one's physical appearance really significant enough to effect any real change to the person, the soul? Naturally, this line of questioning had been provoked by my continued reading of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. This is the question pursued in the second part of the novel, "Body and Soul." I won't bore you with too much metaphysical speculation, but I would briefly argue that the appearance of the body can affect not the subject itself, but the subject qua object. However, barring the possibility of our tapping into Hegel's Absolute anytime soon, subject qua object is really the only way a subject can be perceived by another, and therefore this perception indeed becomes important (in varying degrees) to any self-conscious being.

2. Having accepted the idea that this change may be in some way meaningful, will it effect me negatively or positively? As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on this one, and I know I can't really expect much help from my lovely readers (I don't really look like Lauren Bacall). But in case any of you are wondering what kind of face to attach to my voice, I thought I might describe myself in brief. As I mentioned, I have black hair, along with light, slightly freckled skin and light blue eyes. I like to think the juxtaposition is striking. High cheekbones, pert nose, small mouth, I would call myself pretty, not beautiful. However, I am on the tall side (5'10") and I think my figure is a bit mannish and not nearly as graceful as I would like (hence my fascination with the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age; who could ever hope to make grace look that easy?) and it is this detail that makes me unsure of my new haircut: I've always aimed for a studied femininity in my look to make up for this lack of star quality, and I worry that my little boycut may be more than I can pull off. After all, I'm no Louise Brooks or Anouk Aimée, or even a mere Natalie Portman, and I don't want people to start mistaking me for a lesbian all the time.

But all this is going through my head and at the same time the locks are falling to the ground. I suppose the nice thing about hair is that if I really hate what I do with it, I can always let it grow back (this places it somewhere between clothes and tattoos in the hierarchy of physical adornments). That's why, aunque la mujer ha dicho "bye-bye," yo creo que mejor, au revoir.

Epigraph

"Tomas came to this conclusion: making love to a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep."

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I met a boy. His name is Paul and I feel great affection for him, though I'm not sure if I love him or not. Tomas's model doesn't quite seem to work in this situation. Of course there's sex. And that's great. We even sleep together sometimes, and it's also great. I've never been a huge fan of sleeping alone. Naturally I agree with Tomas that at times sharing one's bed can feel like a violation, and that certainly one must be selective when dispensing invitations. But I'm not sure that the mere desire to share one's bed determines (or is determined by) love. If Tomas is right then I love Paul, but sometimes I feel like I only love him in the confines of my own private little world, a world which of course doesn't exist. This world is contained in a bedroom, and here I love Paul and all the laying and sleeping and talking and fucking and staring into each other's eyes. They all feel like one single continuous act and when we do these things I feel for a while like a coherent being, without fractures, without incongruities. In this bedroom world there are no borders between perception and emotion. But this world doesn't really exist because if it did it would be eternal and in reality it always ends.

You see, Paul isn't happy with just my little bedroom world. Paul wants to share the outside world with me but in that world I cannot possibly grant anyone a monopoly over my affections. He wants to be with me always and so I am only too eager to be rid of him. He wants to protect me but I don't want his protection. He wants us to share all of our problems but I don't want to bear the weight. How can that be love? My rather obvious conclusion is that the Paul that I love, like the world he inhabits with me, is unreal, nonexistent, a utopian construction of my consciousness designed to compensate for the alienation I feel in public life. The Paul I love is just a body that I fill with myself, or a negatively tuned mirror that reflects my needs as fulfillments. I love his body. I love his smile and his laugh. I love that he loves me enough to humor me as much as he does, to tolerate my abuse and hypocrisy, even. But I don't love him unselfishly, so I guess I don't really love him at all.

Seeing a Stranger

I had to run some errands today so I took the subway into town. On the way back, I was riding down the escalator when I caught a glimpse of this girl, riding up on the other side. First I glanced at her, and I noticed that she was pretty. But then there was something about her face that made me look again. She wasn't exceptionally pretty; I took note of her various imperfections, none particularly significant, but altogether making her objectively unexceptional looking. The thing was that she looked familiar somehow, although I couldn't place her. My first thought was that she must resemble some actress or other, although which one I couldn't decide. Then the more I stared at her, the more I noticed her look. She seemed to be looking off at nothing, noticing nothing, but her expression was certainly not vacant. Something about her eyes, which would not meet mine, pulled me in. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted her to clear things up, to explain herself, to help me figure out why her appearance had sent such a jolt through me on an otherwise uneventful commute. I would say, "You look like an actress," and she would say, "Oh, yeah. ____ ____, right? I get that a lot." Then we would smile and part ways. Or I would say, "Do I know you from somewhere?" to which she would reply with a quizzical look and say "I don't think so" or, "Oh, hey, Jo, yeah!" and a quick catch-up conversation would ensue, followed by empty promises to keep in touch. But I was going down, and she was on the other side of the escalator, going up, and anyway her eyes never met mine, so instead I just turned and stared at her as we drifted past each other.

Je l'aime et je la respire

Read a book. Make tea. Tell me something. What do you want to hear? The sounds of wet, loving, foreign tongues. A cold rain. A forest. A bed of poison ivy. A secret patch of mushrooms that "broadcast on transcendental frequencies"- Robbins. A body of work, tatooed, stamped, branded, owned, sold, thrown away and picked up again.

"This is terrible," she said, looking up from the sheet of crumpled notebook paper, over her glasses.

"I know," I replied. "But sometimes I just find myself in a liminal space, like maybe I could burst out in every direction at once, except that I can't escape the stasis. Or maybe I'm nowhere."

"Well, see, that's just garbage. Introspective sloth. You're just too lazy to really ask yourself the hard questions and figure out why you feel the way that you do. That's why all you can do is spout twisted half-clichés and nonsense. What you've got to understand is that it's not enough to be authentic. It's not even enough to be honest. And they're not the same thing. No, the important thing is to be rigorous. To understand, or at least to come as close as possible. Or maybe to understand why you can't understand. But this visceral shit don't fly no more."

"I think I understand what you mean. You've got to have ideas, reasons. Otherwise, it's easy. And no one wants easy. But what if my ideas are so obscure that even I can't untangle them?"

"Then you don't really have any ideas."