Another Omen/Reading the Signs

Or; ‘the injustice of outwardness’

Neither Cervantes (if I can speak for him) or I suggest living lives by omens. I imagine it’s a very slow way to proceed. Like a paragraph full of links, living by omens offers too many possibilities, distracts you from the narrative (which, I concede, can be a good thing), requires too much constant attentiveness. Plus you don’t really ever know how good you are at reading the signs. I’d be perpetually anxious that I was missing something…

Clearly at the end of DQ, Sancho is trying to propel DQ forward and be encouraging. Though he doesn’t know the true identity of the Knight of the White Moon, Sancho’s pretty happy to be going home and prevented by DQ’s defeat from engaging in knight errantry for one year:

At the entrance of the village, so says Cide Hamete, Don Quixote saw two boys quarrelling on the village threshing-floor one of whom said to the other, "Take it easy, Periquillo; thou shalt never see it again as long as thou livest."
Don Quixote heard this, and said he to Sancho, "Dost thou not mark, friend, what that boy said, 'Thou shalt never see it again as long as thou livest'?"
"Well," said Sancho, "what does it matter if the boy said so?"
"What!" said Don Quixote, "dost thou not see that, applied to the object of my desires, the words mean that I am never to see Dulcinea more?"
Sancho was about to answer, when his attention was diverted by seeing a hare come flying across the plain pursued by several greyhounds and sportsmen. In its terror it ran to take shelter and hide itself under Dapple. Sancho caught it alive and presented it to Don Quixote, who was saying, "Malum signum, malum signum! a hare flies, greyhounds chase it, Dulcinea appears not."
"Your worship's a strange man," said Sancho; "let's take it for granted that this hare is Dulcinea, and these greyhounds chasing it the malignant enchanters who turned her into a country wench; she flies, and I catch her and put her into your worship's hands, and you hold her in your arms and cherish her; what bad sign is that, or what ill omen is there to be found here?"

But there is an ‘ill-wind’ to contend with. As I’m reading Chapter 73, I know that there is only one more chapter, a very short chapter. I know that I’m about to finish the book. I’m grappling for a strategy. I know I’m not going to like the way that it ends just as I don’t like the way that The Female Quixote ends or the way Pepita’s DQ ballet ends. I start Chapter 74. I don’t even like the title: OF HOW DON QUIXOTE FELL SICK, AND OF THE WILL HE MADE, AND HOW HE DIED. I’m reading gingerly. And then right in the middle of the chapter, somebody on the outside starts talking to me (about photography or cars or the chimney or taxes). And I am distracted. And I resume and finish and put the book down and immediately pick up Ivanhoe which I’d positioned conveniently at my elbow. I want and don’t want to move on:

Such was the end of the Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete would not indicate precisely, in order to leave all the towns and villages of La Mancha to contend among themselves for the right to adopt him and claim him as a son, as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer.

Oh Don Quixote (and I selectively quote here and conveniently omit the tirade against “the false and foolish tales of the books of chivalry, which, thanks to that of my true Don Quixote, are even now tottering, and doubtless doomed to fall for ever”):

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was his to act, mine to write; we two together make but one…

Morning and Afternoon Light

Spring is here, I hear.

I too fly by night

I had to get a magnifying glass to read the notes on the back of the Anita O’Day CD because "THIS IS A FACIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL LP BACK COVER". I know very little about Anita O’Day except that we fell in love with her in the 70s when we were kids and we saw Bert Stern’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day and we’ve never forgotten her. I read the back cover, not really expecting to learn anything in particular but just because I like the way these cats (a guy called Dom Cerulli, in this case) wrote about jazz on the back of album covers in 1961. So her singing “mellows and matures”, she “makes it sound all so simple”, she’s “a different Anita who has gone beyond those other Anitas” with an “uncanny sense of time”. She’s “complex and daring”…going further and further out on that limb of harmonic improvisation”. And she sings beautiful songs like “The Ballad of All the Sad Young Men”.

drinking up the night/trying not to drown…while a grimy moon/watches from above/all the sad young men/play at making love/misbegotten moon/shines for sad young men/let your gentle light/ guide them home again/all the sad young men

with “supple lyrical sense”. There’s a “bright twist”. She scats “at bright tempo” giving another song its “appropriately funky treatment” and “fitting herself to the brass section….playing rather than singing her vocal”.




I suspect it’s a kind of aspiration of mine: playing rather than singing my vocal. I too fly by night.

Aphorism

Or; Reading the signs, redux, redux

(The first sign, I remember, underlined the absurdity of witticisms on roadside signs - driving as I was towards my father's death. They changed that sign every week and it really began to annoy me although one week the sign's message was about the similarity between 'silent' and 'listen'. I hope I haven't forgotten that one.)

(The second sign, I remember, was more emotional - wanting a sign that things weren't falling apart, that absurdity of death-too-young needing an explanation.)

And then these signs, also close to home (pix courtesy of CKRZ FM - Six Nations Radio):

Reading Recommended Reading

My friend Cees sent me a speech by Joanna Chapman, 'a very courageous woman' who has been wrestling with local authorities for quite some time on matters of principle. The interesting thing about the speech is that Chapman advocates for a consensual, non-adversarial political process and contrasts her experiences with two local councils - one of them being the one with which she is currently (and adversarily) engaged. She doesn't think that this is the way things should be. She also recommends that we support and transform our local media making them sources that we want to read and not merely eschew in favour of the news from away.

Cees described the situation as connected to my preoccupation with dreaming/nightmares and he projected my interior life onto our bigger community life in which 'our city council full of their developer-induced dreams create nightmares for all of us'. And I've talked to a few people this past week about the Caledonia blockade in these terms (though the authority in question is not Hamilton City Council) where the struggle is largely about land use and the ethics of urban sprawl.

But I think there are some other questions behind Cees's recommended reading and those are why am I so self-absorbed, seemingly (on the blog) unaware or uncontemplative about what is going on just outside my door? What happens when I read this speech transcript by a 'courageous woman' and measure my response? Why am I writing about my nightmares, the prescription of D&G and my attraction to/reluctance to engage experientially with the nightmare? My identification is with the wanderer, DQ, who is (very close to the end of the book) being partly wound down and concluded and partly lamented and celebrated and revived. Is wandering a flight response? Cervantes has his hands behind his back now with his fingers tightly crossed. As do I.

And we continue...

Waking up to D and G

I feel like I’ve been losing track of D&G lately. I think this is because I haven’t had that much time to read. I’d relegated them to a routine – it was the Saturday morning readings but then that started not to work out so well as my Saturday got taken over/overtaken. I can ride my bike again but I don’t have ‘permission’ to do it yet.

I had a nightmare on Sunday morning. It was one of those awful situations where you are awake and asleep simultaneously and the dream is disturbing (this one played to my claustrophobic tendencies) and even though you can think of it as a dream and know that you are awake, you can’t quite wake up. I actually hit myself to wake up and then ran outside. It wasn’t cold enough outside to have the desired effect of jolting me but after I ran around for few minutes, I woke up fully.

I hate when this happens. It’s interesting that it happened this week because I had just heard a radio show about sleep and dream therapy which was very interesting and enticing. It reminded me of D&G and the kind of therapeutic practice their work suggests. I was really interested in some of the techniques talked about on the radio – even thinking I might try writing out my dreams as a way of becoming more proscriptive with them but the waking nightmare experience reminded me that this would be a very risky move for me. A day later, I’m not thinking about experiments in dreaming, I’m turning to D&G.

D&G require a certain commitment that other reading doesn’t necessarily require. For example, the chapters are long. The material gets you into an interesting way of thinking that’s pretty removed from everyday life. It takes time to move in and out of that way of thinking. Very little of my life is actually contemplative or conducive to contemplation. I can’t find space for contemplation. My patterns are too suburban or too urban hick. Where are my contemplative environments? Do they enable reading? Does the reading occur prior to the contemplative act? Do I need two spaces – one for reading and then one for thinking about the reading? Or is it three spaces – reading, thinking about the reading, thinking about the thinking about the reading?

In Chapter 2, D&G warn against being reductive and this is something that I really like about them. I just need the space to think, the floor to lie on, the cool tiles of contemplation.

Reading to the Rat; Or, Interception:

ORIGIN Latin intercipere ‘catch between’

Misspelled as interseption in my brainstorming bag

I’m caught between finishing DQ and not finishing DQ. DQ and Sancho have left the Duke and Duchess’s place and are (despite the skinny few pages left in the book) having an accelerated series of fabulous adventures – one right after another. Last night I read Chapter LXII “The Adventure of the Enchanted Head; with other childish matters which cannot be omitted”. I love enchanted heads in novels and I thought immediately about the evil floating helmet in The Castle of Otranto (a favourite book of mine):

The first thing that struck Manfred’s eyes was a group of his servants endeavouring to raise something that appeared to him a mountain of sable plumes. He gazed without believing his sight. “What are ye doing?” cried Manfred, wrathfully. “Where is my son?”

A volley of voices replied, “Oh! my lord! the prince! the prince! the helmet! the helmet!”

Shocked with these lamentable sounds, and dreading he knew not what, he advanced hastily—but, what a sight for a father’s eyes!—he beheld his child dashed to pieces, and almost buried under an enormous helmet, a hundred times more large than any casque ever made for human being, and shaded with a proportionable quantity of black feathers.

I’m thinking about what novel I will read next. I’m thinking about reading Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. I have no real reason for reading it, it just occurred to me that I could read it. I saw a new Dover edition (cheap) at the bookstore. Maybe its cheap availability is what made me think about it. Or maybe it’s nostalgia. My brother and I used to watch the Ivanhoe TV show when we were kids and I can still remember part of the theme song and how the tiled floor felt against my stomach (I often lay on the floor – that tile is a very visceral part of my early years, I think).

Or, I could read the other book that I haven't got yet. I put a hold on a novel at the public library quite a while ago but I haven’t heard anything. Holds are weird in that way. It can take months to get stuff. The way the book interrupts your life and your consciousness is sometimes very interesting and surprising. I’m kind of eager to read this book even though I can’t remember the title or author. It was recommended by my friend Mike who has often been right before.

When it takes a long time to get a book, it’s usually because it’s popular. Once you get it you know that there are no renewals. You have to get on with the reading even if you're not ready or you don't think you have the time. I remember when we got Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn, we read it out loud - one chapter every night because we knew that everyone wouldn’t get a chance to read it in the three-week loan period. It just wouldn’t happen. It was a nice experience to read the book aloud. It was just at the time when we first got our rat, Gwendolyn. It seemed to us that she liked the reading too – or, at least, she was attentive and quiet while we were reading. When the book was finished and the normal evening routine (of everyone just silently going their separate ways) resumed, she actually seemed more agitated and ran around her cage a lot more. This could all be projection of course because rats are more active at night generally but we liked to think that she liked hearing Airborn being read – rats are very social creatures after all…

P.S. I think that I have to read Ivanhoe now because I found this quote when I was searching the online version of the book - testing the waters so to speak. It really made my day to read that Sir Walter Scott is ranked second to God on the best authors list:

I love this book more then any book I've read (besides the bible). Sir Walter Scott is the wisest book writer that I've ever known(besides God). The plot was awsome. I never thought that the BK (Black Knight) was Richard the BK (Big King). I really liked Wamba, I even wrote an essay about Wamba called "Not only a Jester: A Wamba Story. Every body thought he was just a stupid Jester and they didnt know that behind the jokes there was a brave and wise hero. If someone made a play about Ivanhoe that would be cool. This is the Greatest book ever.

My cynicism lifts: the brainstorming bag is working

I have swept all of the words aside except Lair. It may be a place where I can stash my Swag.

Here's what I've pulled out today:
piggyback, handkerchief, concubine, clamor, coin, sigmoid, milkweed, triable, polarization, question, albatross, erosiveness, pizza, lashing, crowbar

Nothing's happened yet - should I try some new words?

So... today

intermediary, decease, shaker, faze, demise (is this a theme?), science, cyclopedia, removal, tankful, respectability, pare, capability, abdicate, photoelectric, lair.


P.S. I looked up "eruct" on the OED dictionary site: "Sorry, there are no results for that search". So, a spelling mistake in my brainstorming bag? That could promote some 'productive' brainstorming...

P.S. 2 The word that kept jumping out at me all day (I kept the words lined up on my desk yesterday) was - "swag": It made me partly think about something that hangs or sways and about 'money stuff', stolen goods...but mostly it was just the word itself, the way it sounds...

Brainstorming Ball

I found my 'brainstorming bag' (was a brainstorming ball) in the basement last night. I'd referred to it in an earlier post. There are hundreds of words in the bag -- many more than I had remembered, probably thousands! I'll just pull out a few, read them and see what happens (let me know what comes to mind for you too!) :)

Swag, Imprompriety, Hoodwink, Rationalization, Vermicide, Beverage, Tract, Bandana, Tumble, Season, Shim, Eruct, Plunger, Air-Borne, Glamor.

I'll have to think about this reading...plus I don't know what some of these words mean...(eruct?)...more to come...

Reading my skin

I met my new dermatologist yesterday. He came in swinging his canister of liquid nitrogen as dermatologists do. He gave me the once-over as dermatologists do. As a regular, I should be used to it by now. But I find it very disconcerting. Maybe it’s just that he’s my new dermatologist (my old one moved to Stoney Creek). He’s talking to me but the whole time he’s sweeping my skin with his eyes. He has special close-up vision. He can spot a freckle gone wrong in an instant. He knows what’s he’s looking for and he knows that I am someone who may give him cause to pause in his reading, to make him stop and reread me. It’s not necessarily complexity he’s finding, it’s anomaly. But it’s intimate. He’s reading and rereading me, my skin. Since we had never met before, he asked me the usual questions about where I grew up (to determine my potential past sun damage), what I do for a living now (my current and potential sun damage), and what I like to do for a good time (just kidding – he wanted to know if I liked outdoor sports like golf (don’t know) & tennis (yes)). He doesn’t really want to get to know me, he just wants enough information to allow him to process and proceed. This is what dermatologists do. All the time he’s talking and I’m talking back, he’s reading me, holding my hand and sweeping his eyes up my arm, across my shoulders and down my other arm. He looks at my face but not the way that anybody else looks at my face. He’s talking in an ordinary way but he’s mentally divided my face up into vertical sections and he’s scanning each section. His head and eyes move vertically. He stops at the bridge of my nose where I had the surgery two years ago and spends a little more time there. He touches the bridge of my nose, smoothes the skin across and he moves his head closer. He checks out my neck, a persistent problem– seems to be under control now. He spritzes my hand with the liquid nitrogen. I’d read it as a small wart but he says not…I’m looking at it right now. It’s red and it looks like a super giant wart. I know it will blister and peel off in a couple of days and smooth out…like my neck…pictured here from a few months ago.