Tingle Alley

The Chimerist: dwell in possibility

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:17:34 -0500

thechimerist:

I probably wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known two years ago what I know now about the conditions for workers who make it, but I wake up with my iPad and go to sleep with it. It’s my alarm clock, my nighttime and commuting library, my dictionary, my hand-held radio, my portable…

A new site about art, stories, and technology that I’m doing with Laura Miller.

Happy Lord Byron’s Birthday! The 224th this year. The book I’m working on is about him,...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:54:00 -0500

Happy Lord Byron’s Birthday! The 224th this year. The book I’m working on is about him, which is how I know; but even if you haven’t been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking/writing about a long-dead Romantic poet, his birthday would make a great, wider holiday. I wish it’d catch on, possibly in lieu of some other winter holiday that’s either dull (Presidents’ Day) or mostly makes people unhappy (Valentine’s). So many ways to observe it. Ill-advised sleeping around, most obviously; pistol-shooting around the house; planning elaborate burial tombs for one’s pets; commissioning a Napoleonic carriage (or equivalent) and taking it abroad without ever paying for it; etc. etc. I wasn’t sure how I’d celebrate, but this morning settled on a mall trip for some Touche Éclat — as purchase of overpriced item bought in vain (both senses of the word) hope of staving off 40-something inevitableness of looking like I’ve been up all night being ass-reamed by a family of giant squid seems right in line with the spirit of the day.

Quasi-related to Muhammad Ali’s birthday: This bit from Remnick’s bio of Ali, about...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:08:00 -0500

Quasi-related to Muhammad Ali’s birthday: This bit from Remnick’s bio of Ali, about Floyd Patterson’s preparations for his title fight with Sonny Liston, is so quietly horrific:

A fake beard and mustache! Poor Floyd.

Rugged.

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 19:19:31 -0500

Rugged.

Out to dinner with my friends L. and W. They told a story about going to attend a meeting of the...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:54:31 -0500

Out to dinner with my friends L. and W. They told a story about going to attend a meeting of the Rationalists Society of East Tennessee, walking into a room crowded with people swaying back and forth, hands in the air, music playing, and slowly, slowly realizing they were in the wrong room.

From this book (which is great).

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:27:33 -0500

From this book (which is great).

New Year’s Eve at The Bywater.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:22:41 -0500

New Year’s Eve at The Bywater.

I didn’t know this: When Angela Carter died she was working ”on a novel about Jane...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:44:16 -0500

I didn’t know this: When Angela Carter died she was working ”on a novel about Jane Eyre’s stepdaughter for which she’d submitted a synopsis: Adele was going to fall in love with a schoolteacher, seduce her own father and watch her mother being guillotined; it was going to play ‘some tricks with history … But then it is a novel.’”

“Perhaps another family scandal—Reverend Sayers’s elderly brother Cecil had...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:30:06 -0500

“Perhaps another family scandal—Reverend Sayers’s elderly brother Cecil had recently separated from his second wife after he had been caught in flagrante with a much younger woman in the potting shed—took the sting out of Dorothy’s announcement.” My goodness!

“Ludwig II of Bavaria is said to have honoured certain particularly impressive trees in his...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:16:53 -0500

“Ludwig II of Bavaria is said to have honoured certain particularly impressive trees in his park by having them saluted.” Random factoid tossed into paragraph of Carl Jung’s Alchemical Studies: So many questions! How saluted? Twice daily, or just occasionally?

Susan Miller’s description of her Parrot Fever in this month’s Gemini horoscope is the...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:53:00 -0500

Susan Miller’s description of her Parrot Fever in this month’s Gemini horoscope is the best bit of authorial intrusion I’ve seen in a while. If I ever survived Parrot Fever I probably would be working it into everyone’s horoscopes too.

BONKING BORIS MADE ME PREGNANT, exclaimed the News of the World; BORIS SACKED FOR LYING OVER AFFAIR,...

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:14:01 -0500

BONKING BORIS MADE ME PREGNANT, exclaimed the News of the World; BORIS SACKED FOR LYING OVER AFFAIR, gloated the Mail on Sunday; TORIES SACK JOHNSON OVER SEX CLAIM, dourly divulged The Scotsman.

I love Emma’s column. Also might have (appalling) new crush on Boris Johnson? Terrible politics, serial philandering, lack of physical attraction aside.

So what's it like in Ceylon? I'd much rather go to Mars or the Moon.

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:35:00 -0500

Near the end of Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer mentions a D.H. Lawrence letter that he describes as Lawrence’s “grouchiest letter ever - the grouchiest letter ever?” and a “masterpiece” of irritability. Dyer quotes choice bits from the letter; but if you were ever curious about how the whole thing read, here it is. I hunted it up at the library a while back. It was written to Lawrence’s friend Earl Brewster in 1921, the same year this photo of him and Frieda was taken. (Photo via.)

To E.H. Brewster, from Fontana Vecchia, Taormina, 2 November 1921

Dear Brewster: Yours and Achsah’s from beyond Crete received today: and by coincidence, one from Alpha. So the family voice was uplifted in one strain on this feast-day of All-Souls. Anyhow you’ve got as far as Port Said.

No, I don’t understand a bit what you mean about rightness and about relationships and about the world. Damn the world, anyhow. And I have ‘understanding’ people, and I hate more still to be understood. Damn understanding more than anything. I refuse to understand you. Therefore you can say what you like, without a qualm, and never bother to alter it. I shan’t understand.

I do wonder what Ceylon is like. The ship sounds rather fun, if rather awful. Of course I should have to make those Australian two-legged organs tune up a bit if I was there. I believe they think they’re most awfully IT.

I’ve been in a hell of a temper for three weeks, blank refused to see anybody after the Fisher’s last visit: and only the Baron Stempel came and gave me a headache. I begrudged him his tea; and detested him. I’ve been so disagreeable to old Grace, rooking me, that now she creeps about as if a dagger was at her neck. I’ve written such very spiteful letters to everybody that now the postman never comes. And I believe even the old Capra daren’t have her belated kid for fear I pounce on her. -But it is a world of canaille: absolutely. Canaille, canaglia, Schweinhunderei,* stink-pots. Fui! – pish, pshaw, prr! They all stink in my nostrils.

That’s how I feel in Taormina, let the Ionian sea have fits of blueness if it likes, and Calabria twinkle like seven jewels, and the white trumpet-tree under the balcony perfume six heavens with sweetness. That’s how I feel. A curse, a murrain, a pox on this crawling, sniffling, spunkless brood of humanity.

So what’s it like in Ceylon? I’d much rather go to Mars or the Moon. But Ceylon if there’s nothing better. Is everybody there as beshitten as here? I’ll bet they are.

There isn’t any news, so don’t ask for any. I believe Seltzer is bringing out my Sea and Sardinia book just now: and poems called Tortoises. I finished the Unconscious book and sent it to America with a foreword answering some of my darling critics. Called it provisionally Fantasia of the Unconscious. – Call it Fantasia to prevent anybody tying themselves into knots trying to ‘understand’ it. Since when [sic] I did up a short story, and suddenly wrote a very funny long story called ‘The Captain’s Doll,’ which I haven’t finished yet. But I have just got it high up in the mountains of the Tyrol, and don’t kquite know how to it get it down without breaking its neck. –If I hadn’t my own stories to amuse myself with I should die, chiefly of spleen.

This afternoon I have got to go into paese for the first time for ten days, to buy some things. If I die before I get back, you’ll hear by the next post, maybe.

Today is Tutti i Morti. Last night the cemetery was lit up with bunches of light like yellow crocuses. Carmelo of course, vestal that he is, was trimming the two lamps before his father’s pigeon-hole, and waiting on guard lest anyone stole the said lamps, which, according to Grazia, are finissime, ma belle, di cristallo intagliato – sa – non ci sono alri cosè in tutto il cinmitero, no ginore, ne in Taormina tutta. She leans on the parapet of our balcony – spaventata – terrified of the ghost of her poor dead Beppe. She has never been to the cemetery since she died; and only twice has prevailed on herself even to pass the cemetery wall. What had she done to him, that she fears his avenging spirit so deeply? The bitch. She comes sheltering under my wing because, I suppose, she thinks I’m such another tyrant and nuisance, such as he was.

I have been reading Giovanni Verga’s Sicilian novels and stories. Do you know them? When once one gets into his really rather difficult style (to me), he is very interesting. The only Italian who does interest me. I’ll send you some if you like. But probably you’ll be reading Sanscrit and speaking Cinghalese by now.

I don’t know anything about the future. My stock of English money is almost gone. England will provide me with no more. I await Mountsier’s arrival in America, and then he will tell me how many dollars are to my name. I hope about 2500 or 3000. I feel at the moment I don’t care where I live, that people are bloody swine – or bloodless swine everywhere – and here at least I have a fair space of land and sea to myself. But if you tempt me one little bit I’ll splash my way to Ceylon. Be sure thought and tell me how much a house costs, and a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs. Don’t be on a damned high Buddhistic plane. I’m in no mood to stand it. – And if you do come back to Europe, come to Sicily, not to Capri.

Tell Achsah B. that I am grateful for the news of the Vail veil – or loin-cloth. Does she then think that my own fig-leaf is too diminutive? and does her modesty alone prevent her telling me so. Oh fie!

We saw Earl photographs, and Achsah photographs, and Schaler photographs, and a whole wall-paper-pattern of Harwood photographs at the Fisher’s. – Tempi passati vostri! Ma son’ tristi, questi tempi passati: a tròppo passati, o non abbastanza.

I will write again when a gentle spirit moves me

— What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er

Ceylon’s isle –

Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.

Rivederci.

* Looking it up tonight, I see Lawrence used the “Canaille, canaglia, Schweinhunderei” construction in another letter written a few days earlier. He must have really taken with it: Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Schweinhunderei Incorporated!

Today was the second anniversary of my dad’s death. I made an agreement with my mom early on...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:52:00 -0500

Today was the second anniversary of my dad’s death. I made an agreement with my mom early on that we weren’t going to mark this day, but instead his birthday (which falls in January), but nevertheless I’ve been counting down the past few weeks, and I can tell she has been too. My dad was a really funny person; I wish, if my memory was going to turn out so faulty, I’d written down more of the things he said (I sympathize with what Zadie Smith wrote about her dad here). This isn’t the funniest story about him – I’m not sure it’s even funny at all so much as indicative of one part of his personality – but it’s in my head tonight so here it is.

In the last few years of his life, my dad got into this thing where he liked to make scenes at Cracker Barrels. It’s hard to explain, but it felt like he’d see the parking lot, and the line of rocking chairs running across the porch, and sense the waitstaff trembling inside, and be triggered into a frenzy of bad behavior. As I told a friend, I was sure a picture of my parents’ Aerostar was going to be circulated as a warning across all the Cracker Barrels in the South. On the last road trip I took with him – we must have been on our way to a family reunion — we stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee. He was having some problems walking by then, and I looked over to check on him as we were crossing the parking lot, and he was shuffling forward and gazing toward the porch with an expression I would describe as very intent. My mom also must have been on high alert, because I remember her and I working this amazing, balletic tag-team at lunch. Nothing verbalized – it’s not as though we ever acknowledged, “My goodness, our family is the scourge of Cracker Barrels everywhere” — but it was as if we’d finally figured out all the points at which these meals could go horribly wrong and how to head them off. For example, my mom maneuvered things so my dad got the interior seat, pretty much body-blocking him in; at different times I swung out of my chair to collect whatever the thing was (the creamer, the check) that, if it didn’t arrive fast enough, might be an instigating excuse, and I remember doing all this in a whirl of competency, like how you might feel if you were pulling off a complicated heist, enough so that I feel bad as I type this at all this competence we were exuding at his expense. We got to the end of lunch. My mom went off to pay the bill. My dad sat looking very tired and red-eyed in his chair. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back but sort of nodded, in a way that acknowledged all the competence. He said, “I miss Jack Goode,” a friend/business associate who had died a few years before. Then, “He and I could really take a restaurant apart.”

Longreads: The Awl's Choire Sicha, Carrie Frye, Alex Balk: Our Top Longreads of 2011

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:27:00 -0500

Longreads: The Awl's Choire Sicha, Carrie Frye, Alex Balk: Our Top Longreads of 2011:

longreads:

There’s this little moment in Ted Hughes’ collected letters when, shortly after he and...

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:03:00 -0500

There’s this little moment in Ted Hughes’ collected letters when, shortly after he and Sylvia Plath got married, he’s writing to his sister and he says, Sylvia’s “had some good fortune lately. She sold a long rather bad poem to The Atlantic Monthly, which is one of the Mags in America, for $50. Then, last week, Poetry Chicago accepted six of her poems - one or two of them her best, and her best is good - and is making an official debut.” A footnote clarifies that the “long rather bad poem” is “Pursuit,” i.e., the poem that Plath skipped class to write after meeting Hughes at a party in Cambridge. Full version here; abridged here (including worst/best lines):

“There is a panther stalks me down:

One day I’ll have my death of him. …

Bright those claws that mar the flesh

And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.

His ardor snares me, lights the trees,

And I run flaring in my skin. …

The panther’s tread is on the stairs,

Coming up and up the stairs.”

I’ve had “The Pursuit” pretty much by heart since forever (It’s included in The Young Girl’s Very Moody Primer, Chapter 4. Frisson) and I don’t think in all that time I’ve ever paused to consider whether it’s a good or “long rather bad” poem—it’s always just been one of The Poems; a foundation text. It’s so jarring (and yet funny) to see Hughes dismiss it with a wave of the hand like that. (But it’s about you you you!) Something here about history as experienced versus history as viewed second-hand.

Photo

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:03:28 -0500

sfilzen: Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:09:07 -0500

sfilzen:

Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?

Photo

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:25:13 -0500

Photo

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:41:37 -0400