Month: August 2009

“Many of the fuqaha’ mentioned mermaids and differed on the ruling concerning them. Some of them said that they are permissible (to eat) because of the general meaning of the evidence which says that whatever is in the sea is permissible. This is the view of the Shaafa’is and Hanbalis, and is the view of most of the Maalikis and of Ibn Hazm and others. And some of them regarded it as haraam because it is not a kind of fish. This is the view of the Hanafis and of al-Layth ibn Sa’d. “

sparge • \SPAHRJ\ • verb

1 : sprinkle, bespatter; especially : spray

*2 : to agitate (a liquid) by means of compressed air or gas entering through a pipe

“I wanted to make a film on guilt,”
so I went ahead and took another half of a pill.

I’d like to try to make pineapple caviar or spheres
to avoid that New Yorky thing—that pressure to show off–
so, I went ahead and did some more jumping jacks to get the blood pumping.

Since swine flu is super trendy
I thought it would be interesting to record things impossible to
experience physically
so I went ahead and got a mooncup

I wanted to make her a little nature fairy,
sonically
and that “savage indignation” drove me to political activism.

You know, I WANTED TO MAKE MY NAME GOOGLABLE –
Some time later, it hit me. My euphoria became even more intense:

Usually I just slink off and sulk somewhere…..
Write some poetry, or something. …

And since my abortion, fun and uplifting like a romp,
I absolutely love covered buttons.

I was in mid quano sweep up in the barn inhaling bubonic
plague at the time…so … I wanted… to make… a dodecahedron .

After some time I again touched her hands I got some mehandi on my hands.

I enjoyed creating this doodle. I like all my meta-doodle doodles. …
But I don’t think it truly captures the essence of the Night Elf race

It would be better if there were other ways to have conversations besides language. Language becomes a site of confusion and aggression because we hardly know what other people are talking about. If in a blog post I say language is material, another person will understand “language” differently, and yet another will differently understand “material.” One can hardly write a love letter even without having to tiresomely unpack the numerous meanings of love. Even a grocery list given to a well-meaning friend will yield different results than one might have expected (how could I have wanted anything but PURPLE cabbage, really?). Philosophers keep examining the problem of language but always problematically, because they do it in language, so they really don’t get very far. They spend most of their arguments defining their terms, which is crucial, but unfortunately they can only define their terms in other words, so the whole project ultimately becomes absurd. In that crevice of absurdity, poetry steps in, not to save the day, but to detourne it. I wedge myself into that crevice with a kind of cheerful resignation.

Today’s outfit took off from yesterday’s: the bracelets. pigtails again. Some coral & magenta plastic bling around the neck. The top, amazingly, is by Vivienne Westwood, bought for no more than $15 at a secret place in my neighborhood that sells cut-rate designer goods. If I look a little puffy it’s from allergies. The locust trees spread pollen all over the NYC sidewalks; my throat is scratchy and eyes running. Horrible!

My hairdo morphed as the day got hotter (in the 90s today). Curly-haired friends, did you know that your hair will hold a twist? This is a hairdo idea from my Black sisters. Two rubber bands and about four minutes, and presto:

Gary is not fond of the pigtails, but that doesn’t bother me. They help me into a state of playful regression. How else am I going to get through my adulthood (not to mention the New York summer)? Really!

language note:

ponytail vs. pigtails

As an antidote to the brocade and kitsch formality of yesterday, today I wore purple & black gingham jeans and ponytails (what is it with the ponytails lately?). The puncta of today’s look are the candy-colored chunky bracelets on my right arm. I’m not at all sure of the meaning of the strange hand gesture I’m making here.

The shoes are my second pair of FitFlops, the ones I think look “Italian.” Their comfort is almost beyond description. They make them for men, too. If you want happy feet, just buy these shoes, although they are admittedly not at the very height of fashion. No, no one paid me to mention them here.

I had to do a lot of walking today, because, like a good kid, I went to meet my mom who was transiting through JFK on her way back home from a hypnotherapists’ conference in Boston. We posed together:

My mother likes to talk to people, and we got to know rather well the bartender at the airport bar we sat at: he was Chilean, with a Jewish mother, and he had recovered from colon cancer, although he now has Crohn’s Disease. He said he no longer has a large intestine, and that he’s had to wear a bag for the past eleven years. He was in his early thirties, and looked absolutely glowing with health. I congratulate him on his pluck in the face of adversity.

Then I took the J train to the city to meet up with Gary and Stan and Tova and Leo. For some stupid reason I forgot to take a picture of them, but here are two interesting street fashion sightings for your entertainment:

(I like how her freckles coordinate with her dress:)

And this one needs no comment:

the perfect frames:

Ray-Ban Wayfarer II, Gray Fade

I tried them on in a shop today, and knew instantly, “yeah”! Of course I’ve already put in an order for the others. That’s fine. One ought to have variety in one’s spectacle choices

A dress-up occasion yesterday: a reception to celebrate the marriage of longtime sweethearts Rick Snyder and Eleana Kim. They gave a beautiful and intimate party in the Flatiron district, so G. and I decided to put on the ritz.

The theme of Gary’s tie is “heraldic lions,” and I love this because it reminds me of my late grandfather Harold’s favorite restaurant (Lyon’s, somewhere on the Bay Area penninsula), which used a similar motif, I believe. They had a smorgasbord very conducive to overeating; I remember my boyfriend-at-the-time, Anthony, ate so much there he had to step out back and throw up. Anyway, the tie was one from a lot I bought on eBay several years ago when I first took it into my brain to sew things. I wanted to make a necktie skirt. I didn’t realize a couple of things: that necktie skirts are actually hopelessly déclassé and amateurish-looking, even when they are made well, and also that they are in fact kind of difficult to make correctly. If you just sew them together at the sides with out unstuffing them they form a big unwieldy swirl. That project was a “fail” (a word Safire remarked on yesterday), but Gary got the pick of the litter in terms of the best ties from the eBay lots. The gold of the tie is of course picked to match my brocade party dress, which I am pleased to say I bought a couple of weeks ago at the Housing Works thrift store for TWENTY DOLLARS, and I just sort of happened across it, saw it in the window and drifted in. The best things come to you when you are not looking for them, clearly. The same is true of the shoes, although they were not so cheap, and they are not particularly comfortable (I have very fussy feet), but MY GOD, aren’t they gorgeous? They were half price: JUNO is the brand, and I do feel like Juno in them, really.

Rick and Eleana looked ever so elegant in their reception outfits: Eleana ethereal in a simple off-white loose shift with asymmetrical side drapes, and Rick in a Mad Men suit that fit him like a dream.

I asked Gary to photograph my ponytail, because I never know what I look like from the back, and then also against some graffiti because it was there.

Black beaded clutch purse and necklace inherited from my glamorous grandmother, Geri Goldberg. I really felt I was channeling her yesterday. She actually had a gold lamé BIB that she would wear to restaurants.

Here’s Gary in the cab home checking his iPhone and looking fluffy.

p.s. here’s what I wore during the day. I thought I looked “Italian”:

Gary wears a UniQlo t-shirt with a motif of traditional Japanese masks. A birthday present from yrs truly, along with the black 501s. Footwear by Keens: serviceable and crunchy. Foyer also painted by me, can’t you tell? Feng-shui koi poster embellished with sequins ALSO by me. Postcard with the gypsy oud player from the Paris flea market. Mini silver service a wedding gift from Laura and Rodrigo. Glass jar a wedding gift from Murat filled with roses from our wedding party (from whence the peacock feather also hails). They still smell hypnotically sweet.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to continue the Outfit Project, honestly, but readers have spoken, and I thought my ensemble today was rather original. Lavender kameez with white embroidery and opalescent bugle beading, bought on Coney Island Avenue at one of the Pakistani shops, worn over a short full skirt of African or faux-African cotton print fabric in shades from deep grape to vivid violet. I like how the cultures are combining here for a fresh and novel effect. I would have held out for a better photo, but Gary is less patient than my tripod. I thank him anyway for his assistance on this beautiful September-like August morning. Shoes and bracelets (not visible) in gold to complement the purple.

Tomorrow evening I will be attending a wedding, and if it’s not too hot, I have an AMAZING dress to wear there. Stay tuned!

Disjunction is not dead. I disagree with Kenny and Anne on that point. “Things” have not suddenly cohered; language has not suddenly become a vast unitary sensical blob. It’s still all editing: of fragments. There is no whole: only continuity.

Regarding syntax, if I were to level a critique on my fellow flarfists, including, occasionally, myself, it would be that, syntactically, the poems are often made to flow rather too smoothly. I need bumps along the way to remind me that I’m interacting with stuff, material; I need to feel that tangible textuality. That is what makes the poems sublime, even when they are flarf poems, which are not supposed to be sublime although sometimes they are. Disjunction is somehow fluorescent: it represents for me, when I stumble on it in a poem, a little flashing message that things are in question, and that excites me. Too much disjunction is blinding, alienating, but without it there’s a kind of plodding from sense unit to sense unit. At the level of units though, rather than from word to word, many of the poems we write are still disjunct, in source, in gesture, and otherwise. Could that be what Anne means when she writes, “JUNCTION IS ALIVE.” Is junction just SEAMING? Is disjunction technically impossible? Isn’t collage always junctive, no matter how diverse its materials? Well, now I’m getting confused on terminology, as I always do, because even prose, this prose, insofar as it can be said to be prose, is textual, and the matter of language is puzzling me again.

To pronounce anything abstract dead, it strikes me, is to risk dogmatism. I don’t mean to be dogmatic about what I have always called disjunction, or torque, before (do I need a new term?); it could be that my affection for it is generational. I came of age as a poet at disjunction’s apex; it could be a kind of attachment like that one has for the fashions of one’s youth. But no, I think there’s something more. Judiciously employed, it releases unpredictabilities; it’s a powerful tool in our alchemical lab. I am not inclined to abandon it, and I don’t agree with these pronouncements of its demise.

Interesting to be thinking on these things on Hiroshima Day.