Without Lifting A Finger





My usual barber's pole (blood and bandages) wasn't spinning, so I went on a walk. Decided to cross the bridge into Naples to see what I could see. *                                         

Call me absent-minded. I didn't start back to work (school) today, it's tomorrow. It was just the power-washer and me. Wondered why the garage was so empty. Anyway, I got everything ready for tomorrow. The slight rainfall was fun (coming and going). I took the two bridges purposely -- to commune with clouds. *  

Have thought about this short poem off and on, and in various contexts, ever since I bought Rodrigo (Polish version) somewhere in Poland (I'm guessing Krakow -- it was so long ago) and, with the help of my wife, tried to translate a few of the shorter pieces. Anyway, the line I always "draw on" to explain things (I know, I'm delusional) is "who knows which is better which is worse" (if I'm not mistaken, there's no "weightier" in the original Polish). Anyway ... * TO CZESLAW MILOSZ 1    Above San Francisco Bay -- the lights of the stars at dawn mist which divides the world in two parts who knows which is better weightier which worse one must not think even in secret they're the same 2    Angels descend from heaven Halleluia when he sets down  his slanted azure-spaced letters    [ Translated by Alissa Valles ] 

Beatrice Wood (March 3, 1893 – March 12, 1998) was an American artist and studio potter involved in the Avant Garde movement in the United States; she founded The Blind Man magazine in New York City with French artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Henri-Pierre Roché in 1916. [1] She had earlier studied art and theater in Paris, and was working in New York as an actress. She later worked at sculpture and pottery. Wood was characterized as the "Mama of Dada." She partially inspired the character of Rose DeWitt Bukater in James Cameron 's 1997 film, Titanic after the director read Wood's autobiography while developing the film. Beatrice Wood died nine days after her 105th birthday in Ojai, California . [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Wood ] *** 



Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp (January 6, 1906 – December 20, 1995) was the wife of Pierre Matisse , daughter-in-law of artist Henri Matisse , and second wife of artist and chess player Marcel Duchamp . Background [ edit ] She was born Alexina Sattler in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1906. The youngest daughter of prominent surgeon Robert Sattler, Alexina was nicknamed "Teeny" by her mother Agnes Mitchell because of her low birth weight .   Paris and marriage to Pierre Matisse [ edit ] Sattler at first thought of becoming an artist and went to Paris in 1921, where for a time she studied sculpture with Constantin Brâncuși at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. [1] She first met Marcel Duchamp in 1923 at a ball given in her honor by American sculptor Mariette Benedict Mills, the mother of a close friend. In 1929 Teeny married Pierre Matisse , an art dealer and the youngest son of Fauve artist Henri Matisse . They had three children: Jacqueline, Paul , and...

The "real thing" wasn't there (except in miniature), so I decided to make my own. The readymade (readypic) was in the Norton Simon's john. * 

I was interested in the Duchamp more than the Pop. *                               









              

        

Been there before. Duchamp to Pop attracted me this time. Per usual, I tried to look at old things in a new way and in new things I rolled the dice. Something like that. *   

 

... I HATED THE Salinger story. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it? That horrible self-consciousness, every sentence comments on itself and comments on itself commenting on itself, and I think it was actually supposed to be funny . And if the poems were so good, why not just give us one or two and shut up, for God's sake? That Seymour figure doesn't impress me at all as anything extra -- or is that the point and I've been missing it? GOD is in any slightly superior, sensitive, intelligent human being or something? or WHAT? and WHY? And is it true that The New Yorker can't change a word he writes? It seems to be the exact opposite of those fine old-fashioned standards of writing Andy White admires so, and yet it isn't "experimental" or original -- it's just tedious. Now if I am running counter to all the opinions at pres...

    Skunk Hour      For Elizabeth Bishop Nautilus Island's hermit heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; her sheep still graze above the sea. Her son's a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village; she's in her dotage. Thirsting for the hierarchic privacy of Queen Victoria's century, she buys up all the eyesores facing her shore, and lets them fall. The season's ill-- we've lost our summer millionaire, who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean catalogue. His nine-knot yawl was auctioned off to lobstermen. A red fox stain covers Blue Hill. And now our fairy decorator brightens his shop for fall; his fishnet's filled with orange cork, orange, his cobbler's bench and awl; there is no money in his work, he'd rather marry. One dark night, my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull; I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down, ...

The Armadillo    For Robert Lowell This is the time of year when almost every night the frail, illegal fire balloons appear. Climbing the mountain height,   rising toward a saint still honored in these parts, the paper chambers flush and fill with light that comes and goes, like hearts.   Once up against the sky it’s hard to tell them from the stars— planets, that is—the tinted ones: Venus going down, or Mars,   or the pale green one.   With a wind, they flare and falter, wobble and toss; but if it’s still they steer between the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,   receding, dwindling, solemnly and steadily forsaking us, or, in the downdraft from a peak, suddenly turning dangerous.   Last night another big one fell. It splattered like an egg of fire against the cliff behind the house. The flame ran down.   We saw the pair   of owls who nest...

        

      

One Art The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster, Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. - Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,      please come flying. In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,      please come flying, to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums descending out of the mackerel sky over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,      please come flying. Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags rising and falling like birds all over the harbor. Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing countless little pellucid jellies in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains. The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged. The waves are running in verses this fine morning.      Please come flying. Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe trailing a sapphire highlight, with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots...

    

... In Time -- two weeks ago now -- I saw a mysterious little announcement of the death of Dylan Thomas. It must be true, but I still can't believe it -- even if I felt during the brief time I knew him that he was headed that way. I just can't believe it and dread what might have happened to him -- in New York ... Thomas's poetry is so narrow -- just a straight conduit between birth & death, I suppose -- with not much space for living along the way.

He claims he's not a political animal, but I know different. I caught up with Mr. C. down at the lagoon an hour or so ago. He was courting the Evanjellicles. *                             

Of course my attention is very scattered these days. I do like her letters however, probably even more than most of her poetry. I will keep reading at least until Frisch's Montauk comes (up till now, a hard to get Frisch -- I've read it only once -- but the Kindle version is due out at the end of March). Elizabeth is in Brazil. She's in her Lota phase. * Excerpt: To Kit and Ilse Barker                October 12, 1952      ... One of the charms of this place is that it almost never feels like Sunday -- maybe because it's a sort of lukewarm Catholic country -- but today it does, and I'm all alone for the time being in the large half-finished chilly house -- with an oil lamp lit at 3 p.m. to keep me warm. No it isn't hot now, but it is starting to get warm again. It was scorching in Rio when I was there last week, but here it's always much cooler. I'll quote from my geography book: "Du...

Backtracking a bit, but that's the nature of Blogsville. Had to post this. *         

Weird and Wacky, but it caught our attention. We were on the way to the Wrigley Memorial and it was just down a side street. I'm sure Huell Howser stopped here. Reminded me a bit of Nitt Witt Ridge in Cambria. *