Without Lifting A Finger

Finished the book ( From the Book to the Book , translated by Rosmarie Waldrop) in Michigan (where blogging was last on the list and also hard to do, as I was laptopless), so very little of Jabes made it to Blogland. Still I couldn't resist e-fixing this wonderful paragraph (from a section titled Notebook) long after it was marked for MEMORABLE (the line of blue ink is somehow Hogarthian):      "The thinker is a seasoned fisherman," he said. "From the sea of the unthought he draws luminous thoughts--moonfish or globefish, pilotfish or flatfish--which, having swallowed the bait, wriggle for a moment between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea before they stiffen, strangers, on the ground." 

Getting a little tired of sauna-esque Michigan. My girls have a "list" (places and things) and they've checked off most of the items. Most likely (bow to the gods of Standby) we will be returning to Long Beach tomorrow. Meanwhile I've again seen Chekhov in Michigan country life (sounds like the genesis of a poem or two). And that has inspired me again to put Quixote aside (about 150 pages from the finish line) temporarily. I finished off Edmond Jabes (the big book of everything), ping-ponged between Quixote and Panza (almost as if Cervantes is dragging it out for $$$), and then picked up (via Kindle) in succession: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya , and The Cherry Orchard.

Reminded me a little of Borges. I won't copy the entire "prose poem" but here's a link to it at The Poetry Foundation . I enjoyed the whole thing but perhaps especially the epigraphic intro, which I copy out here: "We will gather images and images of images up till the last, which is blank. This one we will agree on."  --Reb Carasso