Etel Adnan, Shifting the Silence, rejoiced by Maria Popova

Painting by Etel Adnan from Etel Adnan: Light’s New Measure, Guggenheim Museum, 2021. (Photograph: Maria Popova)

… no secret, i am a big fan of Maria Popova… this post on Etel Adnan’s Shifting the Silence is a wonderful read… and now, i have added yet another book to my reading list… i need to carve out more reading time… i am having such fun with it…

Maria Popova, Women in Trees

(Maria Popova?) Oak-hopping in New Orleans, September 2020. (Photograph: Milène Lichtwarck.)

… about two books, Women in Trees, More Women in Trees, by Jochen Rains… a rare photograph of herself climbing through an oak tree… the subject of the books is a collection of photographs of women in trees… they are vintage and come from a time when it might have seemed unladylike to appear in trees… climbing trees is how so many children gain freedom from a world that is increasingly straightjacketing them… a freeing and adventurous thing to do in the confines of societal expectations, their neighborhoods, their schools… MP treats the act as a feminist gesture full of symbolism… from climbing trees to climbing corporate ladders is but the distance of a generation or two…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… i read about ten pages… the book is long, almost 400 pages… i am a little beyond half way done… the entries have become more extended which i attribute to the happiness he has found with Eric… at times it seems endless, but mostly it is satisfying reading the relatively unpolished thoughts and observations… i have a desire to read some of his more polished writing and story telling, but i also have a long line of books waiting to be read… i keep buying them because they seem interesting… i am not a fast reader, especially because i make notes as i go…

… it’s later in the day… more reading in the Journals… i come across this:

Last night in the moon — head on my shoulder, and the screeching owl flickering across the lawn, through the trees and back again; while the cow mooed sadly for its bull. All stillness in the room, only the arch of grey light from the Gothic window living across the polished floor and the end of the bed. Moment that can never be made again, only known in years afterwards.¹

… and this:

I suppose money is so fascinating, so repelling and so tiring because it has the power to draw all forms of ingenuity out of people.²

… fish pudding is mentioned as part of a meal… i look it up and find a recipe for Fiskepudding, Norwegian Fish Mousse… i save it to Paprika…

… he complains he has nothing to write or is not writing well, but since Eric came into his life he seems to write more and more completely… there is a gradual maturing goin on… he is having success, settling down… if only his health would improve, which we know it doesn’t…

First Thoughts

… i am up too early… awake at 2 AM, then again at 3:15 AM… out of bed at 3:45 AM… Fiona acts like she will come with me then resettles on the bed… Chas stays asleep until after i am downstairs making coffee, feeding the cat, taking my BP meds… i hear the substantial thump of Chas jumping down off the bed… i put on a coat and shoes on in anticipation Fiona will come too and i will have to take her out for a walk, but she does not…

… i let Chas out… let Chas back in… give Chas some treats (what he really woke up for)… pour some coffee… we return upstairs and i quietly let him back into the bedroom… Fiona stays put… now, here i am writing in my journal, thinking i should put the garbage out…

… back from putting the garbage out…

… i think about Georges Perec, An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris… i think about Denton Welch… i think about Proust… i think about this journal… i think about rendering life through the quotidian… i think about the differences between Perec, Welch, Proust and this journal… Perec chooses to maintain a clinical detachment from the details he notes and writes down (at first i wrote “details he describes” but then realized describes is an overstatement)… he doesn’t attach them to a human being, himself or anyone else… this is relative of course… one cannot be completely detached from ones direct experience…

… the result is the construction of a skeleton of happenings the reader will begin to flesh out by inserting the organs, muscles and skin of their own experiences… i wrote yesterday that i thought it would make a good “avant garde” play, a solitary performer, center stage, reciting the contents of the book… the audience is left to flesh out the skeleton with details remembered from their own lives…

… while i am very interested in reporting out on the innumerable quotidian nonevents, as Perec writes… i am not interested in detaching them from my subjective being or playing the clinician who’s job is to report experience with as little judgement about that experience as possible… what i am trying to do lies somewhere between the clinical reporting of Perec and the recording of the minute and personally grasped details in Denton’s journals… i am interested in what my preconscious self deems significant enough to do a double take on… i am interested in the feelings provoked by the scenes unfolding in front of my eyes, ears and nose… i am interested in the thoughts that flow through my mind as i see, feel, taste and touch the world around me…

… today i go for a covid test as prelude to a colonoscopy procedure next week… i also stop taking supplements, eating leafy greens, nuts, seeds… sadly, H just baked a loaf of bread encrusted with seeds which maybe i can cut the crust off of to eat…

… Notes On Attention Paid, the monumental writing effort that nobody will ever read end to end… few will even read small pieces of it… that nobody reads it was getting to me a little yesterday… i keep reminding myself that readership isn’t the goal… setting myself down in words and images is the goal… whether anybody reads or looks is distantly secondary…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… i am passing through a stretch where journal entries are long and very detailed… the kind of details that flesh out a scene, make it more than matter of fact circumstance, people and objects described as if DW wants to take firm possession of them in his memory…

… i think about the Perec book, with the minimal detail of unremarkable things, only finding the barest representation of what the thing or person or animal is and leaving it at that… i begin to realize there are many ways to report out on the quotidian…

… DW seems to be most concerned with the objects that accompany his and other’s lives, the way that people impact him, noting his feelings about them…

… i am trying to put my finger on something… the way these journals unfold… they are tellings of daily happenings and impressions and you know that there won’t be a dramatic climax, but rather a series of smaller climaxes along with their attendant valleys… the rhythm of a life… none of it terribly important but all of it necessary…

Morning walk, Trax on 52

… i spend the bulk of my time writing an email to a woman who wants to know where she can show her photography… it’s an extensive response…

The Act of Smelling, Summer Thomas, Believer Magazine

… an interesting read…

An Attempt At Exhausting A Place, Georges Perec

… i decide it is ok to jump Perec to the front of the reading line… it is a journal of what passes through his vision as he sits at various cafes watching the movement (a favorite pastime of the French i was told when i visited many, many years ago)… nothing is described in any depth, just the for the moment notable details… on the back jacket of the book is written:

One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the “intraordinary”: the humdrum, the nonevent, the everyday—“what happens,” as he put it, “when nothing happens.”

… it is interesting… he builds up an impression of place, its rhythms, inhabitants, just noted as passing through and impinging on his senses… little details, a priest back from a trip (there is an airline tag still fixed to his bag)…

… i do a similar thing with images… when i sit down to write i select some of the various non-events to write about in more depth… he writes just the apparent facts, never speculating without reason what this individual or that individual might be about…

… i imagine the book staged as a play… a solo performance… a man sits on a chair, center stage, and recites the book to the audience… the impressions build in the audience… the non-events surface memories of experiences that have more depth in each individual… to the quotidian surface details the audience adds their individual depths… would anyone come see it?…

… the thought that when i make pictures, edit them, and put them together for viewing that i make non-events events…

… we are up with a start… Fiona sat up in bed, indicating she was preparing to dismount… we scrambled to set her down on the floor, whereupon she scrambled out of the bedroom and down the stairs before we could catch her and slow her down… she is not supposed to be running down stairs which she half did… sigh… gate at the top of the stairs tonight…

… in my sleepy stupor i scrambled to put clothes on so i could take her out for a walk… H asking me questions about her scramble downstairs… they are annoyed with me and the questions sound accusatory… what part of Fiona scrambled faster than i could did they not understand?… what’s happened has happened… let’s move on to taking her out which is what i did… took her a while but she had a wicked pee… we came back… H gave her treats and fed her water with a syringe… Fiona is still trying to figure out how to drink with the cone collar on… she will eventually…

… H, Fiona and Chas all downstairs napping… it is 5:17 AM, normal for me to be up but way before H’s normal wake time…

… feeling the need for a little spiritual calm i have recordings of Gregorian Chants going in my headphones… i am not religious, wouldn’t want to be catholic if i were, but it’s all in latin so i don’t understand a word and the chants are very soothing, like gentle waves lapping the shore of a beach…

… today will be about keeping Fiona still, monitoring her wound and taking her for periodic walks… there are too many stairs involved in letting her out in the back yard… and in any case, she would be want to chase squirrels back there… best to keep her on a leash to restrain her enthusiasm which clearly has returned…

… i was so upset yesterday with the bleeding and having to go back to the vet… it overwhelmed and in some ways immobilized me… thankfully H was coping better… 40 years as an ICU nurse gives you calm in the face of concerning situations… i also didn’t like seeing Fiona so knackered… barely able to move… only to changing position once in a while… such a vital and enthusiastic dog… particularly so in the hours leading up to her surgery… it worries me that if H ever got seriously sick i might loose it and be unable to be there for her… of course, my more confident mind says, yah, you might freak our here and there, but you will find a way to rise to the occasion…

…An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris, by Georges Perec, arrived yesterday… it turns out to be a small, slim, little book… it will be a quick read and i am anxious to get to it, but i have to finish The Journals of Denton Welch first and i have a little less than half the book to go…

… Georges Perec is known for the idea that one ought to pay close attention to the small, unremarkable-to-most-people details… i have to learn more about his reasons for this, but i am guessing they are similar to my own, which is that the bulk of creaturely awareness is about these small, seemingly insignificant, details… we live our lives in a sea of the quotidian… western society, Americans especially, is/are all about the climactic extreme experiences that are felt in intense bursts producing adrenalin rushes that forever sear the experience into our minds… the bigger and more impossible the challenge, the more an individual is valued for achieving it… i value the quotidian over the rush of the exceptional and extraordinary… though some of my clearest memories are of fleeting exceptional moments that surface randomly from the sea of the quotidian…

From yesterday…

… Fiona comes home from the vet, then goes back… getting in and out of the car stressed the wound and she started bleeding… needed a couple of staples to resolve… she is now sleeping it off near the fireplace…

… we were told to pick her up at 2, and we did, but if i had it to do over i would have waited a couple of hours… she was a little too unsteady and struggled to get in and out of the car which is what opened her wound in my opinion… second time she was much steadier and climbed in and out of the car more smoothly…

… early evening, Fiona still sleeping it off… i am not coping well… very tense, angry… worried… drinking…

… i would like to go see On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale…

Art Made by Immoral People, What To Do?

… i enjoyed reading What Do We Do with the Work of Immoral Artists… it is thought provoking and the book Drawing the line: What to Do with the Work of Immoral Artists from Museums to the Movies

… my own thoughts seem to align with where both authors come out… that it depends… troubled psyches often produce remarkable insight through art and we would be poorer as a society to ban it from public view altogether… for starters, not all of those troubled psyches are morally questionable, but what to do with the ones that are?… it is interesting that all the examples offered in the article are white men who abused women and children, but then, the vast majority of the art in museums is made by white men… this is mostly the psyche of the white patriarchy on display…

… an easy criteria for me is whether i am turned off enough by the actions of an artist to simply not be interested in their production… this is true for me with Woody Allen… it gets harder when i really like the work of an amoral actor… Gaugin’s Tahitian women paintings might be an example of this… for the most part i believe museums and galleries have an obligation to put the artwork in context, whether or not patrons are prepared to embrace or even pay attention to that context… if the artists character is, or was, morally questionable… this should be known and become part of understanding the work and it’s relevance…

… i would probably draw the line at supporting a living, morally questionable and unrepentant artist… how one conducts their daily lives should have impact on one’s viability in society…

… the example of William Noguera, an artist on death row for killing a woman, offered in the article is interesting… i followed the links about the artist and the book he has written and found myself a little put off by the slick PR which paints him as a soul that has embraced and is trying to atone for what he has done… there is a kind of gliding over of the murder, acknowledged, but in a, “that was me then, this is me now” sort of way… it is possibly a touching story, but one that has been valorized and romanticized it seems to me…

… still, we should be all for rehabilitation and coming to terms with one’s sins…

… i don’t believe in the death penalty as a form of punishment an enlightened society should pursue… in many ways, the Noguera story is the kind of story one would point to as a better way… sans death penalty hanging over his head… it is easy for me to think i would readily attend an exhibition of his work, but for the slick PR… i could do without that…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… before i am done with Denton Welch completely i will have to read one of his books… they were well received in his lifetime and i wonder if that is where the “profound’ content winds up… or, perhaps i have to recalibrate my concept of profound, which is an epiphanic thought or idea that represents a deep insight into the meaning of being alive in this cosmos… such an idea would make death seem reasonable… if we just got to grasp such an insight before we melt back into the cosmic fabric, all would be ok… or so i like to imagine…

… another odd menu… tomato soup, egg and celery pie, melba toast and minced pie¹

… interestingly, the Journals come more alive with the arrival of Eric as a permanent fixture in his life…

… it occurs to me to look up egg and celery pie and i find a quiche recipe… then, because i have some cardoon in the refrigerator, i look up cardoon quiche, don’t find anything so then look up cardoon and eggs, do find something, and then resolve to make a cardoon quiche because cardoon, plus egg, plus gruyere cheese might be interesting… i think we will skip eggs this morning and make that tonight for dinner… while Fiona is recovering…

… DW talking about an 18th century doll house he is restoring… quite a lot of detail… remembered from years ago, though the object is in front of him to provoke the memories…

First thoughts:

… Fiona spay day… a little nervous… will be glad to have it over with… then on to the recovery and getting myself mentally and physically ready for a colonoscopy… a year overdue… a major step forward in the doctoring that needs doing…

… speaking of things intestinal… clearly had a bug yesterday of the sort that makes me pretty unhappy, not because of unfortunate bowl movements, but because of an all over achey feeling that really wears me down… a malevolent organism on the march… i feel better this AM… i also re-started my probiotic supplement this AM… the subscription came undone due to some rearrangement of my prime account at Amazon…

… colonoscopy, then thanksgiving next week…

… an edge of frustration that few people read what i write… i tell myself that isn’t the point… writing every day and publishing everyday is the point… a product of the now… every day… when i review it… i like what i have done… so, keep doing it…

… part of me thinks that my writing should be dense with profound understanding… that is not the point unless profound understanding is composed of the minutia of my life… that’s what this blog is about… the day in and day out record of some of what i pay attention to… an intentional recording…

… as i read Denton Welch’s journals, i find profound understanding largely absent… it is a detailed and well written account of what was important to him and much of it is pretty self centered… there is the occasional passage that dives a little more deeply into the broad human condition…

… is my writing as self centered?… it is to some degree but, i like to think, also big picture focused to some degree…

… i read a forecast in The Economist that indicated the most likely result of the midterms will be a Republican controlled house, Democrat controlled Senate… short of disaster… all the big stuff needs to get done in the next year…

… HCR meter mostly about the infrastructure package (a BFD) and how far right extremists are seeking to punish any republican that voted for it… there were 13 in the house who did… it is being portrayed as the another step in a socialist takeover of the country… one hopes the benefits will become apparent by the midterms and perhaps the house will stay under Democratic leadership… a fellow can dream…

Trax, Route 52

… there are people coming and going but nobody staying… as i left for my walk i realized i wasn’t feeling that well… intestinal malaise… this seems to happen more frequently lately…

… the people coming and going are regulars… they seem to know the barista… it seems only male baristas are working the morning shift… i am wondering if it has anything to do with being a little isolated and women not feeling secure by themselves…

… a woman ordering coffee… she wears a t-shirt with “BOMB FACTORY” printed on the back… some kind of business… i don’t think it has anything to do with making bombs in a literal sense…

… barista dude and customer dude talking… barista dude reciting a long list of analog weaponry… hatchet, spear, etc… i am wondering if he has a collection of physical objects or if this is related to computer gaming… hard to know… they continue to geek out as barista dude prepares customer dudes coffee… it’s a bro moment…

… while looking through recent app updates i note that halide now includes a macro mode?… i play with it a little… interesting… the iPhone 13 actually has a macro mode built in… my plan is to wait for the 14 to come out before upgrading…

… a young woman with long curly hair walks in… it’s blond and reminds me of my niece S… the woman is shorter…

2008

… what happened in 2008?…

Eva Donkers, Photography

Eva Donkers, from What happens when nothing happens.

… [an article on Eva Donkers](https://www.booooooom.com/2021/11/15/what-happens-when-nothing-happens-by-photographer-eva-donckers/ ““What happens when nothing happens” by Photographer Eva Donckers”) in Booooooom… i admire this photographer’s intention possibly more than her work, which i think might be overly romanticized… it’s all about the color of places that have existed forever, suspended in the late afternoon sun, populated by the occasional human doing nothing consequential…

… she claims inspiration from Georges Perec’s novel An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, and this quote from it:

What happens when nothing happens, other than the weather, people, cars and clouds.(?)

… this, i think, is a perfect statement for my Notes blog… perhaps i should adopt it… i look up Georges Perec and realize i have encountered him before… i install a tag filter dedicated to him among my tag filters on people, which is becoming extensive…

… i order a copy of An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris from Amazon… i once said about my daily photo walks that i would keep doing them until i got bored… that was seven or eight years ago… boredom has never set in… meanwhile, my to-read list grows faster than my rate of reading…

The Journals of Denton Welch

… i might be getting bored with them… but i would like to get to the end, so i will persist…

… life with Eric settles, they live together now… despite the occasional bomb blast and sick day, all is bliss…

The moon shone through the Gothic window on my face. It had nothing to tell but stillness, dead wonder, magic that changes everything from heat and fear to the silver of the snails forgotten trail.

When Erik was away and I lay in bed so still with books, my thoughts, the pretty things I have collected, I thought that all I really wanted was to be alone, to think and to dream in a daze about work I shall do. But now that he is asleep on the bed, I find I can still think and dream, and I even feel better physically because someone is here if I should not feel well.

There’s always this question with me, to be alone or not. Really, to be alone is my nature. If it were not so, I would not have been alone as much as I have.

Is reverie really what people live for, and do they just do things to feed their reverie?¹

… as i read the above, i see reflections of myself… as H would tell anyone, i am a loner… it’s partly true, i like my alone time and i do a great deal to feed my reveries… i have managed to work out a way to have the alone time… it’s why i get up at 4 AM… H will sleep to at least 7 (when i am usually heading out the door for my walk)… for three often blissful hours i read and write… feed my reveries then write them down and share them with the world, which really isn’t interested but i only care a little about that… i envy DW’s success in getting published, but realize that i would have to pull myself together and write something more contained than this sprawling journal which nobody has time, even if interested, to read more than a little of… the journal is the thing to me… this daily reporting of the randomly important details of my life and reveries… this window into the ordinariness of life, my life… yes DW, i at least live in large part for my reveries…

… this seems a good place to stop… the place where the reveries have been fed and then regurgitate onto the computer screen and fired off into the www…

First Thoughts…

… in bed by 9:30 PM last night… up by 3:30 AM… i am in a six hour per night sleep pattern stretch… this happens sometimes… my rhythms… then a night or two with seven our eight hours…

… no alcohol last night… no dinner either… we ate so much at Cafe Mutton due to the extra’s we were given… i hope the fish i had planned will last to tonight…

… Fiona has spay surgery tomorrow… i am a bit anxious about it… totally routine and better for her health in the long run, but she is the sweetest dog ever so it is hard to imagine putting her through any kind of misery, however temporary and however good for her…

… i have chicken coop cleaning duties today… i will do the small coup… the large one already done by L yesterday…

… HCR meter pointing downward… it begins with a speech given by Flynn-the-disgraced in which he argues for one church under god… it moves on to the goings on in Europe… Democracy is under attack around the world… right wing conservatives in congress are hampering the Biden/Harris administrations to ability to counter by holding up diplomatic appointments… this weakens the administration’s ability to conduct effective diplomacy in places where it is badly needed… together with an article in The Bulwark about anti-democratic goings on in Georgia paint an increasingly bleak picture of world stability going forward…

… i make a note to myself to start reading The Economist magazine more regularly… i will get a better picture of world events…

… we did have a nice day yesterday, but then we got home and H got into a foul mood for a while… frustration over a missing cookbook which will reappear i am sure… really frustration with their poor eyesight which is likely getting worse with age… their eyes have been compromised since their premature birth…

… Chas has woken up and wants attention…

… dogs let out, treats distributed…

… opened up The Economist app and read some of the articles… echoing the world situation summed up by HCR and Bulwark…

Cafe Mutton…

… after the family zoom meeting we drive up to Hudson for a late lunch at our niece’s restaurant… lunch turns into a feast when they bring out a few extras because we are family… no need for dinner tonight… we love that they have a restaurant which requires their presence… we always now where to find them Wednesday to Sunday… we don’t get a lot of time with them but i am learning that small moments of contact can be very rewarding… hello, are you there?… yes, we are here!…

… a few of the dishes we enjoyed…

… tomato soup…

…country pate (made on premises) sandwich…

Baguette with butter and salami (made on premises), sautéed ham steak with garlic/parsley butter…

… i need to get better at making photos of the food…

Walking…

… i pass an old woman in a wheelchair in the middle of the grass… i check that she is ok… she assures me she is… she is watching the dogs in the dog run… she tells me they treat people like animals in the assisted living place up the road… she is writing a book about it she says… she is moving next week she says…

… at Trax, the barista is an extremely attractive and fit young male… they must easily break the hearts of young men/women wherever they go… it’s not often i comment on the beauty of males, my primal self is much more into young females, but this one is exceptional… short, slender, fit, latin face, curly black hair, captivating smile and eyes…

… zoftig young woman jogs by… i say good morning… she ignores me…

… on the walk of sorrows i pass a tall, slender, elderly man, white mask, white hair… i say good morning… he quietly says good morning back…

… still on the walk of sorrows, i pass another younger man, shuffling along, mask pulled down below his chin… he moves out into the road to pass well in advance of reaching me… i think to myself, i would have done that… it’s safer, i would be facing the oncoming traffic… i say good morning to him… he looks at me suspiciously and makes no reply…