Six months hard labour
Ce soir I nailed it.
It began with the cheese…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOmA7R9q7Xg&hl=fr_FR&fs=1&rel=0]
And ended “en haut”
25 years later, 6 months hard labour, several injuries and here she is the backflip! I got her back! The first one in this sequence is the first time I managed to nail it. It may look like nowt, but bloody hell it’s hard. (Don’t usually have onsite videographer, but need footage for this fall’s performance art collaboration)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UMmdFx5DLE&hl=fr_FR&fs=1&rel=0]
Continuing on, or branching off from the theme of don’t be a Dennis Stoner (Tee shirts to be printed surely), how about this blog post for some refreshing sentiment. Civility! What about it? Yes!
I am not entirely sure whose blog is no portrait of me is, but this post by Elizabeth Zvonar delighted me, so maybe it is her blog. (It turns out it’s Anu Sahota’s blog, which makes perfect sense, since she’s a fine ear and eye on the world)
There are also very interesting audio recordings from the park. I am v happy to have found it.
Oh God now I am pondering a musical Monsieur Maigret. Spent a lovely bit of time with the glorious wallpaper and divine puffy hair of Ms Deneuve in Umbrellas of Cherbourg ce soir. The Small Male demanded Green Day recesses to recover, but it was clear he loved it. Nothing in the difference Billy Joe’s is heavy on the eyeliner in his own punk way.
We topped it off with a flan-size section of Cleo 5-7. Umbrellas of course fait par Jaques Demy (et Agnes bien sur). Lovely, lovely, lovely Agnes. Who doesn’t get sprightly thinking about Agnes? There should be a nice injection called Agnes.
Been happily ensconced with Catherine et ses Umbrellas of Cherbourg. A return to 80’s kohl coming on. A hungry feeling came o’er me stealing all along the curve of me top eyelid.
I think Cracker would make an ace musical. It’s the restless quality in it. Musicals needn’t only be jolly. A bit of sombre … gritty…
Marie beside me in the garden reported today that she had taken 100 slugs from her plot. She executes a slug patrol and repatriation policy.
My drench ’em and drown ’em approach only result in the saddening sight of a lovely curly earthworm death by imbibing.
They’ve had the second cucumber for dinner last night and there’s no sign of the blighters.
My garden still has this forlorn we need coaxing out of this soil minute plant theme to it.
Nor sure if it was an Ernie, or Herbie moment. Second encounter with a driverless car in my Vancouver lifespan. Today’s managed to escape from a car park, drive itself out and cross the road over two lanes of traffic mount the kerb and then reverse before refusing to dismount the kerb. It sat. People approached. It had managed such an extraordinary circuit I thought maybe there was someone in it we couldn’t see who’d had a heart attack.
The people tried the doors locked. Looked inside no one. And pointed to where it had emerged from in disbelief.
The last car that did this was an old yellow beetle which sailed past my knees as I was stood at the bus stop. Today’s was a fairly dull black volkswagon hatchback car.
The curious thing was it emerged from right beside the alley where you drop off your unfortunates in a brown bag if you’ve had food poisoning to the health board for testing. Not to be getting all George Bataille … but…emerging with force is a bit of theme in that locale.
Was in a garden last night which had sky high bamboo timber growing in it, the shoots (roots?) had raised the paving stones, couldn’t get over the density of the body of that plant, like growing furniture! Then at the top it thins right out and if you only ever looked up it would never disappoint. There’s was also another plant that had this massive leaves beginning with P. There was a few year old spicy arugala that I took a nibble off, hot as chili, due to its age, the friend said. I am renewed in my vigour to defeat the slugs after seeing this place. I only have a box, but a box is a whole box and with a more determined breed of plant, perhaps rubble and companions can be overcome.
The trouble with being a Dennis
Serenaded last night by extracts from Huxley’s Chrome Yellow. A part with Dennis and Annie. At one point Annie confronts Dennis over his blithering… Dennis responds:
“It’s the fault of one’s education. Things seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else’s phrases about them and then there are lots of lovely names and words – monophysit, iamblichus, and pomponazzi: you bring them out triumphantly and feel you’ve clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them …”
I have come across the odd Dennis Stone in Vancouver (and Dublin) and had occasion to sit across the table from him. He tends to luxuriate in the sound of himself (usually — if you remain awake long enough to listen carefully — constructed on borrowed ready made phrases and tag words that plume out of him). One tires quickly of Dennis because with the ready-made phrases come ready-made ideas and he ceased listening to anything other than his own pitter patter, which is not really his own, it’s derived pitter patter that works for the attentive spawning minions necessary for the legacy of Dennis. Dennis, while bathing aloud in himself, often misquotes things he hasn’t bothered to read and wouldn’t bother to read because Dennis has already Decided. Dennis may have an interesting idea or two, but you cannot get near them for Dennis is constantly in the way. Dennis also places himself in the way of your own ideas, for in the shadow of Dennis no one has lived except Dennis who has lived all, everywhere, endless, in the name of the Dennis, Glory be to the Dennis, the bold, holed, souled Dennis. Finally Dennis knows more about ovaries than well an ovary because Dennis has a direct telephone line to the ovary.
There’s something concrete bout Dennis, he’s an early relic, he no longer budges or moves.
In an inter-related matter, perhaps this explains why I rapidly fatigued watching the Charles Olson documentary and was struck by the doorways over all else. The male poet just takes up sooo much space. (thanks Lori for the distinction)
Behind the doorway is the possibility of an opening, an entry point into something, someplace, where Dennis FM, is not the sole (hole!) station.
In accidentally boiling the exquisite cashmere jumper I found on the side of the road I discovered it is also a cardigan and within that flexible arrangement the jumper/cardigan forgave me for the boiling and has not shrunk too much.
In another pairing the precise rhythm of Beckett’s prose in Comment C’est, when read aloud, matches the gentle bobbing that my hockey stick leg muscles will agree only to stretch to. Mr Beckett’s implementation of this rhythm is a great service to short legged, who loathe prolonged anything. He took walks often and the terrain he walked on can be an ankle twisting bumpetty carry on that demands rhythm. I know someone who buried a dog where he used to walk. Between the dog and all other co-incidences he singularly intended to provide for me with this text, which, of course, contains a slug.