The Spirit of the Whortleberry; or, aspects of Iroquois culture I propose we revive

Ages ago now, sometime in late August, I happened upon a copy of Minnie Myrtle's The Iroquois; or, The Bright Side of Indian Character (1855) at a garage sale. The man presiding over the heaps of stuff said that he had found it when "clearing out an old friend's log cabin," and I was intrigued enough by the friend, and impressed enough by the patterns of molding and water damage, that I forked out a dollar and brought it home. The book itself is that curious mix of celebratory anecdote and naive Eurocentrism that is common to the 19th century, though it does end damningly enough by presaging the downfall of those that cause the extinction of 'the Indian'. Humbly, and in the spirit of Victorian delight with the 'other occidentals', I propose we seriously consider adopting the following customs:

1. Returning to some sort of frame of mind in which the haecceity of spearmint, as much as a mountain, is of value.

"Not only they themselves, but every thing in nature, that was beautiful to the eye or good for food, had a protecting spirit. There was the spirit of fire, of medicine and of water; the spirit of every herb and fruit-bearing tree; the spirit of the oak, the hemlock and the maple; the spirit of the blackberry, the blueberry and the whortleberry; the spirit of spearmint, of peppermint, and tobacco; there was a spirit at every fountain and by every running stream, and with all they held communion- personifying every mountain river and lake" (pp. 46-7).

2. Strawberry worship and strawberry festivals.

"The strawberry was one of their delicacies, and one which they believed they were to enjoy in another world. Some of them indeed expected the felicity of Heaven to consist in one continual strawberry feast, and this is something from which the most cultivated palate will not revolt, and is proof that there was a great degree of refinement in their taste!" (p. 50).

3. Communal dream interpretation in which the best interpretation is handsomely rewarded.

"Another diversion was the guessing of dreams. Some person went about from house to house telling a wonderful dream he had had, and requesting any one who pleased to relate it. Whether those attempted, guessed rightly or not, the dreamer after a while acknowledged that the true interpretations had been given, and then he was obliged to pay a forfeit, and whatever was required, he cheerfully performed, however great the sacrifice" (pp. 59-60).

Things we like III

1) This beautiful and inspiring TED talk by Zainab Salbi on Women, wartime and the dream of peace. Salbi grew up in war-torn Iraq and is the founder of Women for Women International, which works to help women in post-war zones rebuild their lives and communities. She’s a passionate and eloquent speaker, and she quotes Rumi, so of course I love her.

2) Fereshteh Najafi, who is like an Iranian Paul Klee. I particularly like her series Tara, The Princess, and Searching for Free Human. The image below (her most Klee-esque) is from Tara.

3) Wikipedia! For two reasons: 1) for having audio samples of Finnish, an absolutely wonderful language that unfortunately I don’t speak at all; 2) for having long been my source for accidental poetry and unexpected syntax, most recently in the message from writer Kartika: “I started writing Wikipedia to take away the sad feeling I had whenever I searched for a general and important article that didn’t exist yet in my language.”

4) The fact that Jim Carrey and I are entirely agreed on what constitutes a dream come true.

The Last Ride of the Wee Yeasty Rider

We've been writing intentionally bad poetry for many years now, but have only recently begun to impose restrictions on content and form. Today, we challenged ourselves to write a 12-line poem containing:

1. racehorses

2. recent evolutionary developments

3. a German literary reference

Below is the result. If the requirements strike your fancy, please, send us your own interpretation!

Ezmerelda's hooves beat the track like a baker kneading challah

Magnificent flanks, but zero propulsion

it mattered little to her rider, who had ceased

himself to grow (before Ezmerelda was born) at the age of 3.

But Jörg was not small, only highly evolved

the hats were being made smaller and smaller, you see.

And his blond hair grew brighter, like challah

The aristocrats in the stands yawned away their educations

tragic, when neurons give way to wee yeasty riders

rising to such proportions only to be beaten down again

This was what was running last through her synapses, Ezmerelda,

as her hooves under Jörg's direction left the track, the cliff -- to death.

Things we like II

1. Frank Bölter’s fully functional origami boat, which would be perfectly at home in The Science of Sleep, and which I think should be available for conversations that neither wholly take place in dreams nor in waking life.

2. Elephant shrews: the manner in which they wiggle their noses to search for grub makes them look as if they are permanently a fixture of a stop-motion film.

3. Marcel Mauss lamenting the loss of the squatting position in the adults of the Western world. Tomorrow's activities involve attempting to reclaim this both humble and incredibly useful posture.

4. Whale calls that sound like bird's songs when sped up, and bird's songs that sound like whale calls when slowed down.

5. Diaphaneity as mineralogical category, and minerals that exhibit all types of it at once.

Things we like

The predilection Lauren and I have for lists is probably obvious by now. Nearly all our lists are infinite, and foremost among them are the lists of things we like. And since I have tentatively decided to post more here, having purged my life of Facebook, but not of the impulse to share random information, voilà une sélection de la liste des choses aimées:

• the Wooster Collective, especially when they post things that highlight the similarities between people and sheep
• Louis Malle, Charlie Chapman, Ingmar Bergman, and the Criterion Collection’s page of quotes
• Jean-Luc Godard's (and Fritz Lang’s) Le Mépris (Contempt, 1963), which is even better than I’d remembered
• Zadie Smith, at least when she writes things that highlight the differences between people and software
• David Sedaris and Dutch Christmas traditions
• Three-line novels. More of these to come.

What the Beatles have in common with sandwiches

There are only two things that a person can say that will immediately convince me that he or she is lying:

1) “I don’t like the Beatles.”

2) “I don’t like sandwiches.”

It would be understandable for some people not to like sandwiches if there were only one kind of sandwich. Or only one kind of Beatles song. But the infinite potential of sandwiches and the actualized potential of the Beatles are both so varied and multifarious that it is, I am convinced, simply impossible to categorically dislike one or the other.

And if a person claims to do so, then the poor thing should be properly introduced to baguettes, focaccia, and John Lennon as quickly as possible — or they should stop lying.

My lovely friend Ashley and I had discussed this over lunch, and then we went to the bookstore she promptly overheard the man who worked there shrug nonchalantly, “I just don’t really like the Beatles.”

Obviously, we fled to the stacks, and got distracted by poetry and Chekhov and the universal law that every bookstore must have at least one used copy of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française.

I ended up with A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf (which I’d already read), and Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt (which I hadn’t). When I went to pay for them, the clerk (the one we were eavesdropping on earlier) commented, “These are both really good books.”

I was distracted by some plastic alien finger puppets, so I said, “Indeed.”

He held up Eichmann. “Make sure you have something funny on hand when you read this one, though. It’s amazing, but, you know ... super depressing.”

In the movie version of my life, I will say, “I appreciate that, but I can’t take advice from a man who pretends not to like the Beatles. How do you feel about sandwiches?”

But in actual life, of course, I said, “Yeah, will do. Thanks.”

Santa Fe, or where we saw the future catastrophe of the social in the geology

Nearly a month ago now, Madeleine and I journeyed to Santa Fe searching for epiphanies, free donkeys, unparalleled breakfast burritos, and work. We were only successful on one front (I'll let you puzzle out which), which presented somewhat of an obstacle to writing. How, after all, do you convey the feeling of a failed quest without failing in the writing of it?

We prayed to Bertha, our über-androgynous patron saint (frozen, photographically, in 1893, and placed on our dashboard)- but to no avail. Traditional prose would not help us, not when we had canyons like Mars, wild horses, mirages with which to contend! At last, however, we found that a list, a modest enumeration of the portions of the trip which resonated uncomfortably with our (collective) state of mind, kept most of the angst at bay. The original text is as follows:

a list, a list that never stops, not even when it appears to:

1. trees that emit a cheesy garbage smell
2. light-up maps of africa
3. v. accommodating drivers.
4. black sheep that become white with age (proof that one cannot always remain a black sheep, despite one's best attempts to)
5. a convergence of chalk farms
6. women who claim to be six months pregnant, but who probably aren't
7. day old pastries (sweet for 99¢, savory for $1…maybe)
8. oil men (slick) who search and rescue (stick)
9. soup from china (maybe?)
10. vicarious eating
11. cartography
12. Yellow mustache's woman
13. apartments that are far too big for the six bugs that inhabit them
13. a foot in need of surgery (in albuquerque)
14. dissatisfaction
15. five distinct editions of Augustine's Confessions
16. murdered plums
17. upstairs jails
18. "art in public places"