Three kinds of love

The first is love mixed with architecture: yellow hot-water-bottle windows, a tear in every one, and the red tower from Vienna Westbahnhof.

(Hundertwasser, Yellow Houses — it hurts to wait with love,

if love is somewhere else — jealousy, 1966)

The second is tiny, that shies at the hooting of cars, that adores the bells of horse-trams.

должно быть, маленький,

смирный любеночек.

Она шарахается автомобильных гудков.

Любит звоночки коночек

(Mayakovsky, A Cloud in Trousers, 1915)

The third is contained in twelve billion words, beginning in ----, ----.

The first kind of love speaks German; the second, Russian; the third, English.

The Vegetable Lamb: Number 1

The Vegetable Lamb, a little project of mine which Madeleine has been providing enormous amounts of assistance with (and contributing to!), is finally here!

The Vegetable Lamb Issue 1:

Number 1

By Lauren Greyson in Art

The inaugural issue of the Vegetable Lamb has arrived! Featuring everything from accounts of trans-species friendships to meditations on difference and repetition, this issue is meant to introduce the indiscernible in all its depth and breadth.

‘The most lamentable comedy and cruel death’

First, the cruel death, i.e. my new favorite depressing poem:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

— Stevie Smith (1957)

And the most lamentable comedy: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by my new hero, Laurence Sterne. My cheek muscles are sore from having grinned and/or laughed out loud through 150 pages (which isn’t v. far in, but Tristram himself hasn’t even been born yet, or rather, hasn’t gotten around to telling the story of his birth, though he has covered his conception, the death of poor Yorick, the wounding of Uncle Toby, hobby-horses, and whether it is possible to baptize a child before it has been born).

For in this long digression which I was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by my reader [...]

The connection: these works are ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them,’ which is what Marianne Moore says poetry should be.

Things we like V: undeniable trends [aka the year in review]

1. An analysis of my reading habits in 2010:

Books that I read, cover to cover: approximately 30.

Books that I spent a good deal of time reading, but either started and didn’t finish, or read only lengthy excerpts of: approximately 25.

2. Norwegian men of the year (to qualify one must be named Edvard): Munch and Grieg.

3. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (one of my new favorite people) and his film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and, praise the Queen!, was showing in London, where I finally saw it and became entirely enamored. There is a v. nice summary of Uncle Boonmee here, though I also highly recommend putting the original Thai title into Google translate:

4. The difference between the real and the surreal, more specifically: my increasing inability to distinguish them. There is reality TV, for one thing, which shouldn’t be real but is, and then obviously wax people who are not made of wax, and women laughing alone with salad.

5. Hedonism, which often takes the form of a search for the perfect chocolate muffin (found, at long last, on Charing Cross Road). As we were snacking on the street, my friend whom I was with declared, “This is the best muffin in the entire world. I like that I can be v. hedonistic around you.”

6. Commemorating instances of cosmic unfairness and/or explaining medieval literature by writing limericks.

7. Ai Weiwei, his ethics, and his beautiful beautiful sunflower seeds.

8. Quantum entanglement, which sounds, like most things, better in German: Quantenverschränkung.

Things we like IV: the post-holiday decadence edition

1. Sun sneezing (photic sneezing reflex if we're being technical) and the art it inspires. If Apollo were to sneeze, these sculptures would be the result.

2. Hand-colored daguerreotypes, particularly when they feature royals who knew the meaning of facial hair. English royalty could do with a new infusion of Teutonic blood.

3. Thai peanut butter cup bonbons from this lovely establishment. Who would have thought the sublime goodness of chocolate and Thai curry would be even more sublime together?

4. Micromosaic jewelery, popular from the 17th to 19th centuries, and enjoying a resurgence now. I'm collecting barely visible tesserae in preparation for my own 2 centimeter tall okapi.

5. Practical guides to lacemaking, particularly if they contain over 300 engravings. Why oh why can't lacework be introduced into the standard mathematics curriculum?

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.