Archive for 2009
Citation (37)
8 January 2009, around 2.56.
the tapestry of memory…
to have done
24 January 2009, around 1.30.
Infixes and conjugations.
Curio (3)
28 January 2009, around 1.10.
The market in Nicosia, ca. 1896?
winter’s dragon-voiced storms
7 March 2009, around 4.03.
We make the rounds, going from house to office to house to office, from tea to coffee to tea again with fruit and runny syrup. Mostly we talk about the weather. It is a never-ending source of conversation. The weather and health are the sacred fonts of social feeling. One is always cold, or has […]
bari janaparh
23 March 2009, around 19.47.
The journey from the capital to the southern cities has an allegorical feel, especially when leaving through the equinoctial twilight. We speed along the straightaways through the floodplains beneath the summits of unattainability, then slow to twist and turn through the vale of woe, night and snow falling hard through the trees. We rise through […]
a backwards glance
13 April 2009, around 0.27.
The sight of a Greek head depresses many people, strikes an unliberated chord, reminds them of books in their grandmother’s parlor and of all they were supposed to learn and never did. —Joan Didion (‘The Getty’ in The White Album, p. 75)
A view (25)
14 April 2009, around 0.35.
properly instructive (1)
17 April 2009, around 0.39.
How to make a cup of tea.
teacher’s house
30 April 2009, around 0.17.
flight
1 May 2009, around 0.17.
When the sun is shining in the morning it is warm enough to drink coffee on the balcony with a book, perhaps something on regional politics, and listen to the swifts cross the sky. I had thought at first they were starlings, because the starlings paused on the wire linking the apartment building to the […]
harevanner
5 June 2009, around 5.15.
She’s down on the street, and she says it’s a good bargain. The woman on the second floor shakes her head and makes a sleepy downward swat of the hand to signify disagreement. The woman on the fourth floor shouts down and asks how many there are. The woman on the street flings her right […]
A view (26)
9 June 2009, around 0.19.
From the kitchen balcony.
Citation (38)
12 July 2009, around 23.13.
reading notes…
lezvi masin
25 September 2009, around 0.28.
From Imagined Communities: It is always a mistake to treat languages in the way that certain nationalist ideologues treat them – as emblems of nation-ness, like flags, costumes, folk-dances, and the rest. Much the most important thing about languages is their capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities. (133) But also: If […]
looking out
6 November 2009, around 19.48.
PF took this picture looking out over Goris. The test included an essay question: ‘write about your fall holidays.’. Although I correctly translated ‘vacation’ into ‘holiday’, I forgot to change ‘fall’ into ‘autumn’. One of the students asked about it. Made me think about what a ‘fall holiday’ would be: bungee-jumping – or Halloween.
Crambe repetita (15)
10 November 2009, around 1.02.
A visual interlude.
A view (27)
24 November 2009, around 9.40.
atmospheric
3 December 2009, around 4.12.
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone, plunges headlong into that black pond where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind which hunger to haul the white reflection down. The austere sun descends above the fen, an orange cyclops-eye, scorning […]
A view (28)
13 December 2009, around 3.39.
More winter is on the way.
properly instructive (2)
22 December 2009, around 1.07.
How to behave in a library.
Citation (39)
27 December 2009, around 4.59.
the dangers of logic…
shnorhq
30 December 2009, around 7.06.
We’ve been waiting for the school to be remodeled for a long time. We were supposed, at first, to move in on the first of September 2008; this was quickly adjusted to 1 Sept. 2009. Knowledge day1 came and went and the building was still not ready. The director clenched and fretted in her tiny […]