The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

More specifically concerning: winter

7.01.02 – Monday

7 January 2002, around 17.16.

Have spent much of the weekend in bed with a cold and only now have the inclination to write even a little bit. Watched the DVD of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988) this morning. It’s a strange film, all ominous puppetry and dark innocence. It started snowing last night and is now snowing again, big, heavy […]

8.01.02 – Tuesday

8 January 2002, around 17.17.

Went last night to the Pleasant St. Theater and saw The Royal Tenenbaums on M’s recommendation. Anyway, it was enjoyable, much as reading Sartre or Pound in a bus station with the cold smell of dirt, stale coffee, and old cigarettes is fun, I suppose. It was uplifting, a tale of redemption, &c. Walked home […]

1.02.02 – Friday

1 February 2002, around 7.35.

Of interest to me today: Nations with land bordering China, clockwise from lower right: Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, North Korea. Nations with land bordering the US, clockwise from lower right: Mexico, Canada. Pushing great sheets of ice off of cars; they slide so beautifully, cracking into […]

4.02.02 – Monday

4 February 2002, around 7.43.

Granulated brain, vocabulary running free like an hour-glass’s sands. To study, to know a thing, is to internalize it and make it one’s own; in short, to memorize it. In a different age, the classical education required massive rote memorization of poetry, prose – you know, the classics. Everything then becomes allusive, words acquire a […]

05.03.02 – Tuesday

5 March 2002, around 21.15.

From Mo Tzu: ‘If there were a man who, on tasting a little bit of bitterness, called it bitter but, on tasting a lot, called it sweet, we would conclude that he could not distinguish between bitter and sweet’ (p. 51, §17). ‘This is simply to destroy what one does not have enough of for […]

A view (6)

17 February 2003, around 9.30.

morning.

aestive

16 July 2003, around 8.20.

Through all the varied lawns the grass once green again is brown, the summer dulling even as does winter. I am a winter creature myself, and these warm days, clear skies and noisome jocundities cause me to ache for a long nap ’til sweet reason returns with the fall; the merest mention of aestivation, however, […]

nêpioi

29 January 2004, around 0.16.

There are people who do not love their lives, for they ride bicycles on ice-covered pavement without a helmet.

Inquiries

7 April 2004, around 13.25.

On quires and choirs.

fog

13 October 2006, around 11.26.

The trouble with epigraphy. A fog has settled in for the winter and, although the café is warm and bright, the bustle and noise merely accentuate the drizzle and dark outside. It is my favorite time of year. It feels right to be inside, to be making things with my hands and reading books. Not […]

A view (19)

4 November 2007, around 18.07.

olfactory, rather than visual.

through the glass

2 December 2007, around 19.59.

It’s windy and cold and it gets dark out early – and I am too lazy to read.

A view (20)

3 December 2007, around 17.07.

all is roses.

callings

28 October 2008, around 2.43.

And a fog settled over the village.

tskhot

18 December 2008, around 0.06.

The room is warm and smells of expatriates, a peculiar blend of locally unavailable spices and foreign laundry detergent. There is a pile of completed books by the door, dwarfed by the stacks still unread beneath the window in the opposite wall. I am finishing up a few things I’ve been meaning to do for […]

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 […]

Crambe repetita (15)

10 November 2009, around 1.02.

A visual interlude.

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 […]

still snowing

5 February 2010, around 0.53.

The passes are probably closed.

A view (30)

25 December 2010, around 19.50.

Boiling the kettle for tea steams up the windows. Still no snow, though.

1 February 2011

1 February 2011, around 20.53.

a snow day Guests were supposed to arrive in the afternoon, but the constant snow made the passes dangerous and the roads, if not actually closed, perhaps should have been. The students were restive and fussy, as were the teachers. Snow kept falling, and managed to find the gap between my scarf and the back […]

clearance

18 November 2011, around 9.20.

Four men in orange vests clean the street. Two men work with overgrown spatulas – or worn down snow shovels – tapping the surface to break up the compacted snow, then scraping it towards the side of the road. They work together, each working on half of a lane (with, meanwhile, a clear lane of […]

A view (33)

21 November 2011, around 7.07.

frost

9 December 2011, around 6.56.

The changing patterns of frost on the window are always interesting to me.

Crambe repetita (22)

17 June 2012, around 18.03.

Blaise Cendrars, Moravagine.

seasonal

1 November 2012, around 9.36.

It’s too cold to ride.

Crambe repetita (25)

21 December 2012, around 5.03.

Margaret Cavendish, Sociable Letters.

A view (35)

4 January 2013, around 14.01.

Frostbound at home.

Crambe repetita (30)

2 August 2013, around 5.19.

Gyula Krúdy, The Adventures of Sindbad.

mulch

24 December 2013, around 14.10.

No snow, sadly. And of course expected – hoped for – snow at the mountain for Christmas; I’m sure there is, too, another few hundred feet further up. The only thing for it is to skate Skarphedin-like across the hardwood floors in stocking’d feet for another cup of tea.

A view (40)

8 January 2014, around 16.37.

It rained most of the day.

undetectable

12 January 2014, around 15.11.

A down-graded storm. There are of course other things I should be doing, even other things I should be reading, but just at the moment detective stories seem to be what I want. They are amusing and plotty and charmingly shamefaced. There’s not a one that takes itself too seriously, not one that claims it […]

A view (41)

8 February 2014, around 10.53.

still snowing.

a mere habit

24 December 2014, around 11.56.

It is snowing outside and there is nothing to do save sit in front of the fire and read. Indeed, there is nothing one would rather be doing. Did she distrust all figurative language because she was sharply aware of the aptitude of the most languid figurative expressions for persisting as a mere habit of […]

A view (45)

8 December 2015, around 16.44.

evening, Portland.

let no man speak

13 December 2015, around 9.49.

It has been a wretched week. Black cats crossed my path, a man missing a leg turned up on my doorstep claiming to live in my apartment, the car which I have the use of declined to start, and the rain – normally a solace – has almost seemed a blight. For consolation I turned […]

A view (46)

26 December 2016, around 11.06.

snow, Zigzag.

and another thing

7 January 2017, around 18.27.

Eventually, it did snow.

tædium

8 January 2017, around 5.31.

It has been unexpectedly cold, and on that particularly evening we were preparing for a very cold weekend, with frost and potentially snow. The puddles from recent rains had frozen, which is a rare thing – if I had a better memory, I could probably count on one hand the number of times this has […]

paraleipsis

5 February 2019, around 15.56.

As in a moment, some weeks or months passed without record. This is not to say that nothing happened.

A view (48)

15 January 2020, around 15.27.

trees and snow.

A view (52)

30 December 2020, around 8.49.

A view (53)

15 November 2021, around 17.10.

æquanimities

19 November 2021, around 14.30.

τὸ δὲ σκότος ἐκλείποντος τοῦ φωτὸς γίνεται. For darkness follows when light fails. —ps-Aristotle, De Coloribus (791a; trans. W.S. Hett) The sense of withdrawing into oneself, running to ground. A step away from easy definitions, the lineæ abscissæ of demographic plots, towards abscission – even so it shall be cut off, as someone said, and […]

24.xi.2021

24 November 2021, around 9.10.

Snow on the distant ridge (not shown).

quired

1 December 2021, around 8.44.

Looking up on the morning walk.

slick

28 December 2021, around 8.37.

About two feet of snow have fallen since then, and the highway is slickly plowed, a layer of graveled white on which cars tend to go too fast, with little thought of lane boundaries or chance, but secure in the hope of their destination. Then one returns to the fireplace and the books, where comfort […]

A view (54)

24 February 2022, around 9.20.

Time: […] it is in my power To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour To plant and o’erwhelm custom. Let me pass The same I am, ere ancient’st order was Or what is now received: I witness to The times that brought them in; so shall I do To the freshest things now reigning […]

A view (56)

3 January 2023, around 9.29.

caliginous

27 January 2023, around 4.22.

…it is necessary for us to name the things that share our own silence with us, not in order to disturb their privacy or to disturb our own solitude with thoughts of them, but in order that the silence they dwell in and that dwells in them, may be concretized and identified for what it […]

unus dies par omni

28 February 2023, around 4.50.

Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ. Nature is wont to be hidden. —Heraclitus (Bywater fr. 10) There is snow outside and a fire going in the fireplace. The black dog is asleep, her tail beating against the carpet with the rhythm of her dreams. The sky is louring, pressing down the hill into the white of the trees; […]

indivisible lines

14 March 2023, around 7.45.

Οὐδὲ δὴ τὸ ἕκαστον ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἀπείρων τὴν διάνοιαν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀριθμεῖν, εἰ ἄρα τις καὶ νοήσειεν οὕτως ἐφάπτεσθαι τῶν ἀπείρων τὴν διάνοιαν. ὅπερ ἴσως ἀδύνατον· οὐ γὰρ ἐν συνεχέσι καὶ ὑποκειμένους ἡ τῆς διανοίας κίνησις, ὥσπερ ἡ τῶν φερομένον. Again, the process of the mind touching an infinite series one by one is not […]

the same river

4 December 2023, around 16.04.

When we write a letter, we experience a strange space. To the friends and spouses we use the most informal language with, we suddenly become very formal. I wonder if the poem’s speaker also lives in such a space, a space that is of our daily lives and yet is separate or different from it […]

cathectical

21 December 2023, around 6.17.

We are constantly telling stories—about how we are, about every person we see, hear, hear about—and when we don’t know something, we fill in the gaps with parts of stories we’ve told or heard before. Stories are always only representations. […] to tell a story based on a character-driven plot or a moment of epiphany […]

frost point

15 January 2024, around 11.36.

One cannot say that it is unseasonably cold, because it is winter and it should, after all, be cold, but it is unusually cold, to the point that the streets have been, for the past two days, uncommonly empty, except for dogs and their owners and (on Saturday) postal carriers. Going out without gloves leaves […]

pretty slick

21 January 2024, around 14.28.

But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, […]

befogged

10 February 2024, around 17.37.

The mist is my subject. I am absent-minded, deeply interior and have a poor sense of direction. Life is punctuated by moments when I have no idea where I am or what’s in front of me. I can’t see. I can’t understand what’s being said or I can’t make sense. This is my ‘science’ and […]

ego hoc feci mm–MMXXIV · cc 2000–2024 M.F.C.

 ::