You Never Know

[Image: “Untitled #153,” by Chris Marker. For more information, see the note at the foot of this page.]

From whiskey river:

Only Once

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body — halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

(Denise Levertov [source])

Not from whiskey river:

A Country Incident

Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope,
I was startled by a loud human voice,
“Do go on working while I talk. Don’t stop!”
And I was caught upon the difficult choice—
To yield the last half hour of precious light,
Or to stay on my knees, absurd and rude;
I willed her to be gone with all my might,
This kindly neighbor who destroyed a mood;
I could not think of next spring any more,
I had to re-assess the way I live.
Long after I went in and closed the door,
I pondered on the crude imperative.

What it is to be caught up in each day
Like a child fighting imaginary wars,
Converting work into this passionate play,
A rounded whole made up of different chores
Which one might name haphazard meditation.
And yet an unexpected call destroys
Or puts to rout my primitive elation:
Why be so serious about mere joys?
Is this where some outmoded madness lies,
Poet as recluse? No, what comes to me
Is how my father looked out of his eyes,
And how he fought for his own passionate play.

He could tear up unread and throw away
Communications from officialdom,
And, courteous in every other way,
Would not brook anything that kept him from
Those lively dialogues with man’s whole past
That were his intimate and fruitful pleasure.
Impetuous, impatient to the last,
“Be adamant, keep clear, strike for your treasure!”
I hear the youthful ardor in his voice
(And so I must forgive a self in labor).
I feel his unrepentant smiling choice,
(And so I ask forgiveness of my neighbor).

(May Sarton [source])

…and:

When the alarm clock went off at six-thirty that Friday, Sammy awoke to find that Sky City, a chromium cocktail tray stocked with moderne bottles, shakers, and swizzle sticks, was under massive attack. In the skies around the floating hometown of D’Artagnan Jones, the strapping blond hero of Sammy’s Pimpernel of the Planets comic strip, flapped five bat- winged demons, horns carefully whorled like whelks, muscles feathered in with a fine brush. A giant, stubbly spider with the eyes of a woman dangled on a hairy thread from the gleaming underside of Sky City. Other demons with goat legs and baboon faces, brandishing sabers, clambered down ladders and swung in on ropes from the deck of a fantastic caravel with a painstakingly rendered rigging of aerials and vanes. In command of these sinister forces, hunched over the drawing table, wearing only black kneesocks clocked with red lozenges, and swaddled in a baggy pair of off-white Czechoslovakian underpants, sat Josef Kavalier, scratching away with one of Sammy’s best pens.

Sammy slid down to the foot of his bed to peer over his cousin’s shoulder. “What the hell are
you doing to my page?” he said.

(Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay [source])

…and:

Dear miss rose: I almost began “My Dear Child,” because in a sense what I did to you thirty-five years ago makes us the children of each other. I have form time to time remembered that I long ago made a bad joke at your expense and have felt uneasy about it, but it was spelled out to me recently that what I said to you was so wicked, so lousy, gross, insulting, unfeeling, and savage that you could never in a thousand years get over it. I wounded you for life, so I am given to understand, and I am the more greatly to blame because this attack was so gratuitous. We had met in passing only, we scarcely knew each other. Now, the person who charges me with this cruelty is not without prejudice toward me, he is out to get me, obviously. Nevertheless, I have been in a great tizzy since reading his accusations. I wasn’t exactly in great shape when his letter arrived. Like many elderly men, I have to swallow all sorts of pills. I take Inderal and quinidine for hypertension and cardiac disorders, and I am also, for a variety of psychological reasons, deeply distressed and for the moment without ego defenses.

(Saul Bellow, “Him with His Foot in His Mouth” [source])

I’ve never seen RogerVadim’s 1957 thriller Sait-on Jamais (released in English-speaking countries as No Sun in Venice), and there doesn’t seem to be much information on the Web about it. Its only really notable feature, in fact, appears to be that Vadim had its score (by John Lewis) played by the influential Modern Jazz Quintet. Wikipedia departs from objectivity in describing this group:

The enigma of the MJQ’s music-making was that each individual member could improvise with an exciting vibrancy but in toto the group specialised in genteel baroque counterpoint.

In a recent performance for the Jazz at Lincoln Center series, the Aaron Diehl Quartet recreated one number from Sait-on Jamais‘s soundtrack, “One Never Knows”; according to one commenter at the YouTube page, this “appears to be a perfect rendition” of the MJQ’s own recording of the number:

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Note about the image: The photograph at the top of this post is one of a series called Passengers, by filmmaker/photographer Chris Marker, currently on display at the Peter Blum gallery in New York. You can find a wonderful writeup about the Passengers exhibit here, at a blog devoted to Marker and his work. It includes some striking images in which Marker inset photos of Metro passengers with fragments of famous paintings resembling the photos’ subjects.

It’s hard to sum up Marker’s ouevre, or even his biography: he was probably born in Paris in 1921, but many sources (including Marker himself) say his birthplace was Mongolia. Like Thomas Pynchon, he rarely gives interviews and is seldom (never?) photographed.

His most famous single work is a black-and-white short film, La jetée, made in 1962: a strange and beautiful montage of still photographs and a single scene in motion. (Terry Gilliam’s 1995 film Twelve Monkeys expanded its premise into a full-length feature with Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, and Brad Pitt.) You can watch La jetée at numerous places around the Web, including as a three-part YouTube series. (Part 1 is here.)

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