[Image: one of various digital collages in the “Fictions” series by Flemish photographer/artist Filip Dujardin. (Click to enlarge.) These buildings and landscapes do not actually exist (although he starts with images of buildings in and around Ghent, Belgium).]
From whiskey river:
While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors.
“He doesn’t know,” my friend whispered excitedly. “He’s passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He’s in another play; he doesn’t see us. He doesn’t know. Maybe it’s happening right now to us.”
(Loren Eiseley [source])
…and:
Here and There
Here and there nightfall
without fanfare
presses down, utterly
expected, not an omen in sight.
Here and there a husband
at the usual time
goes to bed with his wife
and doesn’t dream of other women.
Occasionally a terrible sigh
is heard, the kind that is
theatrical, to be ignored.
Or a car backfires
and reminds us of a car
backfiring, not of a gunshot.
Here and there a man says
what he means and people hear him
and are not confused.
Here and there a missing teenage girl
comes home unscarred.
Sometimes dawn just brings another
day, full of minor
pleasures and small complaints.
And when the newspaper arrives
with the world,
people make kindling of it
and sit together while it burns.
(Stephen Dunn [source])
Not from whiskey river:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victm of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest’s clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
Or at least we do for a while.
(Joan Didion, The White Album [source])
…and:
Places I Have Heard the Ocean
In a cat’s throat, in a shell I hold
to my ear — though I’m told
this is the sound of my own
blood. I have heard the ocean
in the city: cars against
the beach of our street. Or in
the subway, waiting for a train
that carries me like a current.
In my bed: place of high and low
tide or in my daughter’s skates,
rolling over the sidewalk.
Ocean in the trees when they
fill their heads with wind.
Ocean in the rise and fall:
lungs of everyone I love.
(Faith Shearin [source])
…and:
INT. JUDY’S BEDROOM – (EARLY EVENING)
The window shades are drawn, the lights in the room have been lit. Scottie [James Stewart] is sitting, relaxed, thumbing through a magazine idly. The jacket of his suit is hung over the back of a chair. The bathroom door is open. There is a full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and we catch occasional glimpses of Judy [Kim Novak] as she moves about inside…
She comes out of the bathroom happy and contented. She wears the black cocktail dress, her blonde hair is done up in the Madeleine way. She stops to pose and show off the dress and smiles across at him lovingly.
JUDY
Hello, my love. Like me?He regards her admiringly with a small, contented grin.
SCOTTIE
Mmmm.JUDY
Is that the best you can do?She turns to the mirror over the dresser.
SCOTTIE
Come here.JUDY
Oh, no. You’ll muss me.SCOTTIE
That’s what I had in mind.JUDY
Too late. I’ve got my face on.She has opened the candy box, rummages around in the jewelry, comes up with some earrings, holds one up to her ear to see what it looks like, decides against it, finds some other earrings, small and neat, and puts them on. During this:
JUDY
I’m suddenly hungry. Would you rather go somewhere else?SCOTTIE
No, Ernie’s is fine.JUDY
I’m going to have one of those big beautiful steaks. And… let’s see… to start…During this she has taken a necklace out of the box, and is trying to fasten it around her neck. But the clasp won’t work.
JUDY
Oh! Help me with this, will you?She backs up a step, still holding the necklace in place, and Scottie rises from his chair and comes up in back of her. He takes the ends of the necklace from her.
SCOTTIE
I’ve got it. He bends down and bites the back of her neck.JUDY
Oh! You’re supposed to fasten it!SCOTTIE
All in good time.He bites her again.
JUDY
Scottie!SCOTTIE
How does it work?JUDY
Can’t you see?SCOTTIE
Oh, yeah. There.As he is fastening it he glances into the mirror and sees the necklace clearly for the first time. His eyes are immediately startled with the shock of recognition, and he stares, wondering why. The CAMERA ZOOMS IN to a closeup of the necklace in the mirror; then, with a click, the closeup changes to a closeup of the necklace painted on canvas. The CAMERA DRAWS BACK to show the necklace around the neck of Carlotta in the portrait, the same necklace. Now the CAMERA DRAWS BACK to show the Art Gallery, with the Portrait of Carlotta on the far wall.
(Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, script for Hitchcock’s Vertigo [source])
The most difficult fictions to look inside — like Scottie’s, above — are the ones we’ve been telling ourselves: it’s a lot easier to blame others for putting something over on us. Still, under the right circumstances, even when we’re feeling foolish… Carmen McCrae sings it. I love that this song is not bitter, morose, or angry; it’s playful — it winks. You almost have to wonder if there wasn’t — and still is — a little bit of untruth-telling going on in both directions.
[Below, click Play button to begin You Took Advantage of Me. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:40 long.]
[Lyrics]
Jayne says
“Too late. I’ve got my face on.” Ha! Kind of sums it all up.
I knew those were Didion’s words before I finished reading the whole excerpt, and yet, I don’t know The White Album. Her words, her sentences, her cadence are so distinct. More to read… (sigh).
Dujardin’s digital collages, the architectural fantasy, is wonderful. Imagine coming upon something like that–um, whatever it is (engineering open roads through the mountain without losing the top?) while out for a Sunday drive? Makes me wish it were real.
I’ll be following up with Eiseley… want more of that!
John says
I love the irony of that “I’ve got my face on” aside — because, like, from a certain POV It’s not HER face.
Was hoping someone would say something about Dujardin’s work, because I couldn’t make up my mind which of two images to feature. The one up there at the top, I chose because it’s… uh… more restful or something. But I think this is my favorite one (click to enbiggen):
Required a double-take or two to actually see how it really couldn’t work as a real building… but it sure looks like one. Other pieces by him look like the Montreal ’67 “Habitat” project — like modular housing and/or offices, pods almost, apparently fastened together along only one common wall (or floor-to-ceiling) in these crazily cantilevered structures. If I was a little kid, I’d LOVE to explore around inside buildings like that.
Nance says
Magpie stole the Stephen Dunn and took it back to her nest. I might have to cross-stitch it to the front of a TV cozy (like a tea cozy, but big and boxier); I think it might cure me.
Didion: The only book I don’t have now. I’ll have to resort to soliciting donations to my Kindle Fire account. Mr. Mature and I play a game these days of competing to create the most improbable and outlandish story to “explain” the random, inexplicable occurrences that show up… daily, I’d say. There seem to be more of them lately. Or maybe we recognize more of them now (there are always a countless number, everywhere you look) because we are finally old enough to quit denying them or believing that explanation is possible. We don’t even have to leave the house to find a target-rich environment.
Love the Escheresque image of the moth. With Jayne, I want more Eiseley. I’ve begun to think of RAMH as a candy store. I broke open my piggy bank this morning before I came and, obviously, it’s all your fault. (Pout.)
John says
Good to see Magpie out on a raid, even if she immediately does turn around and fly back homeward. You might be onto something with that TV-cozy idea, potentially a real money-maker — especially if it completely covers the box (or panel), with no opening in front. Maybe put a stylized fabric b&w screen on the front, featuring the I Love Lucy or Honeymooners logos.
When I first read that “compet[ing] to create the most improbable and outlandish story to ‘explain’…” line, I thought the object of “explain” was going to be something like “…our never-ending book purchases.” The Missus and I sometimes seem to do that. We’ll suddenly slip up — whoops, damn, I didn’t mean to tell you that I’d spent $N on [whatever] — and rush to fill the ensuing awkward silence with a myriad styrofoam peanuts of rationalization.
Kate Lord Brown says
That poem is sensational, John. And love Didion (read Blue Nights in one sitting on holiday recently). Grass rooves (roofs?) are wonderful – always liked the idea of having a wildflower meadow up there :)
John says
KATE! Made my day, just seeing this comment in the pipeline. :)
I don’t recall your ever saying anything about gardening — do you do all that yourself, the planting and the harvesting and the, uh, the grafting and so on? Because I bet a rooftop meadow where you live would be fabulous. (Well, might have to be a meadow-in-a-greenhouse sort of thing.)
And may I add, very much not as an aside: congratulations on having struck up a very nice rhythm of imagining, writing, and honest-to-gods publishing your fiction!
Jayne says
Enbiggen. Ha! Foshizzle.
I looked in on other creations from Dujardin–quite amazing, all of them. I bookmarked his page–I know my son will appreciate seeing his work. (You know his name, Dujardin, mean garden en Francaise?)
The structure above looks, to me, like it’s almost moving, like little compartments on a track. I wonder if this is actually how our overpopulated world will be living some day.
John says
I love the word “enbiggen.” Didn’t make it up myself, alas — I just see it here and there every so often.
In that second Dujardin example above — the stacked-building one — what may be happening when you say “it’s almost moving, like little compartments on a track” is the way he’s arranged the diagonal stairways, escalators, what-have-you at the ends of the rows. They sort of lead the gaze, as though following a pedestrian as s/he moves up or down (and left-to-right or vice-versa) in the structure.
marta says
The picture in your post and the one in your comment are fantastic. Perfect really.
Part of the Didion quote was quoted by Sheena Iyengar in her TED Talk about the art of choosing. I use it that talk in class and have a very hard time explaining that quote.
My favorite quote here though is about the moth. At first it reminded me of The Night Circus. But I’ve always liked the idea that we are part of another world we know nothing about.
Sorry I haven’t been by as much as I want to be. And I want to read your library story…but I’ve somewhat challenged these days. I like what I’ve read and hope that eventually it won’t be hard to catch up.
Keep writing.
John says
Is the difficulty explaining the Didion quote a, uh, is it a difficulty of communication (because of the multi-lingual environment you teach in)? I mean, is it that the concepts don’t lend themselves to easy translation?
Thanks for the reminder (although you didn’t know you were reminding me :)) about The Night Circus. I meant to look into that when you first talked about it, a few months ago.
Certainly no rush on reading the story. There’s a very good chance that I won’t be posting any installments for the next couple weeks; we’ve got company coming next weekend, so this weekend we’ve got to, y’know, get ready for the company. The weekend afterwards I may do another chapter, but then comes an out-of-town Saturday at the end of the month. So, bottom line, it’s gonna be a messy weekend posting schedule over the next month.
(I may set aside some time this weekend to combine the seven parts done so far into a single document for easier off-line consumption — certainly PDF, and maybe an e-book version if I’m feeling ambitious.)
marta says
It doesn’t lend itself to easy translation. And then a good number of students don’t read literature much and don’t have experience understanding lines like this in any language.
And I’d love a PDF version! So hop to it! Well, actually, until we move, I don’t know if I’m going to read much of anything of length.
jules says
Wow to that Faith Shearin poem. Just wow.