The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry

Adventures in Good Music

Hello Everyone

Dzeims Braun

I would build that dome in air

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Stewart: Macbeth

Four more years

Coverage

2012 Presidential Election: Electoral Map

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Benga: B4 the Duel

The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one they said.

The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million to one....

but still they come.

Open, locks, whoever knocks!

2000AD

Go Giants!

Sgt Grant in Africa

Art.sy

I don't know what it is, but I like it.

The simple representation of a complex thought

Can't stop watching Bourdain

Dig

I was perusing My Documents the other day, looking specifically for a paper I did a semester ago. As usual, I found a graveyard of half-conceived ideas, stories I'd forgotten about, successful papers, failed papers, mediocre papers, and child pornography. No, wait, scratch that last part. However, while I was skimming through the bullshit, I noticed one file labeled simply "joshdig."

This confused me. What the fuck was this? It sure didn't sound like a paper, and it sure didn't sound like a good name for a half-finished story.

My confusion was increased tenfold when I opened the file and began to read.

I have to explain what I think are the groggy circumstances of this composition. If memory serves (maybe?), I wrote this paper sometime around Christmas last year when I came down with a diabolical case of walking pnemonia. The dubious campus doctors prescribed several things that were supposed to fix it and didn't work, some things I don't think were meant for pnemonia but did work, and then finally something that worked. For example, they prescribed cough syrup with codine at first, and then amped it up to cough syrup with vicoden later.

Fuck if I've ever taken such drugs before. I had heard of them, of course, and had even had friends who mixed them with alcohol and even marijuana, but I wasn't willing to take a trip that might wind up with me losing every possible cavity's virginity I had, depending on how hard the trip was. I guess I'm just not hardcore.

I really don't remember much about how well the drugs worked, because those days are nothing but a mire of suffering and pain to me. Fundamentally, I don't know if they fixed anything, or if they were even prescribed for something.

I vaguely remember starting this paper. I think this was the first time I took the vicoden cough syrup, and I'm basing this on how the thing seems moderately plausible at first, and then degenerates into a stream of consciousness ride of utter madness and lunacy. Apparently I thought the idea of "burying" and "digging" as a hobby was downright hilarious. To be honest, isn't vicoden a sedative, so I should've been asleep by the end, and not a chimp with down syndrome?

Of course, maybe I just went literally insane for a while, and now I'm just blaming it on the drugs. Or maybe I was just plain drunk.

For the record, I wrote this when I was still in LAC, and I didn't get kicked out, I just stopped showing up. I only know Josh as a vague acquaintance, and haven't seen him in close to a year. He probably doesn't remember my name. I think he's an engineer or something, and he wouldn't even have anything to do with LAC, much less volunteer for it. Also, I'm pretty sure his hair isn't blonde, and since when are his forearms "rippling?"

And I did edit the misspelled words, grammar problems, and real names out of the thing. I think it makes it funnier, and also, there were surprisingly few. (!) But, no, his last name is not "Brewster," nor is mine actually "Norman." I should've made it something funny like "buttfuck," though.

I mean his name. Not mine.

Okay, whatever. Read at your own risk.

Somewhere a dog barked

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/06/somewhere_a_dog_barked.single.html

The Beard Hater

Anacreon the poet composed many delightful songs; for a luxurious life was allotted to him by the Fates. But Alcaeus and Archilochus of Paros the god did not permit to devote their muse to mirth and pleasure. For constrained as they were to endure toil, now of one sort, now of another, and by abusing those who wronged them they lightened the burdens imposed on them by Heaven. But as for me, the law forbids me to accuse by name those who, though I have done them no wrong, try to show their hostility to me; and on the other hand the fashion of education that now prevails among the well-born deprives me of the use of the music that consists in song. For in these days men think it more degrading to study music than once in the past they thought it to be rich by dishonest means. Nevertheless I will not on that account renounce the aid that it is in my power to win from the Muses. Indeed I have observed that even the barbarians across the Rhine sing savage songs composed in language not unlike the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and that they delight in such songs. For I think it is always the case that inferior musicians, though they annoy their audiences, give very great pleasure to themselves. And with this in mind I often say to myself, like Ismenias -- for though my talents are not equal to his, I have as I persuade myself a similar independence of soul -- "I sing for the Muses and myself."

Kaneda!

Man Ray and Duchamp

Man Ray chess set

Man Ray designed this chess set in 1920 using found objects from his studio. Most of the pieces are geometric models made for still-life drawing (the king is a pyramid, the queen a cone, the rook a cube, the pawn a sphere). The knight—the finial of a violin—was fashioned from a box of abandoned violin necks. Only a handful were ever produced (the maharajah of Indore commissioned a set made from silver-plated brass).

Duchamp chess set

In 1919, Duchamp took a trip to Buenos Aires where his sister lived. When he returned he devoted himself to raising his level of play to it's highest level. But during the trip to South America, he designed a chess set about which there's been some debate. The commonly accepted idea is that he made the set himself except for the Knight, which he hired a local craftsman to carve by hand. Almost all authoritative books on Duchamp mention this. However, Larry List, who documented the Imagery of Chess Revisited show in 2003, argued quite convincingly that all the pieces but the Knight were obviously turned on a lathe. While Duchamp created machine and kinetic art, he never used machines to create the art. As a matter of fact, Duchamp liked to create with his hands. While in Buenos Aires, he carved a set of stamps for illustrating chess positions in correspondence games. List suggests, even insists, that Duchamp hired a local to turn the pieces on a lathe, while he himself carved the Knight by hand.

Ulysses

Pauline Baynes

Beksinski