Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 39

CarrollBlog 3.18

In the park across the street a war is going on. The war of the wall. One large wall of the basketball court has been given to local graffiti artists. For a long time it was a chaotic mess of squiggles and badly drawn swirly initials-- the kind of dumb doodles that gives good graffiti a bad name because it's so meaningless and sloppy. But recently something interesting has been going on and I wonder if it will continue. A few weeks ago I saw a guy in a hoodie sweatshirt at work painting the wall one afternoon. At his feet were many cans of spray paint and although he had only just begun, it was clear his work was accomplished. Later I went to the park specifically to see what his finished product looked like. It was terrific-- beautifully drawn, imaginative, very much like the work of the artist Kenny Scharf. But in two days it was gone--completely covered over by a mass of very badly painted glop-- black or phosphorescent orange and green stick drawings, letters, and other crap that looked like a bunch of ten year old 'Attention Deficit Disorder' kids had eaten too much sugar and then attacked the wall with paint. It was sad because

what they'd erased with their junk was the real thing-- an artist at work. A few days later I grinned when I saw that familiar guy in a hoodie with the many cans of paint at his feet, back working on the wall. This time what he did there was completely different but just as good. I wanted to go over and compliment him, say good for you, man. But I was too shy and didn't. Instead I just stood well back and watched him work. He was fast and adept. He knew exactly what he was doing and the only time he stopped painting was when he'd take a few steps back, look at what he'd done, and then return to work. But once again the nasties rolled in afterwards and completely defaced this new work. I wondered what he thought when he saw it. All those hours put in, coming up with something special and very much his own. His gift to the world, erased by the barbarian horde. This morning early while walking the dog in the park my heart lifted when in the early light, I saw he'd returned and covered the wall yet again with his artistry. It reminded me of that Bruce Cockburn song lyric, "You've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight."

CarrollBlog 3.17

French words and phrases with no direct English translation

Dépaysement: The sensation of being in another country.

La douleur exquise: The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can't have. Even a Sex in the City episode was named after it!

Chômer: To be unemployed, but because it's a verb, it makes the state active.

Profiter: To make the most of or take advantage of.

Flâneur: As defined in the book Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, it's "the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city."

Esprit d'escalier: The literal translation is staircase wit, but it means to think of a comeback when it's too late.

Retrouvailles: The happiness of meeting again after a long time.

Sortable: An adjective for someone you can take anywhere without being embarrassed.

Voila/voici: It's so necessary that we use it all the time. "Voila" literally means "there it is" and "voici means "here it is."

Empêchement: An unexpected last-minute change of plans. A great excuse without having to be specific.

CarrollBlog 3.15

Starfish

by Eleanor Lerman.

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to

the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a

stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have

your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman

down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,

the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,

is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the

pond, where whole generations of biological

processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds

speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,

they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old

enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?

There is movement beneath the water, but it

may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the

years you ran around, the years you developed

a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,

owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are

genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have

become. And then life lets you go home to think

about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one

who never had any conditions, the one who waited

you out. This is life's way of letting you know that

you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,

so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you

were born at a good time. Because you were able

to listen when people spoke to you. Because you

stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your

late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And

then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,

while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,

with smiles on their starry faces as they head

out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

CarrollBlog 3.14

"Somewhere someone is thinking of you. Someone is calling you an angel. This person is using celestial colors to paint your image. Someone is making you into a vision so beautiful that it can only live in the mind. Someone is thinking of the way your breath escapes your lips when you are touched. How your eyes close and your jaw tightens with concentration as you give pleasure a home. These thoughts are saving a life somewhere right now. In some airless apartment on a dark, urine stained, whore lined street, someone is calling out to you silently and you are answering without even being there. So crystalline. So pure. Such life saving power when you smile. You will never know how you have cauterized my wounds. So sad that we will never touch. How it hurts me to know that I will never be able to give you everything I have."

Henry Rollins

CarrollBlog 3.12

AS IT IS

The man I love hates technology, hates

that he's forced to use it: telephones

and microfilm, air conditioning,

car radios and the occasional fax.

He wishes he lived in the old world,

sitting on a stump carving a clothespin

or a spoon. He wants to go back, slip

like lint into his great-great-grandfather's

pocket, reborn as a pilgrim, a peasant,

a dirt farmer hoeing his uneven rows.

He walks when he can, through the hills

behind his house, his dogs panting beside him

like small steam engines. He's delighted

by the sun's slow and simple

descent, the complicated machinery

of his own body. I would have loved him

in any era, in any dark age; I would take him

into the twilight and unwind him, slide

my fingers through his hair and pull him

to his knees. As it is, this afternoon, late

in the twentieth century, I sit on a chair

in the kitchen with my keys in my lap, pressing

the black buttons on the answering machine

over and over, listening to his message,

his voice strung along the wires outside my window

where the birds balance themselves

and stare off into the trees, thinking

even in the farthest future, in the most

distant universe, I would have recognized

this voice, refracted, as it would be, like light

from some small, uncharted star.

~ Dorianne Laux

CarrollBlog 3.11

"What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . "

Frederick Buechner

CarrollBlog 3.8

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

Louise Erdrich

CarrollBlog 3.6

"Perhaps we don't like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don't worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong."

Sufjan Stevens

CarrollBlog 3.5

The park is absolutely empty at seven o'clock on Sunday morning except for two people: a man and his very young daughter who is no more than six or seven. The man is teaching her a Greek dance. Side by side, arms held high in the air, slowly and carefully they do the formal steps together: leg crossing leg, slapping the knees, jumping in the air and shouting "hopah!" at the end of the cycle. The girl is very bad at it, very clumsy. She keeps stumbling but her father catches her every time just before she falls. Righting herself, she squirms out of his hands and shouts "Again! Again!" Both of them immediately start dancing again, big smiles on their faces.

CarrollBlog 3.3

New words that you need to know:

Waldeinsamkeit (German): the feeling of being alone in the woods

2. Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

3. Taarradhin (Arabic): a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face (not the same as our concept of a compromise – everyone wins)

4. Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery

5. Esprit de l'escalier (French): a witty remark that occurs to you too late, literally on the way down the stairs…

6. Meraki (Greek): doing something with soul, creativity, or love

7. Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally 'a meal eaten sideways', referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language:

8. Duende (Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.

9. Guanxi (Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favour, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favour to be repaid.

10. Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

11. Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbor's house until there is nothing left

12. Radioukacz (Polish): a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain

13. Selathirupavar (Tamil): a word used to define a certain type of absence without official leave in face of duty