Country Honey

"Julius Martial's acres--they're few,
but more happily situated
than the gardens of the Hesperides--
lie along the sweeping ridge
of the Janiculum. Broad
ravines slope upward to the summit
and the level, gently swelling top
opens to an untroubled sky
which shines with a light peculiarly
its own, even when cloudiness
obscures the curving valleys.
The dainty roof of the tall house
rises gracefully toward the clear stars.

On one side you can look out
on the seven proud hills and survey
the whole city of Rome, and the Alban
Hills and the hills of Tusculum,
and the cool suburbs nearby
the city: ancient Fidenae
and tiny Rubrae and the orchard
groves where Anna Perenna's
worshippers revel in the sacrifice
of maidenheads.

On the other
we can see the traveller driving
along in his silent carriage
on the Via Flaminia
or the Salarian highway.
His wheels can never disturb
our soothing sleep, which neither
the calls to the rowers or the cries
of the bargemen are strong enough
to break, though the Mulvian Bridge
and the boats as they glide so swiftly
on the holy Tiber seem so near.

The owner offers his country house
(if it shouldn't be called a town house)
freely to guests. You'd think
it was yours, it's open to you
so courteously and ungrudgingly--
with such gracious hospitality.
You'd think it the friendly house
of Odysseus' host, Alcinous,
or that of Molorchus, just after
Hercules repaid his kindness
with sudden prosperity.

But if you're the kind who thinks
all this still isn't big enough,
you're welcome to farm the whole town
of Tibur, or even Praeneste,
with a hundred hoes, or assign
the hillside town of Setia
to one overseer. For me
Julius Martial's few acres
are preferable to them all."

-Martial, IV.lxiv (tr. B. Mills)

Screenplay No. 4 (For Your Consideration)

"Mass. Ave"

This should be shot at dusk, just light enough to discern all of the detail here described. The view is anywhere on the first actual block after the bridge of the Boston side of Massachusetts Avenue (east side of the street). There should be a college-age couple, male and female—the male has a film camera on a tripod, pointed toward and above the film’s camera (which is approximately two lanes of traffic away on the street, perpendicular to the line of the road), the female a light meter around her neck. It should be made to seem that: a) they are in it for the long haul, b) it is the female’s film, and the male is helping her out. Preferably, he should have curly hair. Please, no acting, just waiting. Only soundtrack should be of passing traffic (sync not necessary). They should not be observed to speak; her view should be aligned at all times with the camera’s, while his may wander. One minute exactly; standard fade in and out.

Screenplay No. 10 (For Your Consideration)

Extreme close-up on a Windows calculator screen. With zero on the screen, 1/x is continually attempted. An error message is displayed. 15 seconds.

Ten Stereotypically Canadian Names

1. Kevin
2. Blaine
3. Russ
4. Marc
5. Geoff
6. Richard
7. Randy
8. Glenn
9. Brian
10. Jon

Note: These are all male names because Canadian women do not exist.

A Brief Life Of Rudolph Isenglass

Labored for 45 years in the employ of Chearing Medical. Each morning he would clamber into a cloth clean-suit sealed at its bends with tubes of black rubber, and nestle his scanty tousle into a hood with an inch-thick faceplate. That accomplished, he’d travel through several airlocks into the working space, with stations numbered on stand-up placards and divided by quite small (five-inch-wide, perhaps) conveyal lines, rolls of further black rubber. Stocking in, galumphing, he’d proceed to work at fabricating plascalpels, shaping them by means of a series of fiendishly detailed procedures he kept in his head. At his retirement he gave up any thought of this process—and set instead to tealife, watching out for hefty feeder-birds hopping through his half-a-chestnut tree.

Theme Bands (For Bored Musicians): Pt. 1, Covers Division

LAUCH FAIRCLOTH

Impersonate a blues band made up of suburban dads. Think: a white-on-black Stratocaster, an authentic "Lucille" copy, a five-string bass, Life is Good sweatshirts, backwards Black Dog hats, Ray-Bans, faded Lee jeans, white sneaks, ponytails (no goatees). Interminable, tremolo bar-heavy solos; all standard covers, with one generic original loudly announced as "Dave's Blues".

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

Two people in boxy suits, one on guitar and one on "soft" electronic piano. They play jazz favorites sedated to the point of improbability. They play on a stage decorated with two potted palms, a water cooler, and a coffee machine. The audience is welcome to help themselves to water (the coffee is for the band).

HIDDEN WHEELS

All-dyke Rites of Spring cover band.

PRIDE AND JOY

Impersonate two natty old men via makeup and clothes (tweedy hats with dyed feathers help). Go to a local karaoke night and give your names as "Mr. Pride" and "Mr. Joy". Sing your selections as duets, in exaggerated Brooklyn accents with broad big-band inflections. Suggested songs: "Lovefool", "River of Dreams", maybe "Young Turks". Nothing too obvious!

THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN

Two acoustic guitarists. At the beginning of their set, they take three Percocets in full view of the audience. They proceed to play "The Bear Went Over The Mountain" for as long as they can.

Screenplay No. 12 (For Your Consideration)

"Damon and Pythias"

A series of 20 bucolic Greekish scenes—vibrant fields of yellow flowers, wave-lashed rock shores, cypress glades—each fading out of darkness and suddenly collapsing back into it—15 seconds each. This is a computerized backdrop to two live figures—the whole of it recallingl under-funded video art of the 1980s. The two figures are muscular young men, friends in real life, wearing white tunics and carrying round wooden shields and simple, broad, double-edged short swords. At each fade-in their sword arms are dropped and they are looking around, slightly lost—as the bucolic scene becomes visible they become excited, raise their sword arms, pace around a bit (but always with their faces towards the camera), and shout “Ho! Hooooo!”—lapsing again at the blackout. The figures should maintain roughly symmetrical positions throughout (if one moves left, the other moves right, etc.).

Ten Beat Groups For 2006

1. THE CREEPING PHLOX

This neo-psych trio is tearing up the Ho-Ho-Kus scene with their distinctive brand of "paisleyed rampage". Guitars, sitars, and dulcimers bang out a streaming, swirling brew. Debut single "More To Tell The Babes To Tell The Babies" b/w "Wild Carrots For Jodie" has sold more than 500 copies and a second pressing is on the way.

2. JOHNNY AND LUTHER HTOO

Despite the name, actually three sisters from Madison, Wisconsin with a winsome, folky sound all their own. Check out the high harmonies and witty wisdom of "Do I Really Look Like A Fox?", recently bleAT Quarterly's "Song of the Week".

3. ADVENTUS

A mysterious six-man collective, hailing from various points across western Canada. One moment, they're reciting mysterious "hobo poetry" over a sparse panpipe melody; the next, they're whipping up skeletal funk that owes more than a little to their countrymen in Tootle-Oo. A self-released CD-R, "A Joke On A Capture Of Perplexes", has been turning heads ever since it appeared late last year.

4. TACKS NAILS NAILS

Spearheading the Avant-Boogaloo movement, this sibling tag team crafts playful fist-pumpers designed to provoke a dance party. Mandy Drollkin handles the beats, while brother Steve switches between rapping and a smooth croon. "Rascal Am I" is in heavy rotation on several Shreveport-area college stations.

5. THE FENCE THAT SKIRTS THE TREE

Bearded sage by night, travel agent (!) by day, Sasha Camforra is The Fence That Skirts The Tree's sole constant. His deceptively simple songs, usually plunked out on toy piano, alternate between cryptic whimsy and startling vehemence. The dark subject matter of "A Crabwalk For Cindy" has already spurred debate among the online community.

6. RON APE

A rebel-rouser of the old school--in the person of a seventeen-year-old Boston Brahmin! Mr. Ape (born Asa Ronald Strawfellow) leads his band, the Apiary, through twisty triple-guitar anthems that would appeal to unreconstructed Confederates. Catch him at U. Mass-Lowell this Sunday, on the Basquelieber stage--if you're lucky, he might play his local hit, "Burn Any Blackstrap Molasses (You Find)".

7. SATRAP

Two violinists, a violist, and a cellist...playing obscure 90's hardcore covers? Says Dana Charlap, the "low end" of the group: "We just think it's great music. People just hear the anger and the screaming, and miss the melodies". A nonpareil version of "I'm Back Sleeping Or Fucking Or Something" is currently streaming on their website, www.satrapstrings.com.

8. HIRSCH TWEMBLANT

Conshohocken trio pairs tricky guitarchitecture with eccentric lyrics penned by their "guru", local nursing home resident Jessie Varnedoe. Their recent double album, Shirrs Of Un Gilted Glass/Wombers Pas The Unterwolmm, is available on Twemblin' Leaf Records.

9. LIVING IN ARMENIA

The tragic events of September 2001 affected us all, not least singer-songwriter James Oren Catley. "With all that flag-waving, all I could think of was the song 'Living in America', except I changed the words in my head into 'Living in Armenia'," he explains. With a few dorm buddies on keys, bass, and drums, Catley (who is not of Armenian heritage) uses Living in Armenia to express his opinions on living in our society. Those in search of a "New Dylan" might want to check out his latest release, "Everyone Does...Alright".

10. MUMP

Two Sacramento composers (working under the pseudonyms MUP and PUM) have set themselves a difficult task--making an entire oeuvre out of a single 4-second sample from early teen comedy Lord Love A Duck. They have succeeded, and brilliantly: the surprisingly melodic "Purple Passion?" is proof.

How Young Are They?

"Sirs:

I have just read the article in the Aug. 12 issue of LIFE on Elwood, Wendell Willkie's home town.

I notice you say "...young girls drink Coca-Cola chasers with their whisky while planning to attend Baptist Sunday School next morning."

I happen to be the teacher of a class of young girls in our Baptist Church and no one, not even the Editors of LIFE, can say things like that about my girls without my fighting back. They aren't that type of girl.

You also said: 'The Golden Garden is Elwood young folks' favorite hangout.' That is unfair to our Elwood boys and girls for while it is a favorite hangout of a certain bunch we have hundreds of girls and boys who wouldn't go in that place, for it and others like it are a disgrace to Elwood or any other city.

You seem to have printed all the bad things about Elwood...

Elwood is a lovely little city and there are nowhere in America finer or more loyal, courageous people. Wendell Willkie has every right to be proud of his home town even as we are proud of him.

MRS. RALPH WILLIAMS

Elwood, Ind."

-found in the August 26, 1940 issue of LIFE

Tea With Adam And The Archangel Raphael

"Angel and man, when tete-a-tete,
Albeit, dialects compose:
A secret grammar, delicate
Declensions of poppy and the rose."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Sublimer and Sublimest" (tr. C. Middleton)

"Subhumans"

"Jack the Ripper's dead,
and lying in his bed.
He cut his throat
with Sunlight soap,
Jack the Ripper's dead."

-as collected by Iona and Peter Opie, The Language and Lore of Schoolchildren

Note: Mickey Mouse committed a similar deed with a ten-bob note.

Yi Gluck, A Life Of Her Written

Yi Gluck unfolded from her bedsheets one summery day. It was the first she’d ever been. Darling, most twice darling thing! She yawned, as though to sing “I salute thee, Sister Eos!” Her darling sister, fitly sung. She then did radiate—she did rayfully dissipate—to join hands with her sister beyond through the windowpane. Oh, then the parson came to quote Scripture, but Yi Gluck wasn’t there.

Yi Gluck started as a yellowy point, her volume like unto a shooting-marble. She nestled among the safe soft little hairlets, the pebbles and papers of an unkempt bed. She was fertilized in the night by a motion-sensitive lamp, switched on to confront a rampaging opossum; it spared one white ray to sheet further the bedsheets of the bed in question. Yi Gluck did gestate through the night’s short remainder, and escaped in the morning to join her sister Eos. The parson clambered hopeful up three flights of stairs to recite his Scripture, but she wasn’t there.

The parson thought his early 4:30 thoughts at 4:30 when he woke; in advance of Eos, he thought his unfit and disparsonish things. He thought long and hard on the peculiar humidity that lives between human legs. He wavey-waved those thoughts away. He trudged the city towards the intended flat, in advance yet of Ms. Aurore Eos. It was too late—his seeded intentions had already flown from one fleshly pupil-hole, and sped ahead of him to the site. These intentions formed a yellowy packet about themselves, and they quickened...to gain their goal, they caromed from the head of a sleeping mother opossum. You’ve heard the rest from there.

Minute Particulars

It may be the case that expansive thinking is aided by thought in words. While one would expect that the act of delimiting boundless experience to a set of signs would demean and skew it—it seems instead that any experience is mediated still further through the general culture-norm of the present day. Translation into the realm of words, each of which is a particular with a valence and a history, forces choices in the perception of the real field—this is an opportunity to establish wider clarity and definition. This need not be single clarity or a single definition—it need not establish a precise relation—instead,it fosters awareness of the consistency of precise and real relations—though particulars fluctuate, they always will remain particular and bounded.

Folkways Of Tampa

As the history of the fine old town of Tampa accrues, so too do its unique and charming customs.

ARGOT

"Kendy"--an attractive woman.

"Tomin'"--interesting, intriguing.

"Fallokin", "Fallahkin", etc.--friendly greeting.

"Ho ho co"--derisory call.

"Doppler"--a car. Popularized in the early 1990s by Mr. Soak's infamous single "I Just Killed Your Hypeman".

"Trimmers"--traffic lights.

"Don't come dawdle"--don't interfere with me.


CUISINE

"Boig"--equivalent of grinder, hoagie, et al. elsewhere. Pickled radish is a frequent add-on.

"Mobies"--balls composed of one prawn and one scallop, covered in cornmeal and fried. Generally sauced with green Tabasco; infrequently found in "boigs".

"Sweet Tree"--popular soft drink, half vanilla ice cream and half guava juice.

"Chore Boy"--bismuth cocktail infamous among the nightclub set.


GESTURES, GAMES, ETC.

In the Tampa Bay area, it is at this point more common to "flip the bird" with the ring finger, rather than the middle.

A common children's game is a variation of tag called "twink". If the pursued child can sing a doggerel song in its entirety,


Cindy, Cindy, tallin'-a-mink,
Coby, Casey, tillin'-a-twink!


the pursuer must leave off and chase someone else. The safe area is known as "the till".

"Choctaw"--a jargon of concealment--all vowel sounds are shifted, "a" to "e", "e" to "i", etc. Example: "O went tu gu ta thi ber." Usually spoken quickly, with a distinct nasal inflection.

"Dog funk"--local form of dog racing. Elaborately decorated homemade courses are set up throughout a neighborhood, with hand-operated rabbit decoys. Large cash prizes are awarded to the winner.

LGI

Do you understand the sloth-houses, Mopsus? Where hooks in the drywall are run by thin chain to the collars of shambling animals—counted on to one day breach that drywall, expose the wiring therein.

Do you understand the slaughter-houses, Mopsus? Where numeralled cleavers suspend from a frame of quick-weld slats—they waver and err among many cattle-necks, their courses depending on volumes of animal heat, and the vagaries of panic and panic-response (the varying heat, you see, will alter weak welds).

Mopsus, the sloth-houses—they are palaces to a quotient named LGI, that is, “Least Guidance Implementable”—what could be accomplished by any young person taken off the street and given a hammer is accomplished instead with a reasonably large financial outlay, an idiosyncratic initiative, and an absolute abhorrence for efficiency or celerity.

Mopsus, much the same could be said of the slaughter-houses. This is no quick way to kill cattle.

Favored Words (For A Future Questionaire)

Pinch, coxswain, blunt, cross, mainspring, calendar, ash, mock, sabot, alarm, boil, finch, rock, savor, blinders, mate, pixel, foglight, royal, mixer, home, flail, tugboat, rote, fissile, pictorial, gingko, mayflower, mount, bring, spike, tail, brinksmanship.

The 24 Hours Ranked By Preference

1. 19:00
2. 04:00
3. 21:00
4. 01:00
5. 10:00
6. 11:00
7. 24:00
8. 14:00
9. 23:00
10. 20:00
11. 15:00
12. 02:00
13. 13:00
14. 22:00
15. 18:00
16. 12:00
17. 09:00
18. 16:00
19. 07:00
20. 08:00
21. 03:00
22. 17:00
23. 06:00
24. 05:00

Screenplay No. 14 (For Your Consideration)

"The Marseillaise"

A group of seven large and jovial American men should be assembled at a banquet table, all facing the camera (be sure to include a whole roast fowl of any type and a clean white-to-yellow tablecloth). On the set, they should be thoroughly regaled, served by a team of waiters. They are all dressed in colorful quasi-Roman wear (drapery and garlands). They have all been taught the “Marseillaise” in rough phonetic French. At some point in the feast the director audibly orders the camera to roll. At this, the film starts, and the participants launch into chorus, looking at the camera and pounding their hands on the table in rough time. As they cease, the film ends. It is preferable that the film is timed so that an embarrassed waiter is caught on screen for the song’s duration. Camera perpendicular to the long end of the table; garish yellowy light. Fade in, fade out.

Earth, Wind And Fire

"The struggle against cosmic terror in all its forms and manifestations did not rely on abstract hope or on the eternal spirit, but on the material principle in man himself. Man assimilated the cosmic elements, earth, water, air, and fire; he discovered them and became vividly conscious of them in his own body. He became aware of the cosmos within himself."

-Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (tr. H. Iswolsky)

Cold Clear Light Of Day

Pollexfen had once been a “desk rebel”, but had put those clothes away as he aged and moved in a finer society. He met a friend’s niece one day, and was flattered and favorably impressed to see that she was dressed much as he had been wont to do. Penyez (for such was her name) soon got together a band and named it “Cold Clear Light of Day”, and would stand on the stage calmly enumerating the misdeeds of all her immediate forbears, dressed in the very shirts that they had worn. This impressed and delighted Pollexfen, who soon brought his influential friends. Shocked at first, they would sit together wordless at a cafe table and listen and watch. Soon enough: the band was in the newspapers and Penyez was a known quotable.

Support The Institution Of Verse!

Our plot is to do away with discursive length, and introduce in its stead quick parcels—composed of some happy sentiment, some rhetoric of the entry-level, some profundities climbing out through the surface. A reading public will be induced to adopt for its own what it accepts as flatteries—pocket-posies, phrased out by the round lips of a piebald noble.
Support the institution of verse! Follow a past example—a new currency at the court—sporting pursuit, open to all. The flooding ensues—we can all, we can all do this. This is the necessary spreading of soil. Basic, common, yes: anything to raise flowers outside the hothouses.

Working Method

Compelled to work (by what-you-will), the worker finds at once a furtherance, reason, and refutation of heris labor in the continual devising and revision of a whole method.
But I fear that if any reasonable method is reached—be it skeleton, vocabulary, diagram, for any whole or bounded part thereof—a grave loss’ll be incurred. Not because the method is necessarily wishful or ill-applied, but because method commits the self, commits to the self, too far. The spectral influx finds a prism of a sudden, and hunkers into one white bore. The canal, made in constraint, has only one use; the river is stronger, and marshals some hundred intentions to some hundred uses.

A History Of Death-Marches

Bataan is the clear favorite among them. They may be evoked with propriety by anyone who has already walked nine blocks or more (this allowance is more generous where children and senior citizens are concerned). The death-march is chiefly applied by one civilization to another. There are always survivors at the end of a death-march. The first death march is reputed by Pliny the Elder to have begun in Syracuse in or around 530 BC, and to have tromped back and forth to the eastern shore for the next four months. The “Trail of Tears" is generally considered to have been a death-march, though it is often mistaken for a trail in the recreational sense.

To Wesley Miller

They give you the broken mold, and not the first bust. And you sigh (louder than you ought). You want that ingenious plaster-mass—its corners are sharp or seamed, but when it speaks—it speaks with a mouthful of marble!

You bear the wax scraps down a balmy street. Soon the likeness is lost; it has been obtruded upon by the stoop-sitters, and the game of double-dutch. Dejected, you climb to your basement hutch. You boil, and pace, and prance, and steam, and circle over the deposited remnant. Suddenly, a notion! You pour the hunks into a stripped coffee can; you unearth a single-coil heating element, connect it, and wait for some fifteen minutes. You place the can atop the mystic red spiral. You wait as the wax slumps its shoulders (so to speak). You lean to it, poised with a stiff paintbrush to stir. Canful, a bust made of wax!

52 Girls

1. Sirathe D’Alencon: first cultivar of the domestic pear.
2. Lara Corbits: in a billowy dress with green flowers.
3. Rubi Mardner: one-time Kossovar—rubicund, altogether.
4. Diane-Teals Manassa: “cool as a cucumber”.
5. Judyth Paynter: youngest housewife on record.
6. Gaby Barton Croft: initiated many into the Nitrous Mysteries of Ho-Ho-Kus.
7. Poll Clyde-Davie: little-regarded muleteer.
8. Derwin Turnipseed: my first, my last, my Alpha and Omega.
9. Helga Blum: will be a comfort in his wretched old age.
10. Becka Sandlewood: never more than three meters in stocking feet.
11. Larissa P. Damon: has inherited a home-inspection business.
12. Glebe Marks: self-styled “Afro Queen”.
13. Mandy Drollkin: doats on her two daughters.
14. Jennifer Chun: esteemed as “fearless” among her friends for...what?
15. “Blaise Starrkers”: known in some circles, not in others.
16. Apple-Drella Boteach: a common HUSSY, i.e., a VIXEN.
17. Bao Ho: sister of Minh Ho of Bucks County, PA.
18. Danielle Chambers: sole resident of a rambling Colonial.
19. Lilian Grolle: conossieur of pulled pork, in all its manifestations.
20. Tandy Cendrars: many uncomfortable silences.
21. Liv Conkling: smacks her lips at something sufficiently sweet.
22. Toi Crowninsheld: doctors the iced tea of her aunts.
23. Tif Hansen-Johansson: at pains to distinguish herself from her peers.
24. Deborah Coors: the glass is always half-full.
25. “Brandy” Alexander: raised (sad to say) among the Tamil Tigers.
26. Hendries O’Toole: adopted the cummerbund for everyday use.
27. “Mixtec” Gale Clough: easily distinguishes right from wrong.
28. Kendy Ste-Marie: glossy skin, and matte nails.
29. Cherrie Barten: mocks the youths who gather near her subway stop to perform skateboard tricks.
30. Rahula Connell: researches her genealogy (to no great end).
31. Mika Fleischmann: on an epic quest, spanning three continents and thirty nations.
32. Chondra Fanning: “a woman of distinction”, if Thackeray is to be believed.
33. Elisabeth Jumblies: often described as a “roisterer”.
34. “Budnitz”: at parties, surreptitiously turns out the lights and tumbles among the dismayed guests.
35. Maribeth Quan: studies to be admitted to the bar.
36. Sue F. Corbineau: cordially greeted by fellow patients—“Hi Sue! Hi Sue!”
37. Louisa Semple Docharty: a crackerjack shot, a wolfish whistle, a wonder at whist.
38. Lorette Daws: the angel of the Local 118—but a devil at 41 Mt. Hope St., J.P., MA.
39. Daphne Pimm: regal bearing a stratagem that succeeds in attracting others.
40. Daffney Georges: envies that Daphne Pimm...
41. Carolyn Preiss: age does her proboscis no favors.
42. Haven Bartos: over-applies Liquid Smoke when cooking (no great fault).
43. Delilah Saberhagen: looks askance at most accepted forms of charity.
44. Liesl Soapenhau: a double-double OK?
45. Lady Juana Marks: a muse to the masses!
46. Margot Van Der Waal: hidden as we speak below that bean-bag chair.
47. Cyd Corcoran, MD: scorns the sort of honor that goes untempered with mercy.
48. “Sweet” Dilsey Brown: doyenne of the “Big Boxes” along Route 77 in Camden.
49. Sheila Avakian: ice hockey or field hockey?
50. Flor Hockfeldt: “exceedingly sapient”, says one likely professor.
51. Aglaia Foss: safe to say that she’s keeping her cards close.
52. Leora Galt: very like a strawberry.

The Test Actors Of America

We know that they are perpetually aggrieved. Although they are paid a regular, competitive salary; although they receive a level of public attention that is arguably beyond commensurate with their abilities; still, they find their duties odious.
They are regularly visited with calamities, of a severity not wholly vitiated by short duration. They are informed by telephone of the deaths of their spouses; volatile elements are stealthily added to their dinners; their furniture is eternally subject to seizure and removal. They are charged with devising and demonstrating appropriate human responses to such circumstances; since they can rarely be sure of the exact provenance of the trials they undergo, their stated craft mingles with their native sentiments. Naturally, they do not invariably play the Job; they are also visited with romances, a farrago of riches, fulsome winds of acclaim. But this, to them, is pasteboard, and vanity; each plaudit, each asset, dangled by a childish providence that’s apt enough to snatch it back.

Screenplay No. 6 (For Your Consideration)

"See?"

Featureless white space, with a man sitting on a wooden stool in the lower left quadrant. He has an electric guitar (Fender or Gibson, true school not new school). He is dressed in stylish semi-casual. He is meant to suggest a distinguished improvisor, but should have no background whatsoever in music. Have him improvise frenetically for two minutes with his head bent down in concentration. At the two-minute mark the director will audibly shout “Mark!”—at this, the improvisor will angrily lift his head, look directly at the camera, and shout “See?” Glossy cinematography.

A Souled Work

A souled work’s completion is warded off by the pique of the bored. A soul, involving multiple redundancies, unnecessaries, and false equations—the yet-undigested still nestled in its organs—shall not be borne, saith the worried fabricator. Who could say if the worry will itself come to fruit? The fabricators in question might also hold a tinge of this boredom with the selfsame work of flesh. They will balk at the hours taken to form a loop of bowel, and pinch out a length of appendix from spite.

Let’s double back now. The works we really want, in our nested heart of hearts, take too long to read. They repeatedly wander to places where we do not want them to go—a sentiment, on our parts, less out of compunctions and qualms than unalloyed impatience, the desire to have the damned thing accomplished and solved. Such works could not be souled and whole, I repeat, unless they had been painted piebald with marks, blots, and implicit crossings-out. I admit—I’d attribute this less to intrinsic formal advantage, or necessary moral acumen, than an unacknowledged disinclination on the human’s part to engage with anything that does not share, in some imagined way, its own characteristics/failings. Minutiae are intolerable, save when they are isomorphic (or at very least isometric) to one’s own; kinship in particles fosters kinship in attitude.