Toward Bouldering

My second attempt at climbing the gym wall. It's okay as long as I go straight up, but when there is an overhang, even a slight one (maybe 110 degrees?) it's impossibly difficult for my untrained body! But it's fun. Maybe next year I'll be bouldering in Boulder, Colorado. Who knows?

Rangitoto Island

It's only 20 minutes away on ferry from Devonport and it's a world apart! A dormant volcano with a beautiful silhouette, its coast is made of rugged lava, then as you go up higher the flora drastically changes. At the top you get a breathtaking view 360 degrees around.

It's an hour's walk to the summit, no sweat. What a wonderful hike it was.

Wild Seagulls

This morning when I was walking I saw three seagulls on the road, making menacing noises one to the other and seemingly in dispute. I thought to myself "Is this the mating season?" but couldn't tell which ones were males and which the female. I kept looking, and one of them suddenly looked at me and came flying low straightly toward me with its beaks open and making that menacing sound---to attack me! I swung my arm and it abruptly turned away, but I was rather shocked to see a seagull taking such an action toward a human. Hey, this is not Tokyo and you are not a crow, I said.

Later in the afternoon in the sky there were more seagulls flying, making THAT sound, squeaking, menacing. It looked like a battle, or simplysort of display, showing off, I don't know. But the seagulls looked so dangerous. And the light was bright and the blue of the sky was suddenly profound and looked as if we were already in Spring.

I will remember today as the first day of (possible) spring.

No More Only Poem

This tells about the anxiety we all had to go through when we began writing:

Éclats du vent: chacun rêve, enfant, du Seul Poème. Être poète, le devenir, c'est peut-être épuiser ce rêve, l'avoir renié. C'est assurer un manque éternel, celui de la connaissance. Pour quoi le poète, cet inconnu, est en effet par son poème le connu dans sa totalité, son allure mêmes.

Édouard Glissant, Soleil de la conscience, 1956, p. 41.

Te wiki o te reo Maori

This is the Maori language week! Check out the website: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/tereo/

Paul Ricoeur

Today at the book store I casually bought a copy of The Conflict of Interpretations. I don't know why, because I don't even need it any time soon. Then later, I learned that Ricoeur had died this past May. I didn't even know it!

His contributions to the theory of narrative is one thing I'll have to study seriously, in relation to my NARRATOLOGY AS PEDAGOGY project. Now let him sleep. The books remain.

Maori Phrase Book (1)

1. Nau mai, haere mai. (Welcome, come here.)

2. Ko Erana ahau. (I am Erana.)

3. Ko Mereana koe. (You are Mereana.)

4. Ko Timoti ia. (He is Timoti.)

5. Ko Hine ia. (She is Hine.)

Remember the set of ahau-koe-ia. Then the triangle of toku-tou-tona. My, your, his/her, respectively.

6. Ko Erana toku ingoa. (My name is Erana.)

7. Ko Mereana tou ingoa. (Your name is Mereana.)

8. Ko Timoti tona ingoa. (His name is Timoti.)

9. Ko Hine tona ingoa. (Her name is Hine.)

Some key questions.

10. No hea koe? (Where are you from?)

11. No Tamaki Makaurau ahau. (I'm from Auckland.)

12. Ko wai tou ingoa? (Who is your name?)

13. Ko Awhina Rawiri toku ingoa. (Awhina Rawiri is my name.)

Now some greetings.

14. Kia ora! (Hi!)

15. Kia ora! (Thank you.)

16. Kia ora!!! (Awesome.)

17. Tena koe! (Hello: to one person.)

18. Tena korua! (Hello: to two people.)

19. Tena koutou! (Hello: to three or more people.)

20. Tena koutou katoa! (Hello y'all!)

21. Haere ra! (Goodbye: to person leaving.)

22. E noho ra! (Goodbye: to person staying.)

23. Hei konei ra! (Goodbye: said by either.)

24. Ka kite! (See ya!)

25. Ka kite ano! (See you again.)

26. Ka kite ano i a koe! (See you again.)

27. Ata marie! (Good morning.)

28. Po marie! (Good night.)

29. Kia pai too ra! (Have a good day.)

Asking about conditions.

30. Kei te pehea koe? (How are you?)

31. Kei te pehea korua? (How are you two?)

32. Kei te pehea koutou? (How are you more than two?)

33. E pehea ana koe? (How are you?)

34. E pehea ana korua? (How are you two?)

35. E pehea ana koutou? (How are you more than two?)

36. Kei te pehea koe? --- Kei te pai ahau. (I am fine.)

37. Kei te pehea korua? ---Kei te pai maua. (We two are fine.)

38. Kei te pehea koutou? ---Kei te pai matou. (We more than two are fine.)

39. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te ngenge ahau. (I am sleepy.)

40. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te riri ahau. (I am angry.)

41. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te koa ahau. (I am happy.)

42. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te pouri ahau. ( I am sad.)

43. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te wera ahau. (I am hot.)

44. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te hiamoe ahau. (I am tired.)

45. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te mauiui ahau. (I am sick.)

46. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te makariri ahau. (I am cold.)

47. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te hoha ahau. (I am bored.)

48. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te hiakai ahau. (I am hungry.)

49. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te hiainu ahau. (I am thirsty.)

50. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te matemoe ahau. (I am exhausted.)

51. Kei te pehea koe? ---Kei te matekai ahau. (I am starving.)

52. Kei te pehea koe? ---Tino pai ahau! (Very good.)

53. Kei te pehea koe? ---Ka nui te pai ahau! (Really good.)

54. Kei te pehea koe? ---Taua ahua ano ahau! (As per usual.)

55. Ahua pai. (Sort of okay.)

55. Ahua ngenge. (Sort of tired.)

56. Ko wai tou whaea? (Who is your mother?)

57. Ko wai tou matua? (Who is your father?)

58. Ko wai tou kuia? (Who is your grandmother?)

59. Ko wai tou koro? (Who is your grandfether?)

Juilletistes/Aoutiens

You know these words?
Those who take their vacances in July and August, respectively.
I want to be a Septembrien then!

Ni rhetorique, ni syntaxe

And this truly extraordinary aspects of Eluard that Jean points out correctly:

Rien ne lui est plus étranger que la rhétorique, sous quelque aspect que ce soit. Rien ne lui est plus étranger même que la syntaxe, dans la mesure où la pure continuité des messages visuels et sonores s'y substitue à tout arrangement constructif de la phrase. (97)

No rhetoric, no syntax. And he continues to say:

La forme qu'elle affecte le plus volontiers est celle du simple énoncé. Elle nomme, elle dit, elle désigne. (ibid.)

Wow. How true!

Facilite, evidence

Another great quote from Eluard by Raymond Jean (96):

Les poèmes ont toujours de grandes marges blanches, de grandes marges de silence où la mémoire ardente se consume pour recréer un délire sans passé.

The reader's memory plays a great part in interpreting a poem, naturally. And the interpretation (as an addendum to the text of the poem itself) is a pastless, therefore unjustifiable, delirium. In this sense a poem is a mirror of the reader's mind, conscious and unconscious. What plays in the margin is the experience, and it presents itself as an unrepeatable, unique occurence.

What does a panophobe fear?

The answer is: everything.

I boght the local beer Tui (named after a species of NZ bird) and on each crown cap there is a little quiz. E.g.:

What does a panophobe fear?
A. Everything.

Where are the 2006 Olympics to be held?
A. Turin.

I find this fascinating. In the US there was a brand of beer called Red Dog that did the exactly same thing. These are trivia, for sure, but at the same time a kind of poetry of tous les jours. I think about the person who write this.

Are you afraid of everything? Poor pal.

And Her Name Is

Je t'appellerai Visuelle
Et multiplierai ton image.

---Paul Eluard

Raymond Jean writes: "C'est que, pour Eluard, Picasso est l'introducteur à la réalité par excellence." (55) Here is a great quote from Eluard (what he writes about Picasso):

Homme, femme, statue, table, guitare, redeviennent des hommes, des femmes, des statues, des tables, des guitares, plus familiers qu'auparavant, parce que compréhensible, sensibles, à l'esprit comme aux sens.

Eluard, the natural. It's a pity I didn't bring his two-volume Pleiades with me...

La vision chez Eluard

Monde des miroirs, monde des YEUX FERTILES, monde de la connaissance immédiate et de la nécessaire réciprocité. L'amour ne peut être que la reconnaissance du visible, parce que le visible est ce qui fonde la forme la plus directe, la plus riche et la plus accomplie de la communication.

Raymond Jean, ELUARD (Seuile, 1968), 51.

Wilder's Statements

Thornton Wilder has an enviable bio. Born in Madison, Wisconsin (well, I don't particularly envy this), he grew up in Shanghai as the Consul-General's son. Then he lived in California, New Haven, Roma (where he studied Archeology). He has an M.A. in French lit from Princeton and taught some French and comp lit at Chicago. Then he worked as an intelligence officer of the US Air Force in North Africa and Italy. (By then he was a succesful writer, of course.) China, Romania, and Africa. Ezra Pound would have envied his life course.

Wilder was very unsatisfied by his contemporary theater. Here is what he wrote in the preface to OUR TOWN AND OTHER PLAYS (Penguin):

I believed every word of ULYSSES and of Proust and of THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, as I did of hundreds of plays when I read them. It was on the stage that imaginative narration became false. (...) I found the word for it: it aimed to be SOOTHING. The tragic had no heat; the comic had no bite; the social criticism failed to indict us with responsibility. (8)

And his belief in the concinuity of literary history (as history of creation):

The play [THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH] is deeply indebted to James Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE. I should be very happy if, in the future, some author should feel similarly indebted to any work of mine. Literature has always more resembled a torch race than a furious dispute among heirs. (...) I am not an innovator but a rediscoverer of forgotten goods and I hope a remover of obtrusive bric-à-brac. (14)

I especially like the final sentence's "a rediscoverer of forgotten goods." This is the basic attitude of Poundian poetics, isn't it?

But then

Such a "No" at this kind of occasion means only the wish that no such brutality should enter one's life-space. It's sheer selfishness, the same kind that makes us blind to what is happening elsewhere.

London

My trip to Tonga was fantastic and hilarious, but oh, London. On 11 September 2001 I was in London. In the following days people feared, and it was felt riding on a tube. That fear has now, after almost four years, materialized itself. Do not use death as an option. To live and let live is the only basis for our world. Do not kill. Do not.

And My Joy Today Is

And my joy today is
that slice of blue
gradually revealed by the splitting,
dark clouds of winter.
The foothills of Sandia are now tinged red
as if by blood
by the lowering rays of the sun.
My visual field is blocked randomly
by the drops of crystallized water
their ambiguous purity.
A high-school friend of mine
is working particle physics there at the Institute.
What can his research be?
Destruction of the world, or the fifth sun?
‘Sandia’ means watermelon in Spanish.
In this dry, freezing north
wind on the New Mexico plateaus
looking at the mountain’s luminous, rugged surface
I imagine watermelon’s sweet, red pulp
and the summer when dogs sleep, languished
in rocky shades
and I smile.
My joy today is this blue sky of winter.
However hard I try, I cannot recall
how death smelled in that summer, and
my grandmother’s voice.

In-class Readings

We also read a lot in class. Some of the materials that Jen has chosen include poems such as Marianne Moore's "The Fish" and Elizabeth Bishop's "The Moose", or Garcia Lorca's famous, superb essay on duende. Each require more detailed commentary which I'll attempt in the future.

Finally, I'll post my work for Day 4 above.

Soundless

Then we proceeded to write on an item--an abstract one--from the list, personifying it. Our time being limited (15 minutes rule here) I started in no time without a set direction, and failed to 'personify' it. But I saw some other possibilities. What I chose was "soundlessness".

SOUNDLESS

Is there a difference between silence and soundlessness?

There is a big old fir tree in Siberia. After four-hundred years of tranquil existence, now it's falling down under the weight of acid snow. The area is remote, at least a couple of hundred kilometers in any direction from a human settlement. What sound do you think you hear? The answer is: no sound, as there is no human ear nearby to hear the tree fall.

One summer in the 1970s I found a swallow's nest under the roof of a neighboring store. There were young swallows inside, old enough to eat live worms whole, but not yet beginning to learn flight. When I approached, they all fell voiceless, an extreme silence. I felt sorry for them. Silence is a state of fear.

One winter day in the 1990s I was standing on the beach in Tofino, a town on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It's the town that you first see after a trans-Pacific flight Tokyo-Seattle. Ten-meter waves were rolling in from the northern Pacific, roaring, and it was dreadfully cold. Drenched by the splashes of the waves, I was exhilarated. I couldn't see far, I could hear nothing. In this resounding, monstrous breaking waves and typhoon-like wind, what I experienced was soundlessness.

Soundlessness is an altered state of consciousness.

Obsessions

Then Jen asked us to make a list of obsessions. I am not sure if one can bring one's obsessions into consciousness. But there are some recurrent motifs that do appear in what I write, especially when I'm writing off the top of my head. Here is a temporary list:


sky
dogs
sea
summer
winter
grand parents
bilingual areas, bilingual people
the US Southwest
islands (esp. Hawaii)
deserts
people in transition
tranquility, soundlessness
death
fear of death
contingency of existence
humidity / temperature
futile efforts
volcanoes
sacred mountains
sun, sunshine, shadows
rain, clouds
the passing of clouds
the sense of isolation