The Restless Lens

Walking poem (a selection of places family members have lived)

From the Evening Shade of this Poplar Bluff, I can see a Golden Meadow shining in the floor of such a Pleasant Valley that I begin to lose interest in leaving for New Orleans.

I love the kind of thinking that produces beautiful stuff like this. The Embroidered Computer

David Byrne, “Take Me to the River” Stop Making Sense, nineteen-freaking-eighty-four. note ballcap.

We are dreaming sleepers, curious provincials, winning losers, subversive suckups, creative consumers, patriot traitors, soldiers of god and drug addicts all.

Killed the afternoon at the seafood shed along the bayou

How I rebel: Seek understanding, not answers / Use as little as possible / Make new things / Always be kind / Don’t add to the noise / Have no fear

studying ‘peripheries’ is no less rewarding than studying ‘centres’

In How the Latin East contributed to a unique cultural world, an essay interesting not only for the history, but also its way of seeing it.

Today I learned about the Draupner Wave, observed in the North Sea in 1995, confirming the extistence of long-reported “rogue waves.”

Beach shells, Grand Isle State Park

Any romp on Wikipedia or afternoon on a busy street will quickly illustrate to anyone given to such musings that the past is not a textbook timeline of beginnings, middles, and ends or a catalog of which objectives were accomplished and which were not. History is a partial record of the ongoing loss of the present in which connections, and thus “direction,” can only be observed in hindsight, after exercising considerable discretion with the data. As such, in order pass the present between the points we put on the timeline in peace, stability, and with eyes always on justice, how could we ever simply aim to “win” the future as if it were the last point to draw? The past can be lost and the future will never conclude (we hope); our timelines are too short and scant to suggest any reason for such confidence. The future can of course be influenced, but it cannot be made. The most important object of attention, therefore, is the present, for if we are wisely guiding our present as it slips away, we need not worry about the direction of our future.

There are two types of people in the world: those who keep their kitchen utensils hidden in drawers and those who keep them in crocks out on the counter.

I’m sorry, somehow, I’m just now, after watching it in a bar, understanding that “It’s a Wonderful Life” is one of the most subversive movies in American history. THEY PAY OFF THIS MAN’S DEBT BECAUSE HE’S A GOOD NEIGHBOR. Wild.

The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture…. the writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others, in such a way as never to rest on any one of them.

Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, 1967.

When I’m in New Orleans, I eat at my friends’ restaurants. That’s what a good life looks like.

We built the town’s first bypass to ensure quiet in the neighborhood, to keep the rustle of trees and the soft clatter of neighbors’ dishes in the air, to hold on to the way it had always been here, and then, because it was so convenient, we got in our cars to find something more exciting to do, something impressive to bring back with us, and that really took off, so we ended up ringing the town with bypasses, for reassurance, to bring some public life to all that damn intimate near-silence with the Doppler shift of distant traffic, and now we can’t remember why we hadn’t wanted it like this in the first place, or figure out why, though they are more lavish than ever, our homes don’t hold as firm in our memories as they used to, when we’d go out.

It rained early afternoon in South Louisiana today that kind of rain that starts hesitant and gentle from a smooth grey sky, then swells up in a gloom to a full and satisfying soak rolling down, but just keeps getting louder, becomes a roar that rips the light out the air and down the storm drains with impatient violence, water shrapnel whizzing through the air every which way, translucency imposed upon every sensation, and the water in the yard rises so fast it‘s like it’s coming right for you.

Madness is the result of the shock produced in man by his own intelligence and we still haven’t recovered from the trauma three million years later.

Josè Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Nothing good happens quickly.

Today I learned…what an entrepôt is. Wikipedia is the best. If you don’t already chip in to support Wikipedia, please do. It’s among the last vestiges of what we once pretended the internet could be.