Of Samovars and Dogs the Walrus Spoke

He has a brass samovar – made in Moscow, he proclaims lifting off its top – everyone stops – They ooh and they awe. Someone offered him $200. He had just bought it for fifty dollars less – can’t pass up a bargain, he proclaims. This is were they bring their dogs on Sunday mornings. There are four dogs on leashes here. They sniff each others’ butts. The people sniff each others’ wallets. I got some Avery sunglasses yesterday. Are they prescription? They are Bally. I’ve been admiring your silvers. Nice dog. What a nice boy. A boy, he says, passed away on the operating table (supposedly this was on the news) yesterday, he claimed, but he came back. And when he woke up he announced, “There are dogs in heaven.” What a story. Then he repeats the story about the offer for his samovar. I think I liked the hockey crowd better. They merely paint themselves orange and scream while waiting for a fight to break out. These people have ritualized their aggression way too much. They are too polite. There is a G W Bush smirk on their faces and they chatter.

In the end all fall victim to the object of our adoration, perhaps because passion runs its course more swiftly than any other human emptions, perhaps as a result of our excessive familiarity with the object of desire – Roberto Bolano – The Insufferable Gaucho, 2010 p78

An imagined place

            Full of imaginary things

Though they might be real

            Things is some real space

Or they might be imaginary things

            In a real space

            This is very common

Things only exist in space

They must be some place

            Or other
Even if it is imagined

Your judgment… is true, but not all of it. That is, it is all true, but what you have expressed [to a critic after reviewing Anna Karenina] does not express all that I meant… It is one of the true things that can be said – L Tolstoy

A community is an abstract collective – one person who by means of a visual or aural presence is assigned to represent a class (another equally abstract concept). As the spokesman of his community he said…..

Too many… are enlisted too quickly into society’s privileged classes to remain convincingly or for long, society’s critics - Pankaj Mishra – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11 p10

17 states have a state rock but only one has a state gun. There are three granite states, not just one.

[There is] the growing assumption that literature cannot affect our future, that the future is in other hands – Alfred Kazin, 1960

Smear campaigns work – they tell us what we want to believe

Late justice may / be more useless / than none – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010 p259

Solutions that are marketable

Solutions that have panache

Simple solutions for

            Complex situations

One solution fits all

Should [there] be a meaning, not outside humanity in general, but outside each consciousness – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980  p72

NTLU – No Teacher Left Unaccountable

I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky / in a sea shallow enough to stand up in – Fernando Pasoa

NCAA take from March Madness:

            Ticket Sal                   $15.5   million

            TV Licenses fee             $770     million

            Corporate sponsorships      $185     million

                        TOTAL to NCAA           $950.5 million

We [the critics] write words about words – and then as the conversation progresses, we write words about words about words about words – Sam Anderson – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11  p11