A Robert Creeley story

I went looking for something else and found this short story:

Last night talking to the poet Claes Andersson, who is also a member of the Finnish parliament and a psychologist, he tells us he had encouraged a young woman, a patient, to look to books for a relieving sense that many feel as threatened as she in the world. The book she randomly finds is Kafka’s The Trial.

Robert Creeley, Autobiography (Madras and New York: Hanuman Books, 1990).

A Wikipedia article describes Andersson as “a Finland-Swedish psychiatrist, author, jazz musician, politician and former member of the Finnish Parliament.”

Museo Faggiano

in The New York Times, an amazing story from Lecce, Italy: “Centuries of Italian History Are Unearthed in Quest to Fix Toilet.” The result is a museum, Museo Faggiano.

I am relieved that our plumber did not unearth centuries of Italian history when he replaced a pipe in our bathroom last fall. It would have made things too confusing.

[If you take the museum’s 3-D tour, be sure to look through the glass floors wherever possible.]

The last Sinatra song

A YouTube treasure: Jonathan Schwartz plays a recording of the last song from Frank Sinatra’s last performance. It’s Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s “The Best Is Yet to Come.” The occasion was a party on the final night of the Frank Sinatra Desert Classic golf tournament, February 25, 1995. Elsewhere, there’s a video clip. And here, while it lasts, is the complete performance.

I’ve been thinking about Sinatra after watching Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All. Every so often, the cable company gives us a free weekend of extra channels. For once, I found something to watch.

[The brief bit of “New York, New York” from November 19, 1995, can’t really count as a song. The words ”The best is yet to come” appear on Sinatra’s gravestone.]

Simpsons grammar and usage

“Inflammable means flammable? What a country”: Dr. Nick Riveria, in The Simpsons episode “Trilogy of Error” (April 29, 2001). This episode is filled with language comedy, mostly by way of Lisa’s science project, a grammar-correcting robot named Linguo. She has to repair Linguo after Homer gives it beer:

Lisa: Almost done. Just lay still.

Linguo: Lie still.

Lisa: I knew that. Just testing.

Linguo: Sentence fragment.

Lisa: “Sentence fragment” is also a sentence fragment.

Linguo: Must conserve battery power.

Me too. I’ve been grading.

[It’s really a grammar-and-usage-correcting robot.]

Mark Trail and Abbey Powell

[Mark Trail, April 14, 2015.]

OMG, Abbey Powell is a real person at the USDA. And now she’s trapped in the Trail world. Run, Abbey, run!

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

Ariel

[Left right: Matti Pellonpää as Mikkonen, Turo Pajala as Taisto Kasurinen, Susanna Haavisto as Irmeli Pihlaja.]

Ariel is a 1988 film from Finland, directed by Aki Kaurismäki. It’s the second film of his Proletariat Trilogy. Like The Man Without a Past (2002), it is dark and funny. Elaine thought of Umberto Eco’s characterization of Casablanca : Ariel, too, is “the movies,” with many deadpan moments of noir homage and parody. And yes, the protagonist Taisto looks as if he stepped out of Pulp Fiction (made six years later).

One of the many delights of this film is its wonderfully eclectic, eccentric soundtrack. What a treat to hear Casey Bill Weldon’s “WPA Blues” accompanying a scene of looking for work.

To understand why the sequence above is funny, you’ll have to watch the film.

[Weldon is identified as “Bill Casey” in the credits. Oops.]

Word of the Day: lotusland

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day is lotusland:

1 : a place inducing contentment especially through offering an idyllic living situation

2 : a state or an ideal marked by contentment often achieved through self-indulgence

M-W explains:

In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus and his men discover a magical land of lotus-eaters. Some of the sailors eat the delicious “lotus” and forget about their homeland, pleading to stay forever in this “lotusland.” (It is likely that the lotus in question was inspired by the fruit of a real plant of the buckthorn family, perhaps the jujube, whose sweet juice is used in candy making and which has given its name to a popular fruity candy.) The label lotusland is now applied to any place resembling such an ideal of perfection, but it also carries connotations of indolence and self-indulgence, possibly derived from the way the sailors refused to work once they reached the original lotusland. The dreamy unreality of a lotusland is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Well, sort of. Lotusland is not a nice place to visit, precisely because to visit is to stay. As Robert Fitzgerald’s 1961 translation puts it,



The Lotos Eaters offer a dangerous form of xenía [hospitality] — an anti-hospitality, really, that erases the identity of the xeinos [guest]. There’s nothing malevolent about it: the Lotos Eaters have some choice stuff, and they’re happy to share. But to eat the lotus is to lose one’s nostos [homecoming]; the guest consumes the lotus, and the lotus consumes the guest. Think of the language of substance abuse: crackhead , meth head . The substance takes over the user’s consciousness.

I first encountered the lotus as a schoolboy, in Ross Russell’s Bird Lives (1973), a biography of Charlie Parker. One chapter is titled “Yardbird in Lotus Land.” I thought lotus land was slang for California. I didn’t yet know about Homer.

[If you’ve seen what happens to lines of poetry in various browsers on various devices, you will understand why Fitzgerald’s lines appear as an image.]

Domestic comedy

“I’m just going to make a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll put water on for you.”

“I’ll continue narrating.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Billie Holiday, 29¢

[Billie Holiday stamp by James Leddy. 2¾″ × 2½″.]

I’ve had this artistamp on my office door for many years. It predates the USPS’s Billie Holiday stamp (September 17, 1994) and must postdate the first-ounce stamp’s rise to twenty-nine cents (February 3, 1991). My dad is a fan — of Billie Holiday, not of the post office. He heard her sing at the Apollo Theater, sometime in the 1950s.

More by James Leddy
Abe’s shades : Boo! : Happy holidays : Hardy mums : Questionnaire : Thanks!

[Billie Holiday’s centenary: April 7, 2015.]

Scott Pelley’s Bob Schieffer

Scott Pelley, paying tribute to Bob Schieffer on the CBS Evening News: “Bob Schieffer, my friend, my colleague, my mentor.” He left out doppelgänger. Doppelgänger.

[If you’re reading in a reader: there is an apostrophe in the post title. I added it after posting so as not to complicate the URL, not realizing that it wouldn’t have done so.]