Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 09 May 2008 | 2008 13

"At first, she was unable to read. To begin with she was bothered by the bustle and movement; then, when the train started moving, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow that beat against the left-hand window and stuck to the glass, and the sight of a conductor passing by, all bundled up and covered with snow on one side, and the talk about the terrible blizzard outside, distracted her attention. Further on it was all the same; the same jolting and knocking, the same snow on the window, the same quick transitions from steaming heat to cold and back to heat, the same flashing of the same faces in the semi-darkness, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and understand what she was reading. Annushka was already dozing, holding the little red bag on her knees with her broad hands in their gloves, one of which was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She wanted too much to live herself. When she read about the heroine of the novel taking care of a sick man, she wanted to walk with inaudible steps round the sick man's room; when she read about a Member of Parliament making a speech, she wanted to make that speech; when she read about how Lady Mary rode to hounds, teasing her sister-n-law and surprising everyone with her courage, she wanted to do it herself. But there was nothing to do, and so, fingering the smooth knife with her small hands, she forced herself to read."

~Anna Karenina. Book I, chapt. 29. Translation, Pevear/ Voloshonsky.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 08 May 2008 | 2311 25

Returned home to write a few more lines of this sort:

Erntol swept the thunder dust into his atomizer tray and touched up the sagging Tri Neb with an ad hoc smattering of star plaster and Bega chunks. Then the twin moons of Golgoth struck, sending their heat wave over the Naptha Jet: this signalled the “O’ Clock” and time for lunch...

Erntol then travels to a nearby planet for his favortie meal of Som-Soms and Quirtz, and it happens that this planet very nearly resembles the one we were discussing earlier: the people, though technologically advanced, are all hunting-and-gathering types and have no buildings at all save for a single mega complex where an abundance of foodstuffs and dry articles and useful technologies are stored. (It is a strange fact of the Erntol Universe that many planets are named after obscure historical personages, like the elementary schools in the U.S. today; and this one, called Hal Booker Davis, follows that pattern.) Sorry to say, several especially distrustful nomadic groups have lately banded together for the purpose of storming the mega complex, and this is to interpose a serious obstacle between Erntol and his Quirtz.

*
Now doing 'word work' and studying for a sort of food-preparer's exam, familiarizing myself with, for example, the proper internal temperature of beef... In idle shop moments, reading Joseph Campbell these days --his interview with Bill Moyers.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 08 May 2008 | 0101 09

Seem to have lost my way and am not sure what to attempt. Johnny North, as if sensing this, has recommended having a discussion in this forum of the movie Dead Man, which sounds really good, so I'm pencilling that in for May the 23rd, if that suits. No cajolery, but if anyone should wish to watch and talk about a movie around then, they're welcome to.

These lines from a William Blake poem occur in Dead Man, by the way:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

(The movie's lead character is named William Blake. The full poem can be found here.)

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By holly, 07 May 2008 | 0909 13

read this today on the role of the mangrove in Myanmar area and the result of its disappearance.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 06 May 2008 | 2109 43

Can they find out, what it read. Is it somewhere, what I did. Is it hidden, I have touched. Is it PPPWET?

I'm Going to have to get her a new one. The Old man told me PPPWet. The old man told me: get in the box.

Old in the closet and old in the sweater box.. Old: was hit by an accident, never did I push.... never did I PUSH, DO I PUSH THE BOX! ....

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 05 May 2008 | 0101 08

Then there's a deus ex machina type situation where a letter bomb arrives (blackberry enclosed) and in order to keep it from detonating Margrum has to type a message very quickly with the proper punctuation. Higgs takes the opportunity to lord his superior knowledgeableness over Margrum, not only pointing out each of the missing marks but giving the reason for each one and saying "apposition" quite a few times. Problem is that, even after the message has apparently been typed correctly, the bomb continues ticking and seems poised to go off. Higgs, apoplectic, insists "the bomb is wrong", but offers no further suggestions; so that Margrum is compelled to employ his reflexes once again: he throws the letter back in the box, puckishly lifts the delivery flag up, and tackles the fear-rooted Higgs into the safety of a nearby ditch.

It is unclear what lesson is to be drawn from this episode (had the message in fact been typed correctly? Will purveyors of authority ever be baffled by still great authorities?) yet Higgs' confidence in his ability to punctuate is, for a long time, shaken. "I was a fool to have been mad at you Margrum," he says, "I'd be lost without your erratic idiom." The other pats him friendily but doesn't speak. He's gazing wildly at the demolished box.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 03 May 2008 | 2311 20

What do you imagine Clinton was thinking about this?

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 02 May 2008 | 2008 25

The old man was using the mouse on the flat part of the computer. He complained of the wandering cursor. The old man was advised to use the touch pad instead. The old man was advised to purchase a mouse pad and also told what that was. The old man said he knew what a mouse pad was. He expressed he hadn't played solitaire in ages. He complained of the wandering of the cursor. He expressed that, gradually, this was growing familiar.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 02 May 2008 | 0707 58

The latest conflagration between Margrum and Higgs had to do with the placement of commas. Higgs was something of the view of Karl Kraus that a misplaced comma was a sort of “gateway drug” that led inexorably to moral depravity. Once you were careless with commas, you were careless with everything, and ultimately with the things most important.

Margrum was more of the view that commas were a form of decoration –here, there, whatever “looked right”, whatever “felt right”. None of it bore any resemblance to how he actually thought or spoke, so what did it matter? Writing was communication --an especially perverse form of it-- and in the end you knew what he meant.

The battle (inspired by a play of Margrum's that he'd asked Higgs to read -- probably in the expectation of receiving unvarnished praise) grew so furiously intense that soon the two were not speaking to each other. Margrum refused to leave his hut; Higgs barricaded himself in his office; and knowledgeable parties began to whisper that the partnership was over at last.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 02 May 2008 | 0101 28

I ran across the track,
the planks rumbled beneath;
a dog met another dog
behind the dog park fence.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 01 May 2008 | 1212 03

Otherwise, spent much of the day abed, resting, concluding Sot Weed Factor. Attempted, did not achieve, post on "blog models" --what were the examplars of blogs, as I thought? "Assuming we know what a blog is, what did we think a blog could most be?" I've always fancied the style of Things Magazine, in which hyperlinks are frequently used as a form of punctuation, the use of these things ("/") too... Attempted, did not achieve, post on indigenous peoples: not only Sotweed but Typee and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man has gotten me thinking about it. Finally some "word work" and, on Room's, the rocket man garb.... Feeling the need to watch Dead Man again. (I appreciated, among other things, the way it had been cut.)

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 01 May 2008 | 1111 34

I drew a stick figure of a woman with a protruding hand which looked like it could be “giving someone the finger” (or just waving a finger) and beneath it put in block letters the caption, “I would never steal from your store.” I then drew beneath that a stick figure of a man with an eggish head, mustaches and glasses, sitting at a desk and writing something. Beneath him was the caption, “Why am I making a check out to you?” These were drawings I'd made of a dream that morning. I would look at them sometimes throughout the day.

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 30 April 2008 | 0101 26

In March Vester shed his leaves and the vines weakened and fell from his stem. No longer was he calling the gardener, no longer did he ask for his soil to be turned, no longer did he stand for whole days in the shower; and, removing his feet from the pot at last, he was less frequently wheeled to the green house. The soil grew gray and dry around him, he did not attempt to break into the garden, his eyebrows and eyelids left him.

John Fowler and Bob Tens did what they could but Vester spoke in fevers of a final solution. “I have been a Snickers, I have been a plant,” he said, “now both of you go see Stoamses and tell him the final stage of development has come.'”

Special From Our Own Correspondent
Submitted By Paul Deppler, 28 April 2008 | 2311 37

Was stunned to come across this passage in The Sotweed Factor the other day -- another one for the list of Elm and Ivy mentions:

He endeavored to push her aside in order to get at the cowering poet, but she clung to him like a vine upon an oak, so that he could only hobble across the parlor.

True to say, this is oak and vine, not ivy and elm, but the same concept would seem at work. (Full list here). Below are renewed efforts at "sententiae' after the long model trailblazed by A.T. I'm now thinking of the form as a sort of syllabically unhindered haiku, or very short story; and, while the first was a success to my thinking --the second, okay-- the third and the fourth remain stuck in the queue.