From The Minus Times #29, as republished in The Minus Times Collected.
“Classic Water”
by
David Berman
I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for
the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stagecoach.
I remember the night we camped out
and I heard her whisper
“think of me as a place” from her sleeping bag
with the centaur print.
I remember being in her father’s basement workshop
when we picked up an unknown man sobbing
over the shortwave radio
and the night we got so high we convinced ourselves
that the road was a hologram projected by the headlight beams.
I remember how she would always get everyone to vote
on what we should do next and the time she said
“all water is classic water” and shyly turned her face away.
At volleyball games her parents sat in the bleachers
like ambassadors from Indiana in all their midwestern schmaltz.
She was destroyed when they were busted for operating
a private judicial system within U.S. borders.
Sometimes I’m awakened in the middle of the night
by the clatter of a room service cart and I think back on Kitty.
Those summer evenings by the government lake,
talking about the paradox of multiple Santas
or how it felt to have your heart broken.
I still get a hollow feeling on Labor Day when the summer ends
and I remember how I would always refer to her boyfriends
as what’s-his-face, which was wrong of me and I’d like
to apologize to those guys right now, wherever they are:
No one deserves to be called what’s-his-face.
Benedikt had arranged all the shelves in the storeroom a long time ago: you could see right away what was where. Father-in-law had Gogol right next to Chekhov–you could look for a
hundred years and you’d never find it. Everything should have its own science, that is, its own system. So you don’t have to fuss around here and there to no good end, instead you can just go and find what you need.
Number eight wasn’t there. Well, maybe he made a mistake and put it in the wrong place … that happens … Here’s The Northern Herald, here’s The Herald of Europe, Russian Wealth, The Urals, Lights of the Urals, Beekeeping … no, not here … Banner, Literary Bashkortostan, New World … he’d read them, Turgenev, he’d read it, Yakub Kolas, read it, Mikhalkov, A Partisan’s Handbook, Petrarch, The Plague, The Plague of Domestic Animals: Fleas and Ticks, Popescu, Popka-the-Fool–Paint It Yourself, Popov, another Popov, Poptsov, The Iliad, Electric Current, he’d read it, Gone With the Wind, Russo-Japanese Poly-technical Dictionary, Sartakov, Sartre, Sholokhov: Humanistic Aspects, Sophocles, Sorting Consumer Refuse, Sovmorflot–60 Years, Stockard, Manufacture of Stockings and Socks, he’d read that one, that one and that one …
Chalk Farm, Chandrabkhangneshapkhandra Lal, vol. 18, Chaucer, John Cheever; The Black Prince, aha, a mistake, that didn’t go there, Chekhov, Chapchakhov, Chakhokhbili in Kar-sian, Chukh-Chukh: For Little People.
Chen-Chen: Tales of the Congo, Cherokee Customs, Chewing Gum Stories, Chingachguk the Giant Serpent, Chipmunks and Other Friendly Rodents, Chkalov, Chrysanthemums of Armenia Part V, Chukotka: A Demographic Review, Chukovsky, Chum– Dwelling of the Peoples of the Far North, Churchill: The Early Years, read it. Kafka, Kama River Steamboats, Kashas Derived from Whole Grain. Dial M for Murder, Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder on the Orient Express, Kirov’s Murder, Laudanum: The Poetic Experience, Lilliputians and Other Little People, Limonov, Lipchitz, Lipid-protein Tissue Metabolism … he’d read it all.
The Red and the Black, Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Blue and the Green, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Blue Cup, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Chocolate Prince, The Crimson Flower .. . that’s a good one … The Crimson Letter, Crimson Sails, Little Red Riding Hood, The Yellow Arrow, The Five Orange Pips, The White Steamboat, White Clothes, White Bim– Black Ear, T. H. White, The Woman in White, The Purple Island, The Black Tower, Black Sea Steamboats: Registry, this is where The Black Prince goes. Now …
Appleton, Bacon, Belcher, Blinman, Cooke, Culpepper, Honeyman, Hungerford, Liverich, Pearson, Saulter … Baldwin, Beardsley, Hatcliff, Morehead, Skinner, Topsfield, Whitehead, Whisker … Bairnsfather, Childe, Fairbrother, Motherwell, Littleboy … Ambler, Bulstrode, Chatterley, Doddleton, Dolittle, Fleetwood, Gabbler, Golightly, Hopkins, Sitwell, Skip-with, Standon, Swift, Talkien, Walker, Whistler. .. Hammer-stein, Hornebolt, Ironquill, Newbolt, Witherspoon … Canby, Mabie, Moody, Orwell, Whowood … Bathurst, Beerbohm, Beveridge, Brine, Dampier-Whetham, de La Fontaine, Dewey, Drinkwater, Dryden, Lapping, Shipwash, Washburn, Water-house .. . Addicock, Cockburn, Crapsey, Dickens, Dickinson, Fullalove, Gotobed, Hooker, Longfellow, Lovelace, Loveridge, Middlesex, Sexton, Simpkiss, Sinkin, Strangewayes, Sweetecok, Toplady . .. Fairweather, Flood, Fogg, Frost, Haleston, Rain-borough, Snowdon, Sun Yat-sen, Weatherby, Wyndham … Middleton, Overbury, Underhill… Coffin, Dyer, Feversham, Lockjaw, Paine, Rawbone …
The Vampire’s Embrace, The Dragon’s Embrace, The Foreigner’s Embrace, The Fatal Embrace, Passion’s Embrace, Fiery Embraces, The All-Consuming Flame of Passion … The Dagger’s Blow, The Poisoned Dagger, The Poisoned Hat, Poisoned Clothes, With Dagger and Poison, Poisonous Mushrooms of Central Russia, Golden-haired Poisoners, Arsenic and Old Lace, Death of a Salesman, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Death Comes at Midnight, Death Comes at Dawn, The Bloody Dawn. . .
Children of the Arbat, Vanya’s Children, Children of the Underground, Children of the Soviet Land, Kids in Cages, Children on Christ, The Boxcar Children, Nikita’s Childhood.
Marinina, Marinating and Pickling, Marine Artists, Marinetti –the Ideologist of Fascism, Mari-El Grammar: Uses of the Instrumental Case.
Klim Voroshilov, Klim Samgin, Ivan Klima, K. Li, Maximal Load in Concrete Construction: Calculations and Tables (dissertation).
Anais Nin, Nina Sadur, Nineveh: An Archeological Collection. Ninja in a Bloody Coat, Mutant Ninja Turtles Return, Papanin, Make Life from Whom?
Eugenia Grandet, Eugene Onegin, Eugene Primakov, Eugene Gutsalo, Eugenics: A Racist’s Weapon, Eugene Sue.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Tashkent–City of Bread, Bread –A Common Noun, Urengoi– The Land of Youth, Uruguay– An Ancient Land, Kustanai– The Steppe Country, Scabies–An Illness of Dirty Hands,.
Foot Hygiene on the Road, F. Leghold, Ardent Revolutionaries, The Barefoot Doctors, Flat Feet in Young Children, Claws: New Types, Shoe Polish Manufacture, Grow Up, Friend: What a Young Man Needs to Know about Wet Dreams, Hands Comrade!, Sewing Trousers, The Time of the Quadrupeds, Step Faster!, How the Millipede Made Porridge, Marinating Vegetables at Home, Faulkner, Fiji: Class Struggle, Fyodor’s Woe, Shakh-Reza-Pahlevi, Shakespeare, Shukshin.
Mumu, Nana, Shu-shu: Tales of Lenin, Gagarin: We Remember Yura, Tartar Women’s Costumes, Bubulina–A Popular Greek Heroine, Boborykin, Babaevsky, Chichibabin, Bibigon, Gogol, Dadaists Exhibition Catalogue, Kokoschka, Mimicry in Fish, Vivisection, Tiutiunnik, Chavchavadze, Lake Titicaca, Popocatepetl, Raising Chihuahuas, The Adventures of Tin Tin.
Afraid of guessing, Benedikt went through the treasures with shaking hands; he was no longer thinking about issue number eight. It’s not here, I’ll live. But book after book, journal after journal–he’d already seen this, read this, this, this, this, this … So what did this mean? Had he already read everything? Now what was he going to read? And tomorrow? A year from now?
His mouth went dry and his legs felt weak. He lifted the candle high; its bluish light parted the darkness and danced on the shelves along the books’ covers … maybe, up on the top …
Plato, Plotinus, Platonov, Plaiting and Knitting Jackets, Herman Plisetsky, Maya Plisetskaya, Plevna: A Guide, Playing with Death, Plaints and Songs of the Southern Slavs, Playboy. Plinths: A Guidebook, Planetary Thinking, Plan for Popular Development in the Fifth Five-year Plan. Plebeians of Ancient Rome. Plenary Sessions of the CPSU, The Horn of Plenty in Oil Painting, Pleurisy. Pliushka, Khriapa, and Their Merry Friends. Plying the Arctic Waters. The Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. He’d read them all.
From The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya. English translation by Jamey Gambrell.
The Crow Is Beautiful, 1988 by He Duoling (b. 1948)
Black Grouse in Gliding Flight, 1915 by Hans Emmenegger (1886-1940)
“Peach”
by
D.H. Lawrence
Would you like to throw a stone at me?
Here, take all that’s left of my peach.
Blood-red, deep:
Heaven knows how it came to pass.
Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up.
Wrinkled with secrets
And hard with the intention to keep them.
Why, from silvery peach-bloom,
From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem
This rolling, dropping, heavy globule?
I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it.
Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball?
It would have been if man had made it.
Though I’ve eaten it now.
But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball;
And because I say so, you would like to throw something at me.
Here, you can have my peach stone.
Pastoral (Angel Hunters), 1950 by Leonora Carrington (1917–2011)
Buddhist Lama, 1875 by Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904)
I went by my favorite used bookstore the other week to pick up the copy of Tatyana Tolstoya’s novel The Slynx last week. (I’m halfway through it, and it’s fantastic stuff—dirty, cruel, funny, unexpectedly moving—like a filthy generative loam that isn’t exactly poisonous, but will certainly yield side effects.) After seeing this diagram earlier in the week, I looked for a copy of Thomas C. Oden’s 1969 multidisciplinary
text Structure of Awareness. I was unsuccessful there, but I did spy something called The Shape of Content by the artist Ben Shahn. I’ve long been a fan of his work, so I picked it up and thumbed through. I ended up reading most of it this weekend.
The Shape of Content (the title now is not exactly ironic, I guess) collects a series of lectures Shahn gave to Harvard students in the late 1950s. The first lecture is a somewhat boring apologia, a kind of What the hell am I doing here?, but the following material is good stuff, if not exactly fresh. There are plenty of illustrations too, mostly unrelated to the, uh, content of the words (although they are of course intimately related). Illustrations like the one above, and this one, below, make the 144 pager seem, well, kinda short.
Here’s Harvard UP’s blurb:
In his 1956–57 Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, the Russian-born American painter Ben Shahn sets down his personal views of the relationship of the artist―painter, writer, composer―to his material, his craft, and his society. He talks of the creation of the work of art, the importance of the community, the problem of communication, and the critical theories governing the artist and his audience.
“Victory”
by
Denis Johnson
the woman whose face has just finished breaking
with a joy so infinite
and heavy that it might be grief has won
a car on a giveaway show, for her family,
for an expanse of souls that washes from a million
picture tubes onto the blank reaches
of the air. meanwhile, the screams are packing
the air to a hardness: in the studio
the audience will no longer move, will be caught
slowly, like ancient, staring mammals, figuring
out the double-cross within the terrible progress
of a glacier. here, i am suddenly towering
with loneliness, repeating to this woman’s
only face, this time, again, i have not won.
Biblioklept 