This just in from The Beat Museum:
Jack Kerouac‘s literary agent, Sterling Lord, recently re-discovered a manuscript of a play Jack wrote almost fifty years ago. Entitled “The Beat Generation” it will be published by Thunder Mouth Press later this year.
According to the Associated Press, the play by Kerouac is “based on his drunken Beat adventures, has been”
I guess its serendipity. I spent part of Friday afternoon updating the links page to reflect a long list of literary websites, resources, and weblogs. I did this with the hope that NoCategories might become a more literary endevor.
Today, I recieved an email requesting that I write a book review, and an offer for a free review copy.
I know I complained earlier about all the “Buzz Balls & Hype” that can engulf a website that writes book reviews.
It seems as if the realm of the literary blog is already beginning to diverge. There are the so called “literary blogs” that discuss reading and writing, and then there are the ones that serve promotional purposes for a struggling writer, the so-called “author website”. Need I bother to mention that I prefer the former to the later?
Its not just something that happens to literary websites. I’ve noticed a recent proliferation of advertizing on the Gawker family of blogs. On one recent entry — it is a very funny article called “Lies I Have Told Verizon DSL Support Today” — the ads are so thick you can barely find the text of the article! Those blogs are starting to remind me of the mid-90′s websites, with all the clutter, etc. Blogging Pro put it well, with the headline: “Gizmodo Revamps RSS Feeds to Make More Money”
To the credit of the Gizomdo Blogs, Blogging Pro mentions:
Gizmodo seems to have developed a fair policy of delivering partial ad-free feeds or full feeds with advertising enclosed. Readers choice. The ads are placed every fifth entry so the reader is not bombarded with sales pitches.
It seems that Web Syndication is a viable way to avoid the kind of bombardment I’m complaining about.
To return to the topic at hand, I’m resolved not to let that kind bombardment happen in my little internet garden here. While I’m delighted to get a free book for review, and would be delighted to do so in the future, I’ll do my very best to be fair in my assesment of such a book.
Besides, any press is good press.
A wooden statue
Originally uploaded by dylan_k.
I have always had an affinity for the wooden indians that you see at bars and in tobacco stores.
I took the picture of this one in front of a trading post in Maine.
3 Quarks Daily brought to my attention a stunning new collection of photographs: “Thoreau’s Walden: A Journey in Photographs” They were taken at Walden Pond, which was where Henry David Thoreau composed his famous book “Walden”.
The full article is Miller’s Walden, published in Harvard University Gazette.
It seems strange to me, for some reason, to think of Thoreau as a Harvard graduate. Perhaps I would rather think of the more humble aspects of the author. Furthermore, I would like to be able to identify with Thoreau, but I never went to Harvard.
I watched a documentary today, as part of my new science class. Yes, I did just graduate. Yes, I am taking a class. No, I don’t want to talk very much about it. Its a science class.
The documentary was interesting enough, about the very primitive microbes on the Earth. It was still a documentary though.
Continue Reading
I wore my borrowed cap, my borrowed gown and my well-worn shoes. I stood in line nervously, out of breath. Was this the right time, the right place, the right line? I had missed the graduation practice, since I was still working up the money to get my diploma in the first place, and so, with no idea of what to expect, and with hardly anyone expecting me to be there, I arrived for my graduation day.
Our little campus on the hill can be beautiful sometimes. It was one of the first things to impress me about the place. There isn’t the kind of million dollar landscaping that some schools pride. Some of the trees are a little weary, a little wiser, for the storms that bent them. All the sun was there that day, and all the clouds, and the light came through the clouds in rays. Perhaps the sun often pours through the clouds like that, but it took an important day to notice. I remember the first day there on that lawn as vividly. On a day in a place when everything is new, nothing can be taken for granted, and everything begs for attention. On a final day in a long-familiar place, nothing can be taken for granted anymore, everything begs for attention, and so everything is new.
I wish I could say I looked across the dark teeming sea of tassels topping the faces of a hundred friends, but I was in the middle of a long line of strangers. I only knew a handful of names to go with those faces. Only a smaller few from that group were my friends. Much of the speechifying was about what it would be like once all the friends and familiar faces were gone. “You’ll never be in the same room together again” we were told moments before the bagpipes announced our arrival. Fine, I thought, I’m in a room full of strangers – and a room full of ghosts. Over the past three years or so, the sea of faces that I do know has flooded through here, like a great wave against the rock, scattering into the mists and clouds.
Chuck was the one who pulled me out of my confusion. He said he though I could use a friend to walk through the whole ordeal with, so he signed me up to be next to him. He lined up, and me with him, near my friend Mina. Mina was about to be announced as one of the top of her class, proving that it is possible to party and to study harder than a hundred people ever could. Mina had Sonja at her side, anxiously scribbling out the spelling of her first name, respelling it phonetically, half-a-dozen different ways, lest the professor mispronounce it. Allison was behind them, chastising me for not having spoken to her often enough, for not having let me read my novella, and for my hat being on backwards.
The bagpipes cried out.
Say what you will about the sound of bagpipes, but when they play those pipes for you, you stand a little taller, you walk a little stronger. Someone said a prayer of thanks, for all the ways this day could have never come. Say what you will about the power of prayer, or its place in the academy, but it was the perfect prayer for me.
When the faculty came to the field, one of my most feared professors smiled when she saw my shoes, and she laughed. They’re scuffed shoes, with holes in the soles, and a rip in a place where my big toe sticks out. This is the same professor who made fun of those shoes in a meeting, once. I told her I love my shoes. They’re comfortable. In fact, they’re the same shoes I wore on my first day of college. I decided, in that meeting, that I would graduate in those old shoes, no matter how old they became, before I retired them. They’re a pair of black, canvas shoes, Chuck Taylor brand shoes, and they were worn even more after that meeting, but I wore them anyway. The high heel shoes only stuck in the earth and the dressier shoes made noises on the stage. My shoes are as old as my college career – older now, and they show what a walk it was for me. It wasn’t a short and easy road for me, but I traveled it anyway, and so I wore my shitty shoes with pride.
I bought a new pair of shoes to replace them that day, but I can’t wear them yet. The paper they handed me on graduation day is blank because I still lack three credit hours. I’ll start taking those credits this week, and in three weeks I’ll have my actual diploma, and a new pair of shoes to wear as I walk away from this place.
Where will I walk?
The sun does set on the sunset streets
and the clamour collapses in California at night,
Golden glint and silver spotlights fade.
In this darkness with lack of glamor or glory
will you forget the splendor of a sunset sight?
And if you do, what shall remain
once you’ve shed your happy shell?
I can not prop the sun on it’s zenith,
not even for your love of me,
night still marches steadily toward
with morning behind it
be sure you have something for the between.
According to Jonathan Rintels at the Center for Creative Voices in Media”
Monday, May 9, at 9:30 p.m. and midnight EDT, C-SPAN televised the Media and Democracy Coalition’s press conference unveiling to the public the Bill of Media Rights. The Bill represents a milestone in the media reform movement that presents a positive and unified vision for a competitive, diverse, and independent media to better serve our nation’s democracy and culture, today and in the future. Over 116 groups representing 20 million Americans have already signed on.
Speaking at the event were Common Cause President Chellie Pingree, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights’ Wade Henderson, Consumer Union’s Gene Kimmelman, AFL-CIO’s Paul Almeida, and others.
The Center for Creative Voices in Media is proud to have played a lead role in drafting the Bill.
Read the Bill of Media Rights here on the Bill’s website .
I’ll have to look at this new logo for a while before I can decide whether I like it or not. Lord knows I spent plenty of time looking at the old logo when I was a kid….
walking in the rain.
The sound was all around me,
I had no words then.
Away from you,
apart from expansive moments and open skies
And you, blocking the rest of them
swelling the world around you
so that I can’t see
wrapping the cloak of nightfall,
beautifully,
so that I can’t-
I see the way you dance
in the moonlight
drink up the nightfall for me.
And you, in the circle
with the rest of them
swelling the world around you.
alone
so I can’t see
your dance in the night cloak,
without the music,
or the musicians,
nor the circle from which your dance spins
You, blocking the rest of them,
swelling the world around you,
so that I can’t see.
the cloak you wear, while dancing
beautifully
so that I can’t-
wear the cloak,
be the cloak,
see the night fall
or you, blocking the rest of them, or the rest of them
a world swollen around
blindness
so that I can’t see
If anyone still breathing can remember “Apocalypse Playground” … it might be of interest that I’ve done another round of reading through the archive for usable text. I’ve grabbed a dozen poems or so, and I’ll be republishing them @ www.nocategories.net over the next several days. Let me know what you think!
“Fat Boy” Shogo, and a kid named Orange spat from the balcony in turns, trying to see who could hock one the farthest. I watched them for a while, as each passed the others’ marks. They invited me to join them.
“that’s nothing !” I called out to the last projectile to hit the pavement before my turn came. I rolled up my sleeves. Leaning over the edge made me nervous. A Foriegn landcape reeled around me – green grey mountains clothed in smoke from nearby rice fields. An urban mess sprawled through the valley.
I wondered, what does rolling ones sleeves have to do with making ready to spit? And why say “that’s nothing” unless you’re certian of yor own spitting abilities (which I wasn’t)?
What I did know was that there was a loud and booming voice in the back of my head, the voice of my culture, a command from Uncle Sam himself. “Any hot-blooded American boy worth his spit can… well, spit. So spit boy! Spit!”Without balking from the edge, I puckered up and let one drop.
The boys crowded ’round, anxious to see why I had aimed down and not out. They found their answer, waiting three stories below, leaning against the wall : a row of five girls. My glimmering glob of spit shrank away from us, directly above the middle girl.
The wind blew.
The spit fanned out. It spindled in the sky until it became a thread which nestled itself squarely atop the five girls’ heads. It was as if I planned it that way.
Flanked by claps and screams, I pushed down my sleeves.
My good friend Christopher Robinson has drafted me for rebuilding his outdated website, which will be called Sinister Studio.
Chris is a farmer, an artist, etc. Here are three of his works.
By way of introduction you might read his statement:
When there are to many questions too answer and too many problems to fix it becomes clear that the system itself is wrong. A new system must be implemented seemlessly into the fabric of reality, a new system that actually works, politics must become as adaptable and forceful as nature itself if social change is ever to be acheived.When there is no time to explain all the rules and no one who can understand them anyway it becomes clear that communication must be updated. Everyone has to understand the goal and agree on the plan before social change can be implemented.
Everything has a pattern, everything is made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies, everything must exist in an infinite universe. Patterns can be mapped and displayed, changes in vibration can be triggered.
Novelty can be manufactured.The people in power have the power to stay in power. The people without power are giving thier power willfully to the people in power. Every dollar and minute you spend is a vote. When you interact positivly with the power structure you reinforce it.
Most people have needs. Most people are not aware of their options.
My artwork is optional…
do you know me
as a word
something you can spell
something you can whisper
something you can yell
something you can say
do you know me
as a name?
Do you know me
as a face
The Reading Experience mentions something in the very words I often find myself using for a “screenful” — that is, the electronic equivalent of a pageful.
I arrived at work the way I always do in the morning. Morning isn’t morning when you work a night job, you know, which is unusual. Otherwise, everything was the same as it always was. There is a huge, brightly colored paper sign above the desk next to mine, so that I face it from my cubicle. It says “Goodbye, We Will Miss You”. I thought, how nice of them to put that there for me. It wasn’t for me. One of the day shift workers left today, on maternity leave, and her friends made that for her. They left it up for me. That’s enough, I suppose. After all, I’ve only been passing through.
It seems like I’ve always only been passing through.
I don’t have any real eulogy for my last day of work here, not too many interesting stories to tell, no significant lessons learned. My ass hurts. I never thought I would ever say this, but I miss the light of day. A depressive personality like mine, confined to a cubicle, locked away from the sun, does not fare well. I won’t dwell there. I won’t thrive here. I’m gone.
More than a few people have expressed their astonishment that I ever accepted a post like this one. Why would I work for a monopoly telecommunications corporation? why would I take these hours? Why would I live at home for so long? Why would I do all of these things, in spite of myself, for the money? I suppose you could call it an exercise in hypocrisy. You could say I wanted to “know my enemy”. You could say that, like it or not, I did need the money. I’ve never had any money.
Dumpster diving is chic, couch surfing is oh-so-punk-rock, hell even homelessness was an adventure, of sorts — but I got tired, very tired. Tired isn’t even the word. I was powerfully frustrated with life when life was like that for so long. I needed the pendulum to swing the other way. Already, I feel it has swung too far.
I feel like I’m quitting my life along with this job, and it bothers me that it feels like this job has been my life. It does scare me that I don’t know what’s next, what do do, where to go, who to be, etc. I only let it scare me a little, though.
Whatever comes next, its bound to be more fun than this has been.
Did you get your disconnection notice
mine came in the mail today
they seem to think I’m disconnected
don’t think i know what to read or write or say
glossaries injected daily
words + numbers spell out the price to pay
it simply states, “yr disconnected baby”
see how easily it all slips awayThis is no direction
prepare for the city
angels turn on heavens lightHurry up the stage awaits you
don’t forget memorize yr lines
missed yr mark now we medicate you
out of step just cant find the time
will we pass through undetected
everything right here inside our file
not so free to be unprotected
a secret Mona Lisa hides behind her smile
sonic youth — disconnection notice
Slate magazine recently wrote about an overhaul going on at the Barnes Foundation Museum. The article provides an interesting discussion of the interaction between design and presentation.
The trouble with eye-popping buildings, whether by Gehry or by Hadid, is this: While everyone enjoys fireworks, no one wants fireworks every night. Shock and awe soon pale in a museum building visited many times over. Moreover, there is a point where dramatic architecture is in danger of overwhelming the art. What is needed is a degree of old-fashioned restraint. The museum world was reminded of this when the Museum of Modern Art recently unveiled its major expansion. Yoshio Taniguchi, its architect, provided plenty of drama (at right), but he couched it in a minimalist vocabulary. While his minimalism can be aggressively reductive in the museum’s public spaces, in the galleries it provides a neutral (if somewhat bland) setting for the works of art.
Ah, words about aesthetics… they sure are fun sometimes, aren’t they? There’s an interesting point here, about the “vocabulary of minimalism” which, when employed properly, can enable an interesting design to compliment whatever it is built to present. This could be true for a museum as much as for a print publication, etc.
I have received some Disinformation that
GOOGLE has plans that will dramatically improve the results of internet news searches, by ranking them according to quality rather than simply by their date and relevance to search terms.
