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Issue 8A Journal of Letters and Life

ISSUE 8 HOME || BROKEN NEWS || CRITIQUES || CYBER BAG || EC CHAIR || FICCIONES || THE FOREIGN DESK
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The New York Boyfriends
by Joy Kaplan
Author's Links

13. please, keep the bra on!
 

From: al
re: it begins because of birds
under the sky's density
a few birds are wheeling,
they never stop. keep saying,
higher, higher!

From: Benjamin
re: It always starts that way
Nietzsche's Aphorism 22:
In the beginning was the non-sequitor.

From: Ray
re: It always starts that way
After the emptiness, the biblical chaos of time before creation, movement or
matter,
there was a light and it was blue. It was good. Bright deep TV blue, like the
screen
one's VCR makes when the control track on the videotape drops out
unexpectedly.

From: Lily
re: It always starts that way
There still exists little organized sense of what a woman's
biography or autobiography should look like. Where should it begin?

From: Israel
re: what a woman's biography or autobiography should look like
There are a few ways to write a woman's life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call fiction; a biographer, woman or man, may write the woman's life is what is called a biography, or the woman may write her own life in advance of living it, unconsciously, and without recognizing or naming the process.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun, _Writing A Woman's Life_, Introduction, p.1

From: al
re: white throated sparrows of the blood
sitting in the branches of your eye
conquered by the weight of birds
they twitter to you the blossoming
geometry of a map of stars

From: al
re: 19th century grandeur
in 1939 kahlo wrote to nikolas muray, a photographer for vanity fair, from
paris where she traveled to attend a show organized by breton that included her paintings:
'[The show had] lots of junk Breton bought at the market, plus fourteen
portraits of the 19th Century and thirty-two photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. They make me vomit. They are so damn intellectual and rotten that I can't stand them anymore. It is really too much for my character. I'd rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, then to have anything to do with those "artistic" bitches of Paris.'
translated by carla stellwag, who co-curated the latin american spirit at the bronx museum, and former curator at museum of contemporary hispanic art new york.

From: Benny
re: The New York Boyfriends-At Certain Moments He Achieved It.
She shook out her hair and laughed at me through it sidelong.
It may have been the moment that I fell for her. Dora was young
and very beautiful. Sixteen. I know. But with her it was different,
she was like some force of Nature.

From: Ray
re: she was like some force of Nature
You should try her now, dude, she's like some primordial event!

From: Lily
re: Dora was young and very beautiful.
How does the process of becoming, or failing to become,
a sex object operate in the woman's life; how does she cope
with the fact that her value is determined by how attractive men find her?

From: Benny
re: Dora was young and very beautiful.
She induced in me the simultaneous physical relaxation and mental arousal that are pinot noir's hormonal signature. 'This '65 is still compact and tight, but it already displays a ripe, plummy, clean and fresh nose. Good aging potential, but also very drinkable now,' I thought.

From: Ray
re: Dora was young and very beautiful.
May I suggest some fava beans and a nice Chianti?

From: Benny
re: Dora was young and very beautiful.
A rather unorthodox inclusion of 10% Cabernet Sauvignon gives this otherwise classic Chianti a beautiful backbone. It carries wonderful aromas of deep, mature fruit and intense spice. Dry and sophisticated. It is an intense wine with luscious, refined flavors, that reminds me of a Sassicaia '92 I once had: 'Huge and serious'.
http://www2.gol.com/users/wsfwine

From: Ken
re: Dora was young and very beautiful.
I think we have to become connoisseurs of fear. Most of us avoid fear.
We worship the god of security. Instead of facing our fears, we walk
around with a kind of free-floating anxiety. It's much more therapeutic
to recognize that we have fears and to try to separate out the one's that
are reasonable from the ones that are not.

From: Lily
re: Good aging potential
I'm not gonna get all psycho-bitchy about how sexist that was.

From: Benny
re: Good aging potential
The alert reader may notice that the title of this chapter functions rather
like that of the "Abuna-i", the first few discreetly sensual scenes which come at the beginning of a series of "Shunga", or Japanese wood-block prints depicting scenes of "The Floating World", which is to say, those of a decidedly erotic nature. The "Abuna-i" print---abuna-i means danger in Japanese, by the way---may show a geisha reaching into the kimono of a client, but no more, and is meant to warn the viewer that more explicit images are to follow. That you've mistaken it for incisive social commentary is truly a surprise indeed. In the opening paragraph of the story containing the line which so distresses you, I set the satirical tone for what was to follow by describing how I'd wrestled my elderly grandmother to the floor and violated her open tracheotomy.
Um, this did not actually happen.

From: Dora
re: Sixteen.
I had none of his knowledge but all of his irony.

From: Benny
re: Sixteen.
She was a wisecracking hot-head, but basically a nice kid
and after a few sips of rag water, she'd let me pull the strings
and then things would get embolismic. She was young
enough to look up to me and not see my faults.
At least for a few years.

From: Benjamin
re: At least for a few years.
All of this lasted a long time, or a short time: for properly speaking,
there is *no* time on earth for such things. (Zarathustra, 4th Part)

From: al
re: it may have been the moment
what was she wearing?

From: Benny
re: what was she wearing?
Not much. A black silk confection with a front hook
which I was able to activate with the tip of my cane.
It was good fun, that double jack-in-the-box,
but mastering the technique required practice.

From: Ray
re: mastering the technique
So this is art, he thinks, and this is how it does its work! How strange! How
fascinating!

From: Charles
re: mastering the technique
Throughout the late Fifties and early Sixties the painters
were the most adventurous people in the arts, the ones most
committed to searching out new ideas.

From: Benjamin
re: mastering the technique
I was Jackson Pollock executing a painting on porcelain.

From: Ray
re: executing a painting
One has to commit a painting, said Degas, the way one commits a crime.

From: al
re: jackson pollock
his work was marked
by bold lines and forms,
and it became progressively more colorful
as his style evolved.

From: Israel
re: jackson pollock
Unique and hard to fathom is the way Pollack churned myriad traces of his
memories, enthusiasms and private fixations together with an approach geared to unrelenting spontaneity.
David Anfam

From: al
re: executing a painting
modern art touches a sore spot, or several sore spots
in the ordinary citizen of which he is totally unaware.

From: Dora
re: painting on porcelain
Those sessions of Abstract Expressionism left little bruises between my ribs.

From: Benny
re: little bruises
But Dora was a good sport.

From: al
re: little bruises
those linear maelstroms also contain something from pollock's
slightly naïve understanding of the modern age as epitomized
by 'the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio' (1950), in short,
instantaneity and speeding wonders.

From: Charles
re: little bruises
We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us. -Neil Postman on McLuhan

From: Benny
re: little bruises
Nostalgia for those splendid little purple mums inspired me, years later
while on business in Tokyo, to acquire a ruinously expensive Ming vase,
white porcelain featuring a motif of dime-sized blue chrysanthemums.

From: al
re: Nostalgia for those splendid little purple mums
'energy and motion made visible-memories arrested in space',
pollock's simple but revelatory note that paraphrases the 1947-50 works.

From: Benjamin
re: Nostalgia for those splendid little purple mums
Place little good perfect things around you, O higher men!
Their golden ripeness heals the heart.
What is perfect teaches hope. (Nietzsche, #15, _On The Higher Man_)

From: Dora
re: painting
My grandmother paints in oils. New England landscapes, you know the kind:
autumn birches on fire, snow-packed roads, cloud covered marshes, Rockport
Motif #1.

From: Lily
re: painting
Some people don't paint because they weren't born with a paintbrush in their hand.

From: Benjamin
re: ennobling privations
Others will just go out and buy a paint set. If they can
afford only one tube, then they'll paint everything in blue.

From: al
re: ennobling privations
but was picasso that impoverished?
perhaps he deliberately chose a limited color palette,
in the same way that a poet may contain himself
to a set of words, using them over and over again,
trying to exhaust all the possibilities.

From: Dora
re: trying to exhaust all the possibilities
Me? After the rain I tear off my clothes, jump into a puddle and rub mud all over my body.

From: Benjamin
re: rub mud all over
I am *not* a canvas for other people to paint on!

From: Dora
re: ennobling privations
What kind of painter are you?

From: Ken
re: ennobling privations
If I could be an artist, I would be a good one, not a moralist.

From: al
re: ennobling privations
why is it that the contemplation of a painter and his struggles seems
more acceptable than that of a writer with his endless words to set down?

From: Benjamin
re: ennobling privations
Mr. Al, you are answering a question with a question, and that's no answer at all.

From: Lily
re: ennobling privations
The sketches that we see later on paper are visible, the problem as it is
solved is visible; whereas most of the writer's 'sketches' are in her mind, like terrible knots to be unraveled, and the concentration required is of a different order, partly because there is so little 'métier', such as brushes to be washed, a canvas to be stretched, and actual semi-mechanical tasks such as filling in a background.

From: Israel
re: After the rain I tear off my clothes
Wait a minute, if you cover yourself in mud, that's *pottery*, isn't it?
Careful, you're not just mixing paint now, you're mixing metaphors!

From: Dora
re: mixing metaphors
And why not? Nowadays, they call it 'multi-media'.

From: al
re: multi-media
The creation of the following painting is to be imagined as follows:
A person is sitting beside the sea.
He is painting.
A tone suddenly enters his mind.
As he starts to hum it, he notices that the tone
exactly matches what he is trying to commit to paper.
A text forms in his head,
and he starts to sing the tune,
with his own words, over and over again
in a loud voice until the painting seems complete.
Frequently, several texts take shape, and the result is a duet,
or it even happens that each character has to sing a different text,
resulting in a chorus.
The varied nature of the paintings
should be attributed less to the author
than to the varied nature of the characters to be portrayed.
The author has tried¨as is apparent perhaps more clearly in the Main Section¨
to go completely out of herself
and to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices.
In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced,
but I hope that, in view of the soul-penetrating nature of the work,
this will be forgiven.
The Author
St Jean, August 1940/42
Or between heaven and earth beyond the
present era in the year I of the new salvation.
(that is charlotte solomon's introduction to life? or theatre?)

From: Ken
re: mixing metaphors
Traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the
potter cling to the clay vessel.
-Walter Benjamin

From: Ray
re: mixing metaphors
Cool. I'm down on The Connection between Expressionism and Vandalism,
but this cane trick, man--it's amusing, I'll grant you that--but is it Art?

From: al
re: but is it art?
art never expresses anything but itself.

From: Benjamin
re: art never expresses anything but itself.
What a *wilde* thing to say!
I guess it's somewhat simplistic for me: it's art because it speaks to my
soul.

From: Israel
re: What was she wearing?
Was she barefoot?

From: Benny
re: barefoot
I really can't say. This was back in the days of ankle boots and leg warmers, remember those? In any case, she didn't make much of an impression with her clothes on because her mother sent her out into the world in ensembles that did not show her lungs to advantage.
The subtext of those princessy outfits was, 'This is gonna cost ya'!'

From: Ray
re: This is gonna cost ya'!
So *she's* the one who invented pay-per-view TV!

From: Benny
re: The New York Boyfriends-Pay-Per-View.
But when she undressed, sweet Jesus, she boxed my ears,
such a thunderstorm in my head, the tumult of fist fights
breaking out on Mount Olympus. I can still hear the cacophony
from the first time it happened, she stood there in front of me,
pensive nymphet in a hyperlady-like practised stance, scowling
and holding her poor cramp-stricken tummy as if she would have
liked to disown it, her bijou breasts dangling like baroque pearl
earrings. I lifted her brassiere off the floor with the tip of my cane,
observing how it was lacy and frilly. 'Keep the bra on, Baby,
please, keep the bra on.'
'What I lack in tits,' she told me with the split-second
reflexes of a house-fly, 'I make up for with lace and frills.'

From: al
re: i lifted her brassiere
you take off on such a little strip, and there you are soaring!

From: Ray
re: i lifted her brassiere
We all come into this world the same way: naked, screaming, covered in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of fun doesn't have to end there.

From: Lily
re: sweet Jesus
I thought you were Jewish!

From: Charles
re: sweet Jesus
There is no way of testing our beliefs against something that is not also a
belief.

From: Benny
re: sweet Jesus
Just a manner of speaking, old girl.
The only deity I pay homage to is
Shploingy, Divinity of Stilettos.

From: Israel
re: Divinity of Stilettos.
Amen!

From: Ken
re: practised
Do you have your spell-checker on British?

From: Benny
re: practised
As a native speaker of English I am not dependent on spell-check
or any other such crutch. I subscribe to The Economist and The Granta.

From: Lily
re: Divinity of Stilettos.
Your shoe fetish brings to mind what the young Edmund Burke wrote in his
inquiry into our ideas of the beautiful 'I know nothing sublime which is not some modification of power.'

From: Dora
re: shoe fetish
You?

From: al
re: me?
way back in 1969, the year of woodstock, when half a million young
people my age took their clothes off in unison on a farm in upstate new
york, and changed the course of human history, i personally was stuck
on campus at immaculata (what a name) college, where the female
students could not go outside the dorms in a mini-skirt or a pair of loose
fitting slacks, without wearing a *full length* trench coat over the slacks.
i didn't have a whole lot of choice over where i could go to college,
as i had to go wherever i received the most financial aid--in a huge
generation, things were maximally academically competitive.
plus, i didn't even know what college was--no one i grew up with
had ever gone--i was the first one in my entire family of 24 first
cousins to make it to college.
well, i have to admit this "trench coat policy" did have a permanent
effect on my taste in dress style, which is that i rarely wear a jacket,
and almost always wear a full length black trench coat to this day. . .
but that's pretty much the extent of the effect.

From: Israel
re: shoe fetish
I'm so incredibly bored with sex. I don't want to hear about it ever again.
Manolo Blahnik

From: Benny
re: The New York Boyfriends--Something Sublime.
My luck was such that no matter the date, each and every time I flew
her into Newark it was that time of the month. Personally, I couldn't
have been more delighted. I enjoy nothing more than a petulant red wine,
and Dora was a sassy Beaujoulais nouveau.
Let's just say that I'm a lush.
If I was thirsty as an Arab, she was as combative as one. Generally
speaking, Dora was an enlightened young lady, however, sexually
she was in a dark age of superstition and taboo, but she was educable
and after enough hooch, she let me give her swimming lessons with
my tongue. Let's just say that while I frown upon crumbs left on the
sheets, I do not mind a lipstick mark left on a champagne flute.

From: Lily
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
I could throw up if it weren't for the effort it would take.

From: Benny
re: the effort it would take
The basic fact of the artist's existence remains that
no one asks you to do whatever it is that you do,
and just about no one cares once you've done it.

From: al
re: beaujoulais nouveau
the middle class conception of beauty only makes it trivial.
the beautiful becomes pretty, it becomes nice.

From: Benjamin
re: it becomes nice
There is nothing egalitarian about beauty.

From: Dora
re: beaujoulais nouveau
Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it.
D.H. Lawrence, 'Sex Versus Loveliness' [1930]

From: Israel
re: Let's just say that I'm a lush.
All passions that allow themselves to be savored and digested are only
mediocre.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Essays

From: Benjamin
re: Let's just say that I'm a lush.
I've always been on the wagon, but in those days
it was a broken wagon hitched to a dead horse.

From: Ken
re: savored and digested
It's getting cold, Dora.

From: Dora
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
This is a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend SOMEbody!
John Adams (MA) in "1776, The Musical"
I'll be down in a minute.

From: Charles
re: This is a revolution, dammit!
I don't know up to what point a writer can be revolutionary.
A writer works with language, which belongs to tradition.

From: Ray
re: This is a revolution, dammit!
CAConrad sent this to Realpoetik http://www.scn.org/arts/realpoetik/ from his forthcoming ADVANCED ELVIS COURSE from the very nice folks at Buck Downs Books out of DC.
He can be reached at PO Box 22521, Philadelphia, PA 19110:
Democracy (another kind of Rock 'n Roll) began in Philadelphia.
Rock 'n Roll (another kind of Democracy) began in Memphis.
Benjamin Franklin and Elvis Presley, two great leaders in the rhythm of
freedom, never met, due to the technicality that Benjamin Franklin died 145 years before the birth of Elvis Presley.
This should not however prevent us from delighting in the assumption that if Benjamin Franklin had survived, the two would have become fast and loyal friends. Benjamin Franklin would have no doubt been a regular at Graceland for suppers, bouncing little Lisa Marie on his two hundred year old knee, telling gossip about George Washington and that in-sufferable prick John Adams. Elvis would have taught the old man a few dance steps to drive the women crazy, then taken him out to the firing range to shoot targets of King George and British Red Coats for old times' sake. Oh those would have been great times, would have made some great American portraits, two American Fathers of Liberation.

From: Israel
re: This is a revolution, dammit!
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country, nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
John Adams

From: Ray
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
Oh, man, that's twisted! That's High Goth! I absofuckinglutely like this guy. A man who doesn't go down on his woman, whatever the weather, doesn't deserve her!

From: Charles
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
Here-here!
From Nabokov's Pale Fire (p 155 in the Commentary, in my edition)
Kinbote: You appreciate particularly the purple passages?
Shade: Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful
mongrel on a spot of turf fouled by a Great Dane.

From: Benny
re: Oh, man, that's twisted!
I know I'm sick (at least, according to this society's standards, and we all
know how reliable THOSE are).

From: Israel
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
Fi!

From: Benjamin
re: Beaujoulais nouveau
Gosh, I'd blush, were I able to remember how...

From: Ray
re: Fi!
As in Fi, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman?

From: Benny
re: Fi!
Your best friend is probably inflatable.

From: Israel
re: Fi, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood
Let's just say that anthropophagi's not my cup of tea.

From: Ken
re: Fi!
Fi is simply the French equivalent of 'fie', as in 'Fie upon thee, whoreson
wretch!'

From: Ray
re: 'Fie upon thee, whoreson wretch!'
Well, domo arrigato, Dr. Roboto!

From: Israel
re: 'Fie upon thee, whoreson wretch!'
Before the revolution in 1848, 'Robot' was man, not machine:
three days of forced labour out of every week of a peasant's life.

From: Charles
re: 'Fie upon thee, whoreson wretch!'
We will turn into robots. It's both inevitable and desirable. -robotics guru
Hans Moravec

From: al
re: 'fie upon thee, whoreson wretch!'
after the peasants were emancipated, the robot was abolished.

From: Israel
re: 'Fie upon thee, whoreson wretch!'
The playwright Karel Capek (Sorry, this word processor does not have the
Czech alphabet.), coined its modern sense in the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920.

From: Benjamin
re: Fi!
OED gives:
an imitation of the sound instinctively made on perceiving a disagreeable
smell and:
An exclamation expressing, in early use, disgust of indignant reproach. No
longer current in dignified language; said to children to excite shame for some unbecoming action, and hence often used to express the humorous pretence of feeling 'shocked'.

From: Charles
re: the humorous pretence of feeling 'shocked'
Whole worlds of moral insight and cultural history in that 'hence', eh?

From: Benjamin
re: Whole worlds of moral insight and cultural history
Lexicography is Godhead.




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