If my local course had sharks in the water hazard, I would be willing to spoil a good walk long enough to take up golfing.
DC: Vegetarian Capital Of America
Washington, DC has the most diners who abstain from meat while eating out of any metropolitan area. We are also the most vegetarian friendly.
Take that San Francisco, you damn, dirty, anti-environment, animal haters!
The Next Big Place In Literature
In the years following WWI and WWII, Paris was the center of literary life (while it’s easy to point the city’s long and great artistic history, the American writers who went there didn’t so much go for that reason as for the favorable exchange rate – which meant that pocket change from their families in America could support a comfortable life in France).
When I was in college, Prague was the next big thing.
New York, of course, has always had a special place in literary geography.
And to this list we add… Nairobi?
Outlaw Star
I have an obsession with a nearly fifteen year old anime called Outlaw Star. It’s only claim to fame in America is having run Adult Swim for a few months nearly ten years ago.
Lacking enough thematic or artistic innovation to appeal to Cowboy Bebop fans nor enough adolescent silliness to attract Sailor Moon fans, it never really found it’s niche here.
Which is to say, you probably know nothing about it. But I love it. Don’t know why. When I’m sick, I like to watch it on DVD.
So I’m going to write about as if you did know about it and indulge in some embarrassing, overgrown fanboy behavior.
Let’s just dive in then, shall we?
I am struck by how the ghost of the memory of ‘Hot Ice’ Hilda haunts the hero, Jean Starwind. The first so-called ‘outlaw’ he meets (‘outlaw’ referring less to status, re: the legal system, than a certain independent space travelers – more ‘outlaw’ like a biker gang [which may still indulge in criminal behavior] than outlaw like ‘I have the death sentence in six systems’ [and yes, I was quoting Star Wars) becomes the model for him, even though she dies (though dies as she lived, committed to her ‘outlaw’ principles) within a couple of days of their meeting.
Jean recalls some of her words on a couple of occasions throughout the 26 episode series (Hilda died during the fourth episode), almost as if conversing with ghost.
She is a mother figure (Jean has flashbacks to incidents of his time with his father, but there is nothing about his mother; and when his father dies, he appears to be orphaned), an older sister exposing her little brother to the exciting world ahead of him (though, in this case, it’s more about pirates
and space ships than taking him to his first college keg party), and also lover (though it’s not clear whether they ever actually have sex, but she is clearly an object of sexual desire).
Though the ostensible love story is between Jean and the android Melfina, their relationship is pretty platonic. Not necessarily brother and sister, but perhaps like the girl who has a crush on her older brother’s friend. This is in contrast to Jean’s feelings towards Hilda, who represents desire in all its forms – the desire for sex, for adventure, for knowledge of the path one should take. He wants Melfina for the companionship, but it is always the memory of Hilda he turns to in order to show him the way.
Ezra Pound: Canto LXII
This Canto returns to the western world. Specifically, Revolutionary America.
It begins as if by a (presumably) pro-British governor, but the ‘narrator’ seems to change. This can only be determined by subject matter as the voice does not change much (though it does get colloquial in its spelling in parts).
The subject matters moves to discussions of attempting to secure funding and support for the Revolution from various European powers, including the French and also Dutch banking houses. Surprisingly, he shows little venom towards those Amsterdam banks.
There is an odd lines: in consideration of endocrine human emotions
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think an 18th century speaker would even know of the endocrine system, much less of the affect of hormones and glands on human emotion.
An accident or a deliberate anachronism by Pound?
He also includes a Chinese character (see picture) near the beginning of this (fairly long) Canto. What does it mean? And what did Pound intend by including it, despite having left China, so to speak.
On Poetic Prose
Archimedes Manuscript Revealed
An ancient manuscript by the Greek mathematician Archimedes (the one who saw water spilling out of his bathtub and leaped out and ran naked through the streets, yelling eureka, having realized that he’d figured out that whole mass displacement thing) was decoded or deciphered or whatever you want to call it after years and years or work.
The original writing had been scraped off by a medieval monk who was short on paper, so the challenge was determining the writing beneath and generally putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
You can see it at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore.
Poetry Readings At Bridge Street Books
There will be poetry reading tomorrow night and another on next Thursday night at DC’s undoubted center for poetry, Bridge Street Books.
I won’t pretend to recognize the names of these poets, but I’m still going to try to make it to both readings because Bridge Street is good at bringing in innovative poets, as well as many local ones.
Even Patch Is Getting Into The Review Game
Ezra Pound: Canto LXI
This Canto contains a lot of talk about taxation, something the finance obsessed Pound often harps on.
But a little more interesting to me is something briefly touched on in the last couple of Cantos – what one might call the ‘Christian problem’ (though Pound consistently spells it ‘Xtian’ in this Chinese themed sections).
‘You Christers wanna have foot on two boats
and when them boats pull apart
you will d/n well git a wettin’ ‘ said a court mandarin
tellin’ ’em.
the coffee philosopher 