things move around

Weather report

Yarb — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:39:07 +0000

Cloud in a thick spongy slab in all directions, cloud-juice empuddling streets, streets full of the smell of damp automobiles and the patter of taut umbrellas.

Who’d win

Yarb — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:11:42 +0000

in a fight between a hedgepiglet and a glyptodon?

New year’s onion

Yarb — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:05:06 +0000

“Know, also, the celebrated formulary of the onion. It is a great panacea of many distempers. Roasted under hot ash, after the embers have died, and blended with honey and rue, the electuary breaks tough phlegm, palliates gripes, acts as a laxative in the day and an astringent by night, purges the head of noises and clears the blood. The same vegetable, bruised and scrambled in syrup of the ripe red pomegranate, and mixed with laudanum, that is sublimed by slow fire, is right good for horror dreams of the young. The onion is an opener, and if cooked in jackets of corn-flour dough, and eaten with sea-dust and pepper to taste, it promotes the courses, dissolves the tumours, clears the complexion, and softens chapped hands. It is the king of medicaments, my dear.”

- G.V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr, (1945), pp. 212-213 of NYRB 2008 edition.

Orwelk

Yarb — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:20:45 +0000

I’ve been reading Orwell’s non-fiction, which is brilliant - unlike his fiction - and contains the odd joke. But still, sometimes I wish he would cast aside common sense and fling himself heedlessly on his foes like a big socialist starfish, spurting the iodine of indignation. I think if you could meld him with Flann O’Brien, you’d have the ideal interbellic essayist.

To Autumn

Yarb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:08:57 +0000

Geese migrating in a swish of russet
     Break up in the distance like a wrack of smoke,
Announce the turn of seasons, videlicet:
     Brush with frosty breath the ripened cheek,
And etch expectancy into the air.
     Lingering mists whose chilly fingertips
          Quicken drowsy blood and prick the skin
Beshroud the inlet: dolent container ships
     Low out diapasons, shiver and respire.
     Breezes begin to winnow and bestir
          The forest canopy and floor; the rains begin.

To hear the jitter and skirr of squirrels,
     Inhale the acrid smell of leaf-mould,
Watch leaves pile up in brittle fascicles,
     And at an intersection, the exhaust enfold
An iron fire-hydrant like a sightless wraith;
     And then to feel the sun in a last spate
          Undo all omens in a honeyed gust
Of gold and burgundy, a flourish of faith;
     To see the horse-chestnut spill its fruit
     Amid the sidewalk-dreck, the mossed root
          Splitting the asphalt at your behest,

Autumn, is to know you, in your big-buttoned coat,
     Steaming and champing as you detrain -
Gasp of opening doors, hiss of heat -
     Buying coffee, unpeeling a tangerine,
Giving to the croak of old men in the park
     A rubric of oblique regretfulness,
          To the rush of soft shoes on paving slabs
The clement breathiness of a chinook,
     To the cough of cars the rough finesse
     With which you stiffen and bedew the grass,
          Caress cold railings with dew-decked webs.

What passed for loutishness in 1991, and Gogol and hotels

Yarb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:00:41 +0000

69 is the greatest number one can factorialise on a standard 10-digit calculator, but on more than one occasion, idle in a maths lesson, I attempted to factorialise 70, in the vain hope of causing my calculator to spontaneously combust.

Another thing I used to do in maths lessons was chant the theme to the television show ‘Blockbusters’ (with my mates) at increasing volume and tempo, until the teacher noticed. The music comes to mind even now, as I stare cadaverously into a chintzy hotel mirror, my fingers clacketing at the keys. For some reason whenever I stay in a hotel, I think of Gogol. I suppose hotels are quite Gogolian: bespeaking a dungish uniformity, a honeycomb within each cell of which fizzles a stifled chinovnik worker-bee.

Uhh, yeah…

Yarb — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:00:07 +0000

Bloke was extolling the Kindle to me. You can read a book, he says, on this thing. [You can read a book on a book, too]. And not just one book, but thousands, literally thousands. [At the same time?] It’s not like a phone, he says, the resolution’s perfect. [Thank god for not having to read books on my phone (which I don’t have) any more]. And you can get anything, anything you can think of, you can get it. [Is that so]. Tom Clancy, John Grisham, anything. You like John Grisham? [Uhh, yeah…]

Suspended fourth

Yarb — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:38:55 +0000

I ran the gauntlet of ghastly hotel-guests to the ice-room, returning triumphant and, amazingly, unmolested (I assume my shouting “just getting some ice!” made them think twice). But when I got back, I realised my mind had changed itself, and I no longer wanted a spirit; instead I had a beer and allowed the hard-won ice to melt away in the soft, warm light of my table-lamp, with the rapidity of a hope at the start of a week.

Further update

Yarb — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:29:45 +0000

The freight trains, mostly oilcars, pass through the city snakily. The moose meander in the mountain glades, the sky blackens, the North Star winks uncertainly through the murk.

I’m going to go and get some ice. Therefore I must disrobe, don my blue dressing gown, and slope down the corridor, with the tub tucked under my arm, my face contorted into a grin, saying cheerily through my teeth “just getting some ice!” to anyone I meet, and even those I don’t.

Not all doom and gloom

Yarb — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:10:59 +0000

It’s not all doom and gloom, though (is it ever?) I’ve quit cocking around with spreadsheets for the day and am now admiring my 2-days’ stubble in the mirror, occasionally groping for my wine, while Liszt rings out in his gay galloping posthumous way, and I feel very happy.

Today we were talking about live entertainment, my two tiresome co-workers and I. My company subscribes for extremely expensive seats at our local megadome, which it then offers at full price to staff for all events unsuitable for schmoozing. I said I couldn’t think of any entertainer I’d pay $200 to go and see, except dead ones - Hendrix for example, or Lizst. Neither had heard of the latter; at my mention of the former both made faces as if they were chewing on something they didn’t like.

I shunned them later and dined contentedly at the only good restaurant in Calgary. I’m reading Rabelais, which is an absolute joy. There’s nothing like tearing at a lambchop, taking a slug of Burgundy, and reading a chapter of Rabelais.