Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938).
Movie Millisecond: This way to the monkeyhouse
October 28, 2011Daily Batman: Hanging out
October 28, 2011
I believe this is available as a tee on threadless. If it isn’t, it should be.
Flashback Friday — Just Another Auden October: Autumn Song
October 28, 2011This entry originally appeared on October 20, 2010 at 9:19 am.
Photographed by mjagiellicz on the d.a.
Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse’s flowers will not last,
Nurses to their graves are gone,
But the prams go rolling on.
Photographed by bittersea on the d.a.
Whispering neighbors left and right
Daunt us from our true delight,
Able hands are forced to freeze
Derelict on lonely knees.
Photographed by leenaraven on the d.a.
Close behind us on our track,
Dead in hundreds cry Alack,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.
Photographed by cookiemonstah on the d.a.
Scrawny through a plundered wood,
Trolls run scolding for their food,
Owl and nightingale are dumb,
And the angel will not come.
Photographed by redribboninyourhair on the d.a.
Clear, unscalable, ahead
Rise the Mountains of Instead,
From whose cold, cascading streams
None may drink except in dreams.
(Auden, W.H. “VI.:Autumn Song.” Twelve Songs. March 1936.)
If ever there were a view on which to turn your back à la Gertrude Stein, a sweeping vista of the Mountains of Instead would be the one. No going back. Too late. Prams rolling on. Breathtaking strong tide of inevitability that takes all the water with it and leaves you and your petty fears and dreams dragging in the dust.
Time is stolen from us in such tiny ways — although I guess it is scarcely a theft when you never lock the door or look out the window to see if there is a shadow waiting for you to turn your back, as if all you possess are invincible by dint of being yours — and we use landmark occasions to mark the loss, but we only once in a while really look at what momentous and yet totally miniscule shit comprises what is destined to be our one and only, short history.
This Autumn was already weighing as heavily on me as last year. Now all I feel like I can handle doing is to take a hot bath and climb back beneath the covers (you see what I mean about aiding in our own robbery by time?). Thanks a lot, Auden. I guess what scares me most about it is does it always steal up on you? Does it just sneak up and you turn around and cry out, “Oh, not yet. It can’t be time yet. I’m not finished. I thought I would have more time.”
Photographed by disco_ball on the d.a.
Is there any way to escape that, that moment of realization, that punch in the gut when the waste, all the time you wasted suddenly comes rushing up around you so you can’t even breathe? Your life is over and you’re not ready because you thought you could always keep backsliding, that there would be special accounting for prodigal, last minute, golden you, who always slid in under the wire, who always got a second chance if you smiled big enough when you asked. There is no talking or charming or dodging your way out of final reckoning, and no method by which I can imagine escaping the horror of that realization, and you finally turn around and see the Mountains of Instead. You made them that tall. What do you do about the regret which will follow. Is there a way to soften that blow?
I don’t think there is. I can make vows about viewing this poem as a cautionary tale, and shine you on about how I plan on avoiding such a fate by making every moment count, and on and on until the sun goes supernova, but a plucky attitude does not lower the Mountains of Instead even an inch. No changing the past. No erasing regrets. That is just some fucked up shit right there.
Movie Millisecond: Never knew
October 27, 2011
From Here To Eternity (Fred Zinneman, 1953).
Isn’t that just the way of it?
Just Another Auden October: A lane to the land of the dead
October 27, 2011
Photographed by Logan White.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
(W.H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening.” Juvenelia, 1922-1928).
Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Per mi amico, the Cappy redux — If only edition
October 27, 2011
Geez, if it were that easy, I’d already know what the Cappy’s baby smelled like and have kissed his wife with embarassing effusion on both cheeks in person.
Hippo birdie, old friendoh and brotha from anotha motha. I hope it was full of everything you deserve. Just wish I could’ve been there to wish you happy birthday in person. It’s like, where is this button??
Daily Batman: Cthulu edition
October 27, 2011A terrible day to forget the utility belt.
“Batman and Cthulu” by Scott Vanden Bosch.
The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!… Look away… Go back… Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses!”
(H.P. Lovecraft. “The Other Gods.” Weird Tales. 1948. )
Teevee Time: It’s Wednesday
October 26, 2011
Every child needs a pet.
Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Wait, what?
October 26, 2011
Wait — what?
Just Another Auden October: The terminal point of addiction
October 26, 2011
All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.
(W.H. Auden, “Hell.” A Certain World, 1970).
Daily Batman: Ink-blots
October 26, 2011
via.
But, my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
(Alan Watts, The Nature of Consciousness.)
Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Be Careful or Else
October 25, 2011
Just Another Auden October: Musee des Beaux Arts
October 25, 2011
“Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid.” Jan Vermeer, 1677.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position;
how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
“A Youth Making a Face.” Adriaen Brouwer, 1635.
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
“Landscape With the Fall of Icarus”. Pieter Brueghel*, 1558.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;
the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
(W.H. Auden, “Musee des Beaux Artes.” 1938).
*It has been discovered through radiocarbon dating that Landscape With the Fall of Icarus is not by Brueghel the Elder, though it is thought to be based on a lost painting of his, and that association lead to the centuries-long misattribution of the painting’s provenance.
Daily Batman: Let your fingers do the walking
October 25, 2011Let your fingers do the walking!
…and the crime-fighting.
Daily Batman: Knee-wobbler
October 24, 2011
via.
There it is again.
Just Another Auden October: Let music for peace / Be the paradigm
October 24, 2011
Let mortals beware of words
For with words we lie,
Can speak peace
When we mean war.
But song is true.
Let music for peace
Be the paradigm,
For peace means change
At the right time.
(W.H. Auden, “Hymn to the United Nations.” 1971.)
Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Reasonable suggestion
October 23, 2011
Ladies: if it’s your first time and you’re wondering if you’re drunk enough, the answer is no, you are not. Drink until you’ve forgotten how to wonder things.
Just Another Auden October: The dreadful wood of conscious evil
October 23, 2011
“Ritual Dance” by Aëla Labbé.
Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father.
(W.H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. 1941-2.)
Daily Batman: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none…
October 23, 2011
Part of a series of posters by Laura Pittman on the behance.
Just Another Auden October: This great society is going smash
October 22, 2011
Photographed by bagnino on the da.
This great society is going smash;
They cannot fool us with how fast they go,
How much they cost each other and the gods.
A culture is no better than its woods.
(W.H. Auden, Bucolics II: “Woods.” 1952. 51-54)
