Ragtag grab-bag
I remember the day something like this happened:
He did not really wish to jam bread and vegetable mush up the anus of a chicken, but doing this for me added to my staggering debt. And one day Victor would present the bill for all his kindness.
— Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana
Time for the quarterly tune-up. It’s really tedious after 11 years, as you might imagine.
Robert Mapplethorpe and friends hang out in the West Village in 1978, as caught on film by amateur photographer Leonard Fink. Part of a set of images Fink captured of men at rest and at play around the West Village in the late ’70s, featured in the most recent issue of Pink Mince.
And let me be shameless here for a moment: please try an issue of Pink Mince, whether it’s this recent one or one of the back issues. Each is a stand-alone exploration of theme. I’m very proud of the work by so many talented people I’ve been able to gather for each issue, but the whole project is a drain on my resources and every little bit of support will help keep it going.
This book! It’s good, but more unnerving is how often its arrow hits the mark:
It wouldn’t be strange to get it and then to decide as Perkins did that this one particular person gave it to you, one out of ten or fifty or a hundred, maybe because that person made you feel something special, had done wonderful things in bed or gotten you to trust him physically and mentally as no one else ever had.
— Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana
Have you ever found yourself reading a novel or something, and then stumbled across a passage that resonated so clearly with something that was in your head, or that you’ve done before — OR BOTH — that you almost felt a flush of embarrassment, like some stranger had caught you in the act?
That night I put aside my fiction of former defeats, former glories . . . and began writing a letter. It began reasonably, as a sort of old-fashioned, literary coda to the afternoon. How pleasant to have met you, and so on, the kind of letter no one writes anymore, which naturally has its peculiar charm for the startled recipient. A courtly letter. Spinsterish but sensual. I felt in there brief time we conversed that I was speaking with someone of extremely rare sensitivity, and that you, of course, sensed my physical attraction to you, and were gracious enough to take this in stride, giving me the opportunity to show you the kind of person I am. I know it’s eccentric to come right out with this in a letter, but I have been so moved by your beauty that I, that, at this point everything floundered, I ripped the letter into shreds and started over.
— Horse Crazy, Gary Indiana
Oh, and when I factor in the irony of who recommended I read this, I just want to crawl under a rock and die of self-consciousness. So busted, even if it was unintentional.
For an extra chuckle of relevance (albeit to other things), though, this was in the very first paragraph of the book: “Things commence in reckless hope and die away in stifled longing, not that we had hoped for much from the Staten Island Ferry.” Perfect.
If that’s all found in the first 4 pages, I’m almost terrified to continue.
I’m rather smitten with this poem today, new to me but apparently one that’s made the rounds for decades. It playfully highlights the maddening inconsistencies of spelling and pronunciation in English, providing a vivid example of why I’m always impressed by and sympathetic to the plight of all my friends (and anyone, for that matter) who can take on English as a second language and thrive. Even as a native speaker, there are things in this that highlight tensions between my American accent and the British around me.
Continue reading “The Classic Concordance of Cacographic Chaos”
Ooops, I accidentally skipped December, didn’t I? Well, it was a busy month, but thankfully not as busy as the two prior ones. I was feeling a little burnt out, however, and kept a low profile.
I was travelling and speaking a lot for work, often addressing the subject of using type on the web and other screen-based devices. Here, in case you are so inclined, is a 20-minute talk I gave on the subject in early November at the Future of Web Design conference in New York:
It’s a new year now, however, and I’m feeling refreshed and full of energy, so hopefully there will be more to come soon.
