memory is Hell (a museum)

[ashcanprobably]

Someone asked me if I joined in the Hispanic-American Immigration walk-outs/marches of the past few weeks, being that I'm Mexican and darkly so. Did I feel any obligation to attend? Nope, not at all, I'm no copper ingot. I was there at the very first rally downtown, not totally, I was merely there. I woke up that morning in a mood to go swimming,

Comments

[enickmatic]

So what you're really saying is that you just want everyone to belittle you, right? Because that's the vibe I'm getting here.

[ex_hotlavamo352]

Yeah, dude.

[ulyart]

I am Chinese American, living in France. Chinese is my shabbiest language; on occasional Skype video conferences with my parents, I find myself searching for the right word in Chinese, and often capitulate and give the ready English equivalent for the sake of convenience.

French I speak with my friends and to my dog. For me it is the language of street signs, newspapers, television and the radio. French is quite transparent to me, but it's still a delight to encounter a new word, or to hear a word used in live conversation of which up to now I'd only had the vaguest impression, having read it in a book.
Yesterday in the Vincennes forest Gaspard said, on seeing Timeo meet another dog, "tu vois comment ils fretillent la queue?" ("See how they're wagging their tails?")

Then and there this image of the word fretiller was seared into my memory-- two dogs under the sun in a grassy field bordered with trees-- and only now, looking the word up on the Internet, have I to been able to confirm that fretiller means to wriggle or fidget.

[uberdionysus]

I was reading this and thinking, "He should be on my f-list," and then I looked at your user-info and realized I was already on your friend's list. How did that happen, and how did I miss it? How did I miss someone adding me?

Anyway, I've added you back.

[ulyart]

I liked reading Luis's posts and, suspecting like-minded people would be drawn to his journal, I clicked on his friends list and that's how I found your posts.

Yeah, it's been a few months now that I've vicariously followed your super-charged life. Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier. I think you must be surfing on a current of energy, the way you make art, take in films, exhibitions and party late into the night and document it so extensively in words and images.

I almost commented on one of your posts, when you said Matthew Barney was an example of nerd art-- someone absorbed in his private imaginary world, preferring it to the messy, real world. (if I interpret you correctly).

I thought, James Joyce, Borges, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami... would all be nerds, wouldn't they?

[uberdionysus]

Barney, like geeks, and unlike Joyce and co., is interested in the arcana of hermetic systems. It's not just about creating and living in a private imaginary world, but about the obsession with arcana set up by others in closed systems with codified rules of behavior.

I guess it's less 'nerd' and more 'geek' in that Barney is passionate about particular areas and subject that are obscure, difficult, and complex. Which makes sense because there are plenty of sports geeks who can rattle off arcane facts about some baseball pitcher from 1932 and how he performed in the World Series of that year.

I think Barney is closer to Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace then any of the authors you mentioned.

[ulyart]

sorry for the long comment...

Here is Bryan Magee's anecdote about Borges, from The Philosophy of Schopenhauer.:
When I met Borges some time ago and remarked that I was about to embark on writing a book about Schopenhauer he became excited and started talking volubly about how much Schopenhauer had meant to him. It was the desire to read Schopenhauer in the original, he said, that had made him learn German; and when people asked him, which they often did, why he with his love of intricate structure had never attempted a systematic exposition of the world-view which underlay his writings, his reply was that he did not do it because it had already been done, by Schopenhauer.

[uberdionysus]

Holy crap! I was just digging around and I thought, "I wonder if I missed any of Luis' posts?" And then this.

Damn... Yeah, I was amazed by all the flags at the protest. So colorful. I, of course, got lost in the movement and the colors - sense data and the corporeal transfix me, but you know that.

The dream, the Borges story, the translated Lugones poem: all have a sense of labyrinthine dread; the spin of the spiral; the repeating bifurcation of a Mandelbrot set; the endless signifiers of a Rorschach blot. Your posts have that, too (including, of course, this post): a mustiness redolent of libraries- there's Borges, there's Proust!

I was flattered to see my name; I was happy to read the links. I need to add mmmrorschach; I need to get back to reviewing; sexismorbid is still so fucking sexy (her words and her pictures - I don't care that Sarah's comment is apt, and she is equal parts STDs, existentialism casualty, and Ambercrombie and Fitsch girl); your favorite people are my favorite people but you should know inertiacrept if you don't already; actually, I don't