15 August 2017
03 August 2014
12 June 2014
06 May 2014
Happy birthday, Orson!
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
Orson Welles
03 May 2014
Aubade by Philip Larkin
Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)
28 April 2014
Cyrano de Bergerac - Le nez
via M. Caza.
Is there any great role in French that Depardieu hasn't gobbled up, dominated and glorified with his gargantuan appetite? Dantés, Porthos, Cyrano, Danton, even Tartuffe.
From a street punk hassling a pregnant woman on a train in Les valseuses to the suffering lover of La femme à côté he has a range that spans the whole of what a man can do, feel, and suffer.
Even if he's a large as barn and the butt of jokes of his pinched and pathetic inferiors, he's a monstre sacré, a throw back to the 19th century, a grand soul who's too large for our times.
Zorba the Greek - Zorbas Dance (Anthony Quinn)
Even though this is also the soundtrack to a million bad plates of Souvlaki, it still has magic.
27 April 2014
Three things I hate about business
I’ve put in time at companies small and large, mostly writing and working on web sites. I’ve also done time
in retail, food service, automotive, surveying, and so on. That’s just to say
these observations don’t just apply to one place, or even the current place. But to just about every place. These aren't the only things I find annoying; that list would be too long. These are merely the largest hypocrisies that people seem to swallow without noticing.
That’s all it’s about. Money. Sure, business can be about
quality, innovation, personal enrichment (hmm) or whatever other pop psychology
blather is fashionable this week.
image via
But it’s about making money. And if you don’t believe me,
here’s how you can tell: Wait until there isn’t enough money coming
in. Then even the most laid back, shorts-and-hoodie wearing dude with a sleek new
age job title reverts to form.
2. When people pretend it’s not about power.
They’re not bosses. Nope. Boss is hardly a word you hear
these days. They’re coaches, entrepreneurs, or even worse – leaders.
And they’re your friend, too, ready to crack a joke or pop
open a beer with you. Just chill. Hang out. Open doors! Or no offices at all!! Just a spot on the floor with the rest of the team.
This is another pretense that is easy to explode. Just
disagree about an issue that matters. The response may be temperate, modulated,
well reasoned, but it will boil down to this: I’m the boss. You’re not. We’ll
do it my way.
3. When people pretend business is cool.
Business is not cool. Figuring out to sell industrial hose,
researching wiper blade effectiveness under stringent weather conditions or
selling suburban real estate is not cool. It’s necessary and even important. But
not cool.
 |
| Cool. |
photo by Jan Persson
Cool is Miles Davis, Hunter
S. Thompson and Jeanne Moreau walking down rain swept Parisian streets in the night.
 |
| Not cool. (But you probably knew that). |
And no matter how hard you try to weave in your crappy ass
top 40s rock-and-roll into the equation, it’s still business. No matter how hip
your logo, how au courant your service, it still won’t be cool. It might be
valuable. It could change lives, make the world a better place, or give clients
and employees opportunities they’d never dreamed of.
That’s all more
substantial than being a rock star or measuring up to some middle school notion of what's important.
23 April 2014
How to be Mad and Happy at 55
(this essay is by Edward Limonov and originally appeared in the Exile.)
image via
Considering subject for my column for present
issue I have asked Mark Ames what he wants me to write. Mark suggested to me to
write a piece on the subject of health care, something sounding like "How
to stay fit at 55," written by Frank Sinatra or Jane Fonda. I laughed.
Then I thought, "Why not, as tomorrow is my birthday, I am going to be a
fifty-five, and I feel as mad and crazy as ever, as at thirty-five, so why
not?"
So
I will attempt to create something like "way to a good health," or,
"How to stay fit," or, "How to be mad and happy at
fifty-five," or "Doctor's Limonov advices to a middle-aged men."
First
requirement to fulfill is: the man of fifty-five should go to bed only with
young girls. For its religious orgies Tantrism have recommended usage of only
very young girls, not older than twenty, as it said in a sacred book
"Makhmudra-Tilaka." Jut recently I heard on Radio Liberty that
scientists made an astonishing discovery: longevity of a male's life depends on
quantity of orgasms he gets during his life. Man who experience many orgasms
during his entire life, including old age, live longer and stay younger.
So,
in order to stay young, throw away your old wife, never even look at
overweight, wrinkled woman. Find yourself a pretty teenage girl and fuck her as
often as you can. Don't let a complex of inferiority to overcome you. Contrary
to all rules of bourgeois society, in reality young girls like to get an
attention of older man, it flatters them. Many girls would be proud to go to
bed with you, it will give them enormous sexual thrill that they lack in
relationship with partners of their own age. Besides, some girls dream of
sexual relationships with their fathers. You will be welcome as a thrilling
substitute, believe me, or either I am not Doctor Limonov. Young girls will
excite you better. Young girls have a tight, hot pussies, their love juice is a
boiling one, on the contrary, love juice of an older woman is glue-like. Young
laugh, their freshness, even their naive stupidity will have a rejuvenating
effect on you. Listen to stupid hit songs with them, get them drunk, fuck them
and be happy.
Don't
be upset by your age, don't let social pressure on you to become so strong that
you will be choked by numbers of your age. Psychological victory over your age
will open you a way to pleasurable and easy life. However, don't stay with a
same girl for a long time. Change them.
Take
care of your look. It's easy. Just don't eat too much. Russian middle-aged man
usually overweight, American man also, as both countries have a bad eating
habits. Don't eat three times a day-eat twice a day. Me, for at least twenty
years now I never eat breakfast. In the morning I drink few cups of a very
strong coffee, or a very strong tea. I never eat before 2pm, or even before 4pm.
Second meal I eat between 8 and 9pm. I never limited myself in food consuming,
I eat a lot. But for last few years I eat very little of bread, or no bread at
all. I like meat, especially pork meat. From a Serbian wars I brought a habit
of eating tons of raw onions. My weight now is 67 kilograms. I consume alcohol
with pleasure, but sometimes I don't drink during a week or so. I never drink
before 6 pm.
As
to sport, I have in my apartment my dumb-bells and a weight of 16 kilos. From
time to time I do some exercises with weights.
To
conclude I must again underline the importance of getting rid of psychological
burden of your age, of those silly numbers. Behave yourself as if you don't
know your age. As you don't know what behavior is required by society from a
man of your age.
Transgress
all taboos, be mad. That is the key to a happiness of a man of fifty-five.
22 April 2014
My magic spell
When you're feeling blue, try this.
Lift some weights. Work up a real sweat.
Take a cold shower afterwards. During the cold shower, which should last at least three minutes, you have to yell loudly:
"I am a killer." Several times.
Yeah, I know. It sounds stupid.
But it works.
12 February 2014
05 January 2014
31 December 2013
Good bye 2013. And good riddance.
 |
| Men Fighting, 1950, photo by Elliot Erwitt |
Maybe it was because we forgot to eat black-eyed peas last New Year's Day. It's a Southern tradition: Eat black-eye peas -- a kind of bean, really -- and you'll have good luck all year.
Or maybe it was because we slacked on the other custom. In the Celtic countries of my ancestors, you're supposed to kick out the eldest male child before midnight. Then, he's to be the first one to enter the home in the new year, and he should be crossing the threshold with a full bottle of whiskey.
Good luck charms. I wonder if they would have helped during what followed.
First my aunt died. Then my father in law. Then my own father. My identity was stolen. When someone else uses your credit cards and checking accounts, it's disturbing, like being groped by a cold hand.
A close friend confided the worst kind of secret to me. The kind of secret owning a stench that sours even the best days. Our town was flooded, and mud-stinking water seeped in our basement. My son had a medical crisis, but it turned out well in the end.
Some other, major disappointments kicked the bottom out of the year. Mostly, as I looked over my calendars and journals, I got the sense of a long grind, of grief and stagnation that didn't lift much until the autumn.
It's all relative. I'm not, for example, scrambling for shelter in Aleppo. I got a new and hugely better day job. In each of the deaths I mentioned, the passing was a kind of mercy. Each of them had suffered with disease for long enough.
So: good in the bad, even this year. Still. Even though I'm another circle of the sun closer to my death, even though I lost time this year, time that won't ever come back, even with that, I'm glad to see this year go.
Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, 2013.
25 December 2013
Leroy en anglais and in English
(Here's an English version of the poem I posted a few days ago. Francophones are invited to note any mistakes. Like most things, it sounds better in French.)
The dead are not dead.
They rent hotel rooms by the week
In small towns, in winter.
The dead are not dead
They look out the window
On Main Street, covered with snow
The dead are not dead
They’ll live in the middling hotel
Room number 15
The dead are not dead.
They’re charmed by the wardrobe, the mirror
And the slightly dated bathroom
The dead are not dead
They’re surprised to catch a glimpse of themselves as they
were,
when they were young
The dead are not dead
They calmly unpack their bags —
Light — just the necessities
The dead are not dead
They are finally
Without trinkets and red tape
The dead are not dead
Without newspapers piling up around them
Without the just-opened letters
The dead are not dead
They like the crispness
Of room number 15.
The dead are not dead
Soon, they’ll probably go down,
Take a walk in town
The dead are not dead
No one will recognize them
As their steps crunch in the snow
The dead are not dead
Like the rasp of catarrh
Maybe a drink in this bar
The dead are not dead
They note the difference
Between this and Dante’s Purgatory
The dead are not dead
The receptionist with the coal dark eyes
Reminds them of worn out loves
The dead are not dead
They like the soothing purity
Of a room arranged just so.
The dead are not dead
Unknown, and yet so friendly
They stretch out on the double bed
The dead are not dead
They read the single book
Chosen especially for the trip
The dead are not dead
They know every page
But finally they understand it
The dead are not dead
The snow still falls the snow falls again
They fall silent, smiling, say to themselves
The dead are not dead
They rent hotel rooms by the week
In small towns, in winter.
22 December 2013
20 December 2013
Poem by Jerome Leroy
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d'hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils regardent par la fenêtre de la chambre
La Grand Rue sous la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont vivre dans ce deux étoiles
Chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s'amusent de l'armoire à glace
Et de la salle de bain un peu désuète
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s'étonnent un instant de leur visage
Du temps qu'ils étaient jeunes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils défont tranquillement leurs bagages
Légers juste l'indispensable
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils sont enfin tels qu'en eux-mêmes
Sans bibelots et sans paperasse
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Sans journaux qui s'entassent
Sans lettres à peine ouvertes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la fraicheur nette
De la chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont sans doute tout à l'heure
Se promener dans la sous préfecture
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils ne sont reconnus de personne
Leurs pas font craquer la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Comme le bruit d’une pleurésie
Un verre peut être dans cette brasserie
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils remarquent la différence
Avec le Purgatoire de Dante
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La réceptionniste aux yeux bistres
Leur rappelle des amours fatiguées
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la pureté reposante
De la chambre bien rangée
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Anonyme et pourtant si aimable
Ils s'allongent sur le lit double
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils lisent un livre unique
Celui choisi pour le voyage
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils en connaissent chaque page
Mais enfin ils le comprennent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La neige tombe toujours la neige tombe encore
Ils s'étirent sourient et se disent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d'hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales.
--Jerome Leroy
--Jerome Leroy
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