Three Guineas

The honorary treasurer of the Rebuilding Fund had her eyes fixed on that. ‘What is the use of thinking how a college can be different,’ she seemed to say, ‘when it must be a place where students are taught to obtain appointments?’ ‘Dream your dreams,’ she seemed to add, turning, rather wearily, to the table which she was arranging for some festival, a bazaar presumably, ‘but we have to face realities.’

That then was the ‘reality’ on which her eyes were fixed; students must be taught to earn their livings. And since that reality meant that she must rebuild her college on the same lines as the others, it followed that the college for the daughters of educated men must also make Research produce practical results which will induce bequests and donations from rich men; it must encourage competition; it must accept degrees and coloured hoods; it must accumulate great wealth; it must exclude other people from a share of its wealth; and, therefore, in 500 years or so, that college, too, must ask the same question that you, Sir, are asking now: ‘How in your opinion are we to prevent war?’

–V. Woolf

Axé.

Fragment 1: Like A Rolling Stone

I will write a novel, and these are fragments from that proto-text.

*

He would play this song for them as an example of what would happen if they were not good, or if he were not. Their anger at being taunted this way is branded into their musculature. They do not like it.

The song used second person verbs in scorn and steady hatred.

Of course they must do their utmost to avoid living out on the streets. And the One would have been living out on the streets now had she not had his help. Don’t do what I have done, she sang.

Yet by learning the skills that would keep them from living out on the streets, they were distancing themselves from the One. This was harmful and they might be thrown out before they knew enough.

And he and the One had not wanted to succeed, but had been forced to it. They resented that, and felt proud of time spent not trying. That time was their identity.

Their success surprised them, they said.

“We were not as talented as  they, it was clear, because we had to try. They were made of finer stuff.”

“We did not know history because we had no personal memories of the Depression or the War, and because our school had not covered Europe yet. We did not know history.”

*

The two dyads battled each other for their lives, and this novel will not use the first person except in quotation marks. It will write in the third person of some characters falling into darkness.

*

They had suffered a great deal when they were poor and then again later, when they made the sacrifices they must to ensure they would not be poor again.

They would have liked to be artists and they felt bereft; there were great holes in the air around them where once their work had been.

They fall into darkness and mild water fills their gaps and breaches; wavelets rock and cover them.

Axé.

La felicidad … todo es diferente gracias al amor, jo jo jo jo

I am in captivity until further notice, so all I can do is play songs. This song expresses the deep feelings I have for – ah – the University of California, let us say.

La conscience historique n’est plus la même, jo jo jo-der.

Axé.

Verwandlungsmusik

There has been a coup, so we are playing classical music.

Hasta mañana, o hasta siempre.

Axé.

Leonard Cohen

Based on lines and images from Federico.

Axé.

Juan Blas de Castro (1561-1631)

Axé.

NO PASARAN

Vendrá la guerra, amor,
y en el combate
no habrá tregua ni freno
para el canto
sino poesía haciendo incontenible
del cañon, de fusiles libertarios.

Vendrá la guerra, amor,
y en el combate
nos fundiremos en las barricadas
defendiendo las hordas criminales
a punta de corazón, fuego y metralla
cavando sudorosos el futuro
en las faldas de la paz.

(¡Aquí están los cachorros de Sandino!).

¡No pasarán!
¡Los venceremos, amor, no pasarán!
Si mañana que irrumpa el nuevo día
con su fiesta de pájaros y niños
aunque no estemos juntos, te lo juro
no, !no pasarán!

Vendrá la guerra, amor
y yo me envolveré en tu sombra
invencible
como un fiero león protegeré
esta tierra y mis cachorros
y nadie, nadie detendrá esta victoria
armada de futuro.

¡Hasta los dientes!
¡Que truene hasta la frontera!
¡Luchamos para vencer!
¡No pasarán!

“Jamás olvides que enfrente los ojos del enemigo te echan miradas de muerte.”

Axé.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: RAYUELA

Rayuela [Hopscotch], Julio Cortázar, Chapter 7, complete:

I touch your mouth, with one finger I touch the edge of your mouth, I draw it as it if it came out of my hand, as if your mouth was for the first time just barely open, and closing my eyes is enough to undo it and start over. Each time I create the mouth I desire, the mouth that my hand chooses and draws for you on your face, one mouth chosen from all, chosen by me with sovereign freedom to draw with my hand on your face, and for some random chance I seek not to understand, it perfectly matches your smiling mouth, beneath the one my hand draws for you.

You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavor of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water.

Now Cortázar reads in Spanish:

Axé.

Louisiana: Resist

To: All Faculty
From: Z
Re: Prioritization for “Reduction”

Do not allow yourself to be manipulated. Do not allow yourself to be pitted against other faculty. Do not allow your department to be pitted against others. Respond with unity to any prioritization “surveys” which may have been sent to you as individuals.

Axé.

Charlie Parker

Nachtmusik.

Axé.