The Housewives’ Guide To Anatomy

“When Madeleine sleeps, Mother says, the cows give double their milk. Pansies sprout up between the floorboards. Your father loves me, but I remain slender and childless. I can hear the tumult of pears and apples falling from the trees like rain.

Smooth your sister’s coverlet. Arrange her hair on the pillowcase. Be silent as saints. We do not wish to wake her.”

“When the sun stands striding at high noon,
then up from the waves he comes—
the Old Man of the Sea who never lies—
under a West Wind’s gust that shrouds him round
in shuddering dark swells, and once he’s out on land
he heads for his bed of rest in deep hollow caves
and around him droves of seals—sleek pups bred
by his lovely ocean lady—bed down too
in a huddle, flopping up from the gray surf,
giving off the sour reek of the salty ocean depths…
Now I will tell you all the wizard’s tricks.
First he will make his rounds and count the seals
and once he’s checked their number, reviewed them all,
down in their midst he’ll lie, like a shepherd with his flock.
That’s your moment. Soon as you see him bedded down,
muster your heart and strength and hold him fast,
wildly as he writhes and fights you to escape.
He’ll try all kinds of escape—twist and turn
into every beast that moves across the earth,
transforming himself into water, superhuman fire,
but you hold on for dear life, hug him all the harder!
And when, at last, he begins to ask you questions—
back in the shape you saw him sleep at first—
relax your grip and set the old god free
and ask him outright, hero,
which of the gods is up in arms against you?”

I was a bit surprised to realize that almost exactly the same fight occurs in certain Russian fairy tales, except in those the protean figure is the hero’s lost beloved, and if he can just hold onto her through all her transformations he’ll win her back. He lets go. (Menelaus deals better, here.)

I’m sorry to have been so absent, dear housewives. For one thing I was reading the first two Twilight books, which are much better than expected but don’t inspire much in the way of commentary. (Buffy disempowered at last! Sub-dom manhandling as a substitute for sex! If vampires have no blood flow, then how can they get erections anyway?)

They did inspire a dream, however, in which a crew of vampires was painstakingly disassembling my body for parts—spooling up my intestines, carefully peeling my muscles from the bones and sorting them out, etc. I was conscious and in pain, but quite calm.

(This is by Robert Louis Stevenson)

My Shadow

I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

“And I: What are those shadows telling you, Farewell, what is it? And Farewell: They are telling me about the multiplicity of readings. And I: Multiple, perhaps, but thoroughly mediocre and miserable. And Farewell: I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I: The blind, Farewell, the stumbling of the blind, their futile flailing around, their bumping and tripping, their staggering and falling, their general debilitation. And Farewell: I don’t know what you’re talking about, what’s happened to you, I’ve never seen you like this. And I: I’m glad to hear you say that. And Farewell: I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, I want to talk, but all that comes out is drivel. And I: Can you make out anything clearly in that shadow play? Can you see particular scenes, or the whirlpool of history, or a crazy ellipse? And Farewell: I can see a rural scene. And I: Something like a group of farmers praying, going away, coming back, praying and going away again? And Farewell: I see whores stopping for a fraction of a second to contemplate something important, then heading off again like meteorites. And I: Can you see anything there about Chile? Can you see the future of our land? And Farewell: That meal didn’t agree with me… I see Neruda’s profile and my own, but, no, I’m mistaken, it’s just a tree, I see a tree, the multiple, monstrous silhouette of its dead leaves, like a sea drying up, it looks like a sketch of two profiles, but actually it’s a tomb out in the open, cloven by an angel’s sword or a giant’s club. And I: What else? And Farewell: Whores coming and going, a river of tears. And I: Be more precise. And Farewell: That meal didn’t agree with me. And I: How odd, it doesn’t look like anything to me, just shadows, electric shadows, as if time had speeded up. And Farewell: There is no comfort in books… If I weren’t so drunk and didn’t have such a gut-ache I’d ask you to hear my confession right now.  And I: It would be an honour. And Farewell: Or I’d drag you into the bathroom and screw you good and proper.”

(Oh: This is Chris Andrews’s translation.)

For commentary on the first half of this book, see the previous post…

More on this later.

“I am in the women’s bathroom in the faculty building and I can see the future, I said, in a soprano voice, as if I were being coy.

I know that, said the dream voice, I know that. You start making your prophesies and I’ll note them down.

Voices, I said in a baritone voice, don’t note things down, they don’t even listen. Voices only speak.

You’re wrong about that, but it doesn’t matter…

Cesar Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vincente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Virginia Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Celine shall enter Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear. Its non-power shall manifest itself in a different form…

I haven’t read them, said the voice, and I could distinctly hear the sound of chattering teeth. Do you have teeth? I asked incredulously.

Not real, genuine teeth of my own, no, she replied. But when I’m with you, all your missing teeth chatter for me.”

“Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand. Knocked over glass of water onto waiting-room floor. Put down Foucault and pencil, mopped up water, refilled glass. Sat down to read Foucault with pencil in hand. Stopped to write in notebook. Took up Foucault with pencil in hand. Counselor beckoned from doorway. Put away Foucault and pencil as well as notebook and pen. Sat with counselor discussing situation fraught with conflict taking form of many heated arguments. Counselor pointed to danger, raised red flag. Left counselor, went to subway. Sat in subway car, took out Foucault and pencil but did not read, thought instead about situation fraught with conflict, red flag, recent argument concerning travel: argument itself became form of travel, each sentence carrying arguers on to next sentence, next sentence on to next, and in the end, arguers were not where they had started, were also tired from traveling and spending so long face-to-face in each other’s company. After several stations on subway thinking about argument, stopped thinking and opened Foucault. Found Foucault, in French, hard to understand. Short sentences easier to understand than long ones. Certain long ones understandable part by part, but so long, forgot beginning before reaching end. Went back to beginning, understood beginning, read on, and again forgot beginning before reaching end. Read on without going back and without understanding, without remembering, and without learning, pencil idle in hand. Came to sentence that was clear, made pencil mark in margin. Mark indicated understanding, indicated forward progress in book. Lifted eyes from Foucault, looked at other passengers. Took out notebook and pen to make note about passengers, made accidental mark with pencil in margin of Foucault, put down notebook, erased mark. Returned thoughts to argument. Argument not only like vehicle, carried arguers forward, but also like plant, grew like hedge, surrounding arguers at first thinly, some light coming through, then more thickly, keeping light out, or darkening light. By argument’s end, arguers could not leave hedge, could not leave each other, and light was dim. Thought of question to ask about argument, took out notebook and pen and wrote down. Put away notebook and returned to Foucault. Understood more clearly at which points Foucault harder to understand and at which points easier: harder to understand when sentence was long and noun identifying subject of sentence was left back at beginning, replaced by male or female pronoun, when forgot what noun pronoun replaced and had only pronoun for company traveling through sentence. Sometimes pronoun then giving way in mid-sentence to new noun, new noun in turn replaced by new pronoun which then continued on to end of sentence. Also harder to understand when subject of sentence was noun like thought, absence, law; easier to understand when subject was noun like beach, wave, sand, sanatorium, pension, door, hallway, or civil servant. Before and after sentence about sand, civil servant, or pension, however, came sentence about attraction, neglect, emptiness, absence, or law, so parts of book understood were separated by parts not understood. Put down Foucault and pencil, took out notebook and made note of what was now at least understood about lack of understanding reading Foucault, looked up at other passengers, thought again about argument, made note of same question about argument as before though with stress on different word.”

“I have to stop this, Pearl thought. I’m going mad. Everything was turning white. Her white nails were gnawed and ugly upon the smooth white mug. She had let one of the children paint them. There was the story, wasn’t there? about the English-woman, who could have been French or Dutch, or even a wealthy American, with one of those wealthy purses or belts or eyeglass cases that says upon it ’shit shit shit shit shit,’ and this woman, whoever she was, was mad but she had been cured of it and they had asked her what it had been like in there, in madness, and she’d said, the angels are white, they give off the most amazing light…”

(Damn, dear housewives, don’t you want that purse? I do.)

“One looks up
Reading is a mild form of writing
One and one
Book and book
ONE READER: What are you reading
ONE READER: I am reading the essays of Montaigne
BOOK ONE: He says, “We can only improve ourselves in times like these by walking backwards”
BOOK TWO: Let’s suppress the slightly theatrical element in this
BOOK THREE: And now the god put off the bull’s disguise
ONE READER: The head Thought’s Monster, the heart Mind’s Pathos, the genitals Mind’s Beauty, and Thought’s Measure in the hands and feet
ONE READER: Whoever wrote this book could hardly read
BOOK FOUR: Well, as they say in Bulgaria, if you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water
BOOK FIVE: Nobody has ever claimed that the private eye novel has to be realistic to seem realistic
ONE READER: That’s “eye” for “I”
ONE READER (continuing): The detective goes into hospitals, bars, brothels, morgues, girls’ schools, and consulates—anywhere there are people
BOOK SIX: As La Bruyere says, “At the beginning of love and at its end lovers are embarrassed to be left alone”
ALONG COMES A NEW READER: Fork up, mouth open, eat and don’t speak, fork down, mouth closed, chew, then fork up, speak and don’t eat, mouth—
THE OLD READER: Not waving in the air—fork not waving in the air
BOOK SEVEN: There is no feast without cruelty
THE EIGHTH BOOK is a good fiction and it begins as good fictions do
Slowly
The morning-star brings back the shining day
OBSERVER (gazing into a baby buggy): An infant two or three months old will smile at even half a painted dummy face if that half face has at least two clearly defined points or circles for eyes
BOOK NINE: The hero asked the woman why the groan, the gesture, the mutilated forehead, the old river
WOMAN: I see that you have a swirling gait—water is often a medium for transformation
READER: Often in old tales a goose personifying persuasion waddles at love’s side through scenes of seduction
BOOK TEN: In this tale a woman discloses that it is her own seduction of her own husband that has aroused her interest in seduction
That prolongation, that extension of change
Yes, says the hero, if you do something then you have something, and 100% is all of it
BOOK ELEVEN: A totality, but it’s irrevocably dark
READER: He’s gone totally blind
BOOK TWELVE: An incitement to the reader, the guilty
READER (interrupting): … but not apologetic
WRITER: I’m not confessing
BOOK TWELVE (continuing toward a conclusion): Beside the bed a crowded bookcase and on the floor sex toys”

“Gentlemen! Today is the first time that I realize the presence of life! Gentlemen! I beg you to leave me alone for a moment, so I can savor this formidable, spontaneous, and recent life emotion, which today, for the first time, enraptures me and makes me happy to the point of tears.

My joy comes from what is unexperienced of my emotion. My exultation comes from the fact that before I did not feel the presence of life. I have never felt it. If anyone says that I have felt it he is lying. He is lying and his lie hurts me to such a degree that it would make me miserable. My joy comes from my faith in this personal discovery of life, and no one can go against this faith. If anyone would try, his tongue would fall out, his bones would fall out and he would risk picking up others, not his own, to keep himself standing before my eyes.

Never, except now, has life existed. Never, except now, have people walked by. Never, except now, have there been houses and avenues, air and horizons. If my friend Peyriet came over right now, I would tell him that I do not know him and we must begin anew. When, in fact, have I met my friend Peyriet? Today would be the first time we became acquainted. I would tell him to go away and come back and drop in on me, as if he did not know me, that is, for the first time.

Now I do not know anyone or anything. I notice I am in a strange country where everything acquires a Nativity relief, a light of unfading epiphany. No, sir. Do not speak to that gentleman. You do not know him and such unexpected chatter would surprise him. Do not put your foot on that tint stone: who knows it is not a stone and you will plunge into empty space. Be cautious, for we are in a totally inknown world.

What a short time I have lived! My birth is so recent, there is no unit of measure to count my age. I have just been born! I have not even lived yet! Gentlemen: I am so tiny, the day hardly fits inside me.

Never, except now, did I hear the racket of the carts, that carry stone for a great construction on boulevard Haussmann. Never, except now, did I advance parallel to the spring, saying to it: “If death had been something else…” Never, except now, did I see the golden light of the sun on the cupolas of Sacré-Coeur. Never, except now, did a child approach me and look at me deeply with his mouth. Never, except now, did I know a door existed, and another door and the cordial song of the distances.

Let me alone! Life has now struck me in all my death.”

“‘The way they live up in their fine old private estate, with their fences and their private path and their stylish way of living.’ He always went on until he was tired. When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry. Besides, each time he repeated himself he thought it was funnier; I knew he might go on like this until he was really sure that no one was listening any more, and I made a rule for myself: Never think anything more than once, and I put my hands quietly in my lap. I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.”

“It is always risky to rub sand
In real time
Over a diminishing plot
Each of whose elements is lost in personality
When the personality consists of nothing but doubts
It desires to put between
I’m thinking, someone mumbled
Thinking that the attention his hands are paying is wandering
Effacing one distinction only to discover another
A vast difference between two loves
And perhaps this can account for the enormous fear some people have of women
That’s easily aroused
By the invisible realities
Between beginning and end
The real plot lying between
But when we’re alone we revert
To love, and why not? who will know?
We share in the capacity of narrative to submit to the desires of this or that mind
Without giving up its secrets
And speak when no one answers
I think, the Nightingale Girl said to the Singing Man
That time requires anecdotes to contradict it
No answer
Time longs undividedly for something…”

“There was two babies in the White House and one of them said, ‘Look at that crazy man’! It happened to be Nixon. And Nixon said, ‘Boy, you dirty little midgets, I’m going to kill you. I want my Watergate money back. I want my money back. I want a pizza’!

And the baby flew through the air and landed in a car and then drove to New York City and then into the Atlantic Ocean. And an octopus said, ‘Hey look, a hotdog’. Because their weeners were so long, they looked like a hotdog. It’s longer than the ocean, so it took five hundred oceans to fit it in.

Then a boat came along and a lady who was watching, while pouring a half bottle of Ajax down her apron, said, and she was burping. Then she said, ‘Look, a couple of hotdogs’. And Nixon happened to be on it, and Nixon tried to bite off the tip of the weener, thinking it was a hotdog. And the kid pissed in Nixon’s mouth, and he pissed so much it filled up all five of the oceans, and there was no room for all of the water. Then his mother came and said, ‘Hey, Sweetie Pooh’! Then Nixon just happened to make a poop-oh of his own self.”

I’ve only just started reading Nathalie Stephens’ The Sorrow and the Fast of It. It’s a slim book — the publisher’s filing directive on the back says “Literature,” The Strand nonetheless shelved it under poetry — but it seems to ask for a slow read. “Book-length prose poem” would probably be accurate, but the way it hints toward narrative makes me think we might be able to call it a novel before too long. At this point it feels like it’s brushing up against narrative, like we’re meant to divine the novel it isn’t through the tea leaves it’s left us with. It’s an interesting effect.

So I like it so far, but I like it despite cringing at a number of phrases. The sentence I felt obligated to remove from yesterday’s quotation, for example, was “It was madness even as it wasn’t.” Ugh. And there are a whole slew of these: “It not so much is as isn’t.” “[…]I will write down all that I can’t remember.” “[…]less the appearance of a self than the disappearance[…].” “I anticipated everything save that very absence.” You can note the pattern, the too-simple mid-sentence logic-reversal, the too-easy-to-articulate paradox. Read the rest of this entry »

“There is a fever that overcomes.

The first time was summer and the dogs were delighted in water. The second was spring breaking. Both were evocative. A skin detaching from bone. And something scraping thinly between. [….] There was a plank of wood and I laid my body on it. That became the city for falling. Bone was more breakable. And the fragility of it was unbearable. Duras would have termed : la femme. Am I wrong to contest? My sexe is limp for days. Even as my fingers.”

“Coleridge certainly did not mean, when he said that a great mind is androgynous, that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single–sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided. In fact one goes back to Shakespeare’s mind as the type of the androgynous, of the manwomanly mind, though it would be impossible to say what Shakespeare thought of women. And if it be true that it is one of the tokens of the fully developed mind that it does not think specially or separately of sex, how much harder it is to attain that condition now than ever before. Here I came to the books by living writers, and there paused and wondered if this fact were not at the root of something that had long puzzled me. No age can ever have been as stridently sex–conscious as our own; those innumerable books by men about women in the British Museum are a proof of it. The Suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame. It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged. And when one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates, if one has never been challenged before, rather excessively. That perhaps accounts for some of the characteristics that I remember to have found here, I thought, taking down a new novel by Mr A, who is in the prime of life and very well thought of, apparently, by the reviewers”

“—I wonder, said Carlyle, what it would be like to be shut up in glass and tucked away in the ground like this. To have one’s redness of blood sway slightly at the world’s turn, at the pull of the moon, at the tremor of a near footstep. But to be passed again and again and never chosen. Do you think they want to be chosen, James?

—I couldn’t say, said James. For myself, I would want to be broken against the side of a ship by a distinguished-looking older man in front of a cheering crowd prior to the sailing of said ship on its maiden voyage, which would also be its last, as the ship would sink when it reached deep water and no one would survive. Songs would be sung of the ship. In that way I would survive.”

“What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with bad times and bad feelings, so crowded that almost nothing else could grow in that dark field. But then she had a feeling of peace one morning that lingered from the evening before spent sewing while he sat reading in the next room. And a day or two later, she had a feeling of contentment that lingered in the morning from the evening before when he kept her company in the kitchen while she washed the dinner dishes. If the good times increased, she tought, each good time might produce a good feeling that would in turn produce several more good times that would produce several more good feelings. What she meant was that the good times might multiply perhaps as rapidly as the square of the square, or perhaps more rapidly, like mice, or like mushrooms springing up overnight from the scattered spore of a parent mushroom which in turn had sprung up overnight with a crowd of others from the scattered spore of a parent, until her life with him would be so crowded with good times that the good times might crowd out the bad as the bad times had by now almost crowded out the good.”

“How are sentences asked for. By the way how are sentences asked for. A sentence is a mention of their seeing silk in paper. Any one can see that a noun means disturbance. A noun should not be in an undisturbed sentence. There can not be a noun in a sentence without there having been a disturbance in the meantime. A noun is the name of anything. There should not be a noun in origin in a sentence with him. With is the same thing. A noun is the name in origin. There should not be a noun in a sentence by him. By him is a name without them they know better which is why they were there with them. What is a noun. There should be a sentence and there should not be a noun. There should not be a noun.”

[and also]

“Grammar an angel an angel made of pudding a pudding made of angels pudding angel pudding at a thought so.”

[and again]

“Way-laid made it known as quince cake. This is a perfect sentence because it refers to regretting.”

“If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.”

“He approached a woman who was folding towels on a long wooden table. Her hair smelled like trees in the out-of-doors.

—Is this a dream? he asked.

—Please don’t talk to me, she said, and smiled in a really fabulous way.

He began to try all the ordinary ways of getting out of dreams, pinching, etc. These did not work.

There was a phone in the hall next to the long table.

I will call someone on the telephone, said James to himself, someone who knows me, and I will ask them whether or not I am asleep right now.

James went to the telephone. He called the house of his wife, and asked her if he was in bed at that moment asleep.

—I’ll go and check, she said.

After a minute, she came back. Her voice sounded so warm and happy. He could tell that she was glad he had called.

—Yes, you’re asleep. I wouldn’t worry about it. The covers had come off the bottom of your feet. I put them right, and laid an extra blanket across the bottom. I think you’ll sleep really well now. And besides, I’ll be coming to bed in a minute, and then I’ll wake you anyway and I will not have any clothes on and neither will you. That will be nice.

—Yes, said James. That will be nice. I will look forward to that, then.

—Good-bye, said James’s wife. I love you.

—Good-bye, said James.

He hung up the phone. The girl who was folding towels had stopped. She was looking at him curiously.

—Who were you talking to? she asked.

—I wasn’t really talking to anyone, he said. The phone doesn’t work. It’s just a toy phone, made out of wood.

And it was true. The phone was made entirely out of wood.”