Sentimentality and the Body
A concluding essay of a scholastic nature in summary of the book NOTHING DOING which has just been written and now read
[photographs have been removed]
One has to
end somewhere.
A The genius of the Poussin painting lies
in the absence of explanation. No myth
is being described, no public event being celebrated… The painting has survived and is on the National
Gallery wall.
B One of the guys who is in the Class of 44
sitting in the Grassroots who knew George was talking of his shock at seeing
QUEEN FOR A DAY when he had first arrived in America, being brought here when
he was a kid in the 1950s. You came home from school at four o’clock there was
this guy getting these women to talk about their horrible lives: My husband died, I lost my leg to diabetes,
my daughter has cancer of the face and I would just like to have a tiny vacation
from all of this unhappiness and then Jack Bailey turns to the next woman who
wants to be QUEEN FOR DAY and it seems
her husband is dying of lung cancer, two of her children were killed in a car
crash and the third has not been able to sleep for six months because he is afraid of the dark…
this woman just wants…. And then Jack Bailey listens to two more wanna-bes and
then he asked the audience to clap for who they would like to be QUEEN FOR A DAY. The noise is registered on the applause
meter… sadly and really strange, I
thought back then, this guy said, the woman
with the amputated leg didn’t get to be and..
Two “sexy”--- you know what I mean--- attendants draped a robe on
the woman’s shoulders. They lead her to
a throne and Jack Bailey puts a rhinestone crown on her head and says: You are QUEEN FOR A DAY and this is what you
have won… the camera is panning along the faces of the women who didn’t win and
should one suspect that one of them is thinking: when I lose the second leg
maybe they’ll give me another shot at the crown?
C Competitive suffering you could say but at least these women
weren’t young and good looking because now the television only dishes up good
looking people and makes them suffer for our viewing pleasure unless they’re
competing for some sort of elective surgery.
Isn’t make-over a wonderful word?
As close to a do-over refuting every preacher in the land, if you ask
me…
D All things conceal a mystery, coming from
Pascal. And he quotes: All men shall pass away and be consumed by
time
E Robert Bresson asked Julian Green to
write a scenario for Ignace de Loyola. Green wrote in his diary: He seems inimical to picturesque effects,
wants neither crucifix nor miracles… In the scene in which the Virgin appears
to Saint Ignatius, he doesn’t want the Virgin to be seen (Oh, Hollywood,
wouldst that you could read these wise words of a great director)
Please excuse all errors & scribbling.
Sr. M. Attracta
G The inexorable reality of the
material world, its stones, its voices, its faces, its great beauty, its
thought even, everything that, in a certain way seems right when spirit seems wrong, because this world offers
nothing that is not provable and almost tangible whereas the world of spirit,
of faith remains interior, mysterious nonprovable---
how would it be possible to avoid suffering from this eternal contradiction?
Julien Green 12 July 194
H When the metal door
opens you find yourself walking down a flight of stairs into this open space
between two buildings on Sullivan Street to a door which was open on this
Saturday at five o’clock. A long narrow
basement space was demarcated into two areas separated by a kitchen alcove and
toilet. You have found yourself in a basement converted into an office. The walls have been stripped of their
paintings; the bookshelves have been emptied.
For a few more days until the end of the month GEORGE KAMEN will remain
on the bell upstairs, which his patients rang when they came for their
sessions. All of that is done with on
this Saturday. All of that was now once
upon a time. It is not something to
mourn, at all, George would be saying. A
person can always go to Paris to see things that stay the same. Every city is different. People get confused when they try to
criticize a city with the standards of another city. It is a way to go crazy. You have to be able to see what is front of
your face, first.
I For
some time he has been trying to take pictures of his own body. He
has not resorted to using the timer of the remote control. Too many
memories of comic people setting timers,
then rushing to get into the picture. He has not taken photographs of himself in the mirror. He tried to make a movie of his penis, of his ass, of his chest
hairs. He notices the vulnerability of the flesh when he views the little movies
or the still photos. He is knocked out by the sheer
loneliness implicit in such work. The camera
is for taking a picture of things, of other people, of sunrises, sunsets, all the world of nature. Someone might say it is an exercise in self-love but with no evident
erection these photos and little
films are hardly that… and then of
course they might be an exercise
in self abnegation, a session in
self-mortification because one sees
the aging flesh, the reality of flesh
that has not been presented… of
course he is aware of Buster Keaton trying to escape
his face in Beckett’s FILM, all the while Beckett himself liked posing for the camera, well
knowing he filled up the sensitized
paper… was this all a commentary on
Joyce or his, as well as, my knowing
that famous photograph of Joyce who was said
to be thinking would he loan me a pound…
of course everyone knows Joyce was involved in establishing the first
movie house in Dublin and even Celine
had been off to Hollywood in the hopes
of seeing Journey to the End of Night upon the big screen… and am told about John Coplans and the
very large photographs of his own
body, but he himself was not behind the camera for any of these photographs, though his body was the subject of these photos and he was telling the girl or
boy when to snap the picture, how
to position the camera and then he gave instructions on how to cut the pictures, how to mount them, but he himself
hardly did anything , not much
more than being an art director for this
project which was the photographing of his own body: and again there are no erections but there
are slightly comic poses when the
body is posed in such a way that fingers look like a nest of maggots or a torso becomes a piece
of ancient armor… and as must be
said, Coplans is now quite dead but his body remains behind: remains, toward the end, instead of the predictable
large photo albums of the children
when young and the long funneling down to
the remains being dropped into a hole
J
To maintain the dream, and the scar
of the dream.
from Carnal Love
by Henri Deluy
K He died.
They stayed alive.
The dead seize the living.
l. These three men in the Poussin painting
do not seem to be the robust material
required for how are we to know when to turn from
one to the next to the next? Three men
out for a walk, three men who do or do
not know each other, three men in a book, three
men in a painting. Even in Douglas when
you open a grave of a certain date you
do not know what you will find, which is probably
stating the obvious.
M Like most people who have read books I am
aware of Paul Valery saying a book is
never finished, it is simply abandoned… but given the world today Valery’s words seem to come from so very far away… there is now no destination for the words you have
read, no place where this reading can be exchanged. How naively I had imagined a young
person, much like myself it is true,
wandering into a library
somewhere— Menasha, Wisconsin, Patchogue, NY, Douglas,
AZ will serve--- and walking up and down
the aisles, falling by accident upon my
book and for a few moments it is alive…
but those shelves are not much gazed upon anymore. There
is a feeling up front, everyone is a little embarrassed by all those books over there… arguments are always breaking out about someone jumping the line to use the
computers… get the key for the public bathroom…
N A discussion among the members of the
class of 44 in the Grassroots the other day:
what are the things never to be done again, to be bought, to be longed
for, to miss, to hope for? Never to buy
a new dress suit, a white shirt, never to discuss the buying a wedding ring,
listen to a parent die, never, never,
ever to think today is going to mark a real change in my life, never to
feel under some sort of obligation to the go to any museum …
O A scrap of paper in George’s hand: The cruelest of the bosses in the camps was
Major Goranov who invented and
introduced a sinister ritual. We had to
line up at 4:30 AM before work. At that
time he was usually awake as he had simply not gone to bed at all as he was
drunk. He would step in front of us and
call the chosen victim. He would hand
him a small round mirror, one of these which were sold at the festivals and
tell him,” Look at yourself for the last time.”
At that moment this man was dead already. Goranov would give him the wooden litter and
sack and instruct the Brigade leaders, “ Now you know what to do.”
P It would be convenient to return to the
circle, the going about in circles and the echo within the Tohono O’odham, the
circling up out of the earth to the light of day though it is probable some
young man long ago realized that the reverse seemed far more likely, the fate: waiting, so patiently: how out at the Shell station in… they came
in, those from out there who had been driving across the land and talking about
how fortunate, how lucky to be able to be here forever.. or that couple: that
old man and his young son, looking more like a grandson and the old man is
trying to talk to the checkout girl asking her what is the prettiest thing to
see around here.. and this in Bashas’ … and the line behind every so firmly
scraping the sneakers against the floor just wanting to get into the Mars candy
bar washed down with a twenty ounce bottle of Mountain Dew and then… I saw his
son so embarrassed so impatient… to be getting on… but with a twinge of guilt because to get on
brings him closer to have to clean out the old man’s room or house or God knows
where he has ended up… some people are
half way screwed into the earth and there is no way to suggest maybe it is from how you look at them as they
are maybe going the other way, for all anyone really knows… give me a break… old men ain’t going but one
way and so are the young people around here even if they get away…
Q Wednesday, 8 July, 1857. This morning I
had the remains my mother & and of my son Waldo removed from the tomb of
Mrs Ripley to my lot in "Sleepy Hollow." The sun shone brightly on
the coffins, of which Waldo's was well preserved--- now of fifteen years. I
ventured to look into the coffin. I gave a few white oak leaves to each coffin,
after they were put in the new vault, & the vault then covered with two
slabs of granite.
R Review.
No quiz for sure. A journey and
some travelling. A painting. Three men.
My own history or at least some of it.
Other voices accumulated along the way and the eye comes to a stone set
in the grassy earth of Calvary in Douglas, not to be explained as the words are
plain enough: OLLETHA B
RAULSTON
FINLEY
Jan 11
1921 --- MAR 12 2002
MAX EVERT
RAULSTON
MIA 1944
SAIPAN U.S. ARMY
S Satisfied by nothing, right, Karri was
answering me, and they would try it, the oldest gimmick: why can’t you be
satisfied, look at Jack, Bill and Harry over there, ain’t they satisfied, why
can’t you be satisfied by what you have and have had and what you are likely to
be getting still down the road with not a fear in the world if you compare
yourself to most of the poor shlubs dragging their asses from pillar to post as
again used to be said with plenty of damp spots to fall asleep on…
T Tomorrow. Put it off, put it off, if it is worth
putting off today it is worth putting off tomorrow.
…
V Vanity.
X The spot:
…it must be admitted that normality is often a (almost unfathomably)
complex state--- more complex at any rate that those forms of pathology which
rest on regression and primitivization.
From “On
Courage” by Heinz Kohut.
A commentary by Michael
Roloff:
to report, however "normality" invariably
produces a lot of wear and tear which will make for a news event of one kind or
another. you generally don't need to probe too deep to find the psychotic core
in just about every human being.
A reply written by the shade of Julian Green: the psychotic core you mention has another
far older term: the affects of original
sin---
Y Why a bit too opportunistically I should not stop with the letter ZZZZZZZ as
I would not or maybe I should encourage the cartoonist in all of you to supply
the sleeping figure as the head moves to desk as it falls back against the
pillow on a wonderfully sunny afternoon when the street outside is quiet
There is now the turning back to the first page
