So, while SCOTUS ruled in an unsigned court order sans dissent that
Trump has to hand over his tax declarations to the NY prosecutor (almost
ascertaining his future as a convict in orange jump suit and shackles), we,
in blissful ignorance* of said ruling, went to the
Praia do Norte nearby, which holds the
Guinness Book of Records for the highest surfable waves on the
planet. (continues below)
The killer surf happens twice a year or so, but we had never seen the sea this
agitated, with breakers perhaps 7 meters high (max is something like 38
meters). They are caused by the Canyon de Nazaré, an underwater fold of the
continental shelf that reaches the floor of the Atlantic Plate 3000 meters
down very quickly and echoes/reinforces the waves' amplitude.
*Nassim Kaleb, the author of
The Black Swan, writes in his book that it's practically useless to follow the news.
Almost nothing really important ever happens, he holds--until a
Black Swan Event occurs.
(Ask us in a comment if the link is not informative enough).
Jan van Rijn, the celebrate bibliophile publisher, has a new book out, and it's about "Notre Dame des Fleurs", the mind-boggling first oeuvre of Jean Genet. Genet wrote it in a Paris prison in 1942, on brown-bag paper, whence his "manuscript" got confiscated by prurient prison guards. Undaunted, he asked for more brown-bag paper and rewrote it from scratch. Eventually it got published, so that Jean-Paul Sartre could discover it---Sartre, the inventor of Existentialism---and promptly declare the author a "saint". Genet's career was made---such was the way of French cultural life at the time.
We read the "Lady" four times and it got better with each pass. Four times? Yes, because we had promised to contribute to Jan's publication and didn't know for quite some time what to do.
But then, in late 2019 we hit on an idea during a chance meeting with...
...the mysterious founding fathers of the Verse Reconstruction Movement.
We had always dreamed of writing prose that could pass as poetry (and vice versa), and---having already isolated the "hottest" passages of the Fleurs---we undertook to turn them into poetic language. Six poems resulted, and they are in the book. Here's the first one:
EACH CELL A HISSING NEST OF SNAKES
(by Michael Ampersant)
I’m like those prisons,
Open to all the winds,
Empty and pure,
Swarming with dangerous,
Promiscuous males,
Sprawled out on their beds.
Prisons of dreams, I’d say, for a race of murderers,
Each cell a hissing nest of snakes,
And a confessional.
Their eyes,
Without mystery,
Terrifying,
Like empty theaters,
Machinery at rest,
Deserts.
I approach, my heart racing,
And see nothing,
Nothing but looming emptiness,
Sensitive and proud,
A foxglove possessed by terrible souls.
There are 16 contributors to this volume (if we don't count Genet himself), and one of them is John Coulthart, gay life's most prolific high-culture blogger. Have a look at his post about the book here.
You can order the volume here. It is also for sale in a few bookstores throughout Europe, ie,
Vienna
buchhandlung löwenherz
https://www.loewenherz.at/
Milano
liberia antigone
https://www.libreriantigone.com/
Berlin
prinz eisenherz
https://prinz-eisenherz.buchkatalog.de/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CK6rSnOlNM1/
and if things work well in Paris very soon at
les mots à la bouche
https://motsbouche.com
PS: There are only 150 copies printed; it's a bit like bitcoins, and if we manage to convince Jan to rechristen his book "GenetCoins", or "CoinGenet" or anything else alluding to blockchains, the price will certainly skyrocket into the millions, especially if and when Elon Musk chips in a brief tweet. So, please, hurry.
And...yes...you have seen it coming: our Green Eyes are always about
everything, and so they are also about Bonny Tyler's "A Total Eclipse
of the Heart." Ben, the ravaging black guy, has missed the bus,
and John, the narrator, is taking him home. The conversation is
turning to Truman Capote (who was born in a Southern town called
Monroeville):
Okay, let’s press the issue. “These directions,” I say, “they’re for
Monaville, or for Monroeville?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Capote was born in Monroeville,” I say.
“Truman Capote?”
“Yes. Your Monaville?”
“No,” he says, “I would know.”
“Monaville or Monroeville?”
“Yes,” he says.
I’m trying to flirt, that’s obvious, but is he flirting back? All these
yes’s and no’s, what do they mean? Reader, do you realize—-perhaps not a big
insight, but anyhow—-do you realize that in our situation a flirt means more
than a fuck? Much more?
I can’t ask him whether he’s flirting, of course. “You’re like the Bible,
it’s yes, yes, or no, no,” I flirt.
“Yes.”
It’s coming back to me now. And I don’t mean the Bonny Tyler song “A Total
Eclipse of the Heart,” I mean the Harold Halma photograph
scandal.
Yes, that’s the way to go, much better than to ask him to carefully
evaluate our homosexual encounter retrospectively and split the infinitive
in the process. “You know about Truman Capote?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“You’ve heard about the Harold Halma photograph scandal?”
“No.”
“Capote was already a budding young author, after World War Two, when
Harold Halma, a photographer in New York City, was commissioned to take an
author picture of the prodigy, Capote recumbent on a winged settee, eyes
staring into the camera, the hand resting on his abdomen. Halma’s picture
caused a scandal at the time, people got very upset, even though Capote was
fully dressed, mind you, since, since there was this suggestion that he--quote--was dreamily contemplating some out-rage against conventional
morality--unquote.” Because, evidently, he had one hand in talking distance
of his crotch. Quote, contemplating some outrage against conventional
morality, unquote. Pathetic. Imagine this happening today.”
Let’s see what Ben’s going to say. I guess he masturbates a lot. Two times
per day. Three times on Sundays.
“It’s not yes,” he says, “it’s 'yea':...’But let your communication be, Yea,
yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.’ Matthew, five-thirty
seven.”
Are you still there? Then you will like the book. Give it a try:
