Poem: Holy Water Font

when they come to the water on sunday it barely touches skin, smoothed over and onto the next thing,
honey, darling, sweetheart, dear, let’s park the car close, don’t forget the lights
    but when this child touched the water
        he slowly extended his arm and advanced
        toward the font as if time itself, punctuated by the deliberate movement of his hand, slowed down
    for him, so it

 was very important
    to dip into the water in this particular way, middle finger first,
        then the rest,
    a little playfully, but not too much so,
enough
to withdraw
his hand and cross himself
enough to convince that he saw something in the depths that I didn’t see, not before not since, only scant reflection: once after reading something from the 19th century did I ever feel similar
        but he did see something of

    the trinity

        and I suspect the whole revolving sphere of fluid stood still like in some mediaeval astronomy book
and he was able to stop time, for a bit,
because he was grinning,
        drops of holy water falling to the granite floor
and someone like his dad picking up his five-year-old body to the pew, replete with a jesus coloring book and an entrance hymn.

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3.14.2010

The Iron Rail: Community Library, Art and Music Center in the Marigny Neighborhood of New Orleans

The Iron Rail is an out of the way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Iron Rail hosts a community library in its building on Marigny Street

This out-of-the-way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny is a really cool place. People come and go talking about music and Michelangelo. In a studio in the back of this World II-era warehouse, guys practice experimental music.

My friend A.C. introduced it to me on Friday. For ten dollars or through volunteer hours, members have access to a nice collection of philosophy, literature, art, back issues of zines, anarchist tracts, and other good stuff.

If you have a paper to write for college in a humanities course, you have pretty much everything here. I found an Iris Murdoch book I've been wanting to read. Also, I lost my original Of Grammatology and they have that too. Items in the collection are organized by subject and author. The library is a browsing collection so don't expect a card catalog.

Hours are sporadic but the place seems to be mostly open after 1 until like 7.

Movie night is on Tuesday. Meetings are on Wednesdays.

The Iron Rail
511 Marigny Street
New Orleans LA
United States

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Art Exhibit: Caravaggio at the Quirinale in Rome

Caravaggio's The Annunciation (c. 1608)

The New York Times has a write up on a new Caravaggio art exhibit in Rome's Quirinale. Caravaggio may trump Michelangelo in popularity. It used to be people posted pics of the David's classic ass on their refrigerators, but it seems people are out with the classical, refined body and want their art rough, and out of the bed. I compared Michelangelo's Last Judgement with Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" along with Michael Kimmelman's quotes.

Detail of Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1536-1551) 

"[Michelangelo's] otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric."

John the Baptist (Youth with a Ram), c. 1602

"Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven."

credits: wikimedia

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Flash Fiction: In the Pitcher's Box

"So, I turned to her and said, "Lawd. You got them cockroaches out of the kitchen zink? Them roaches be as old as a dinosaur; I ain't your momma. Clean that shit up before I go all stegosaurus on your ass."

image credit: © Greig Roselli

Ginny was acting like an overblown blow-up doll. She had strapped over her shoulder a Ziploc bag of ice. She was so animated she was cartoonish. Her shoulder had been in pain since she'd pulled a muscle at last week's game. She squinted her face like one of those black and white Laurel and Hardy pictures. She was imitating a character on a television commercial. "Yeah, baby. We love you hard, hard, swear to God." She had pulled up her boxer shorts out to show the rest of the girls her Bugs Bunny drawers. "She was standing next to the macaroni. I'm not your momma. But, at this diner, we fill up your coffee cup without draining your wallet." The boys were all dressed in white tees and nylon running pants. The girls wore helmets. "But, I could give a rat's ass to what she thought. I told her to get away from the macaroni and cleaning the fucking zink." Zack got up to bat next. At the end of the box was a digital rendition of a pitcher. He would virtually throw the ball over his shoulder which would cue one of the boys to throw a hard, unofficial baseball into the throwing machine. "Swing. Bat. Bunt. Cunts." They would say.

Sacrevoir, Untitled

    Stopher was acting like a gentleman. He crossed his legs like Abraham Lincoln. "Now, you see, the problem with our team is one of emotion." Coach Liniski paid Taylor no mind. He felt for his chest, passed his hand through the unbuttoned part of his lapel. "Where is your tie, Coach Lineski?" He pulled it out of his coat pocket. He was making a dozen of the softball players laugh their asses off. "So, you see, here, this is what I don't understand girls. Why do the girls? See them over there? Why do they use softballs, but the boys use hardballs? I don't get it." Nora laughed. "He said, 'hard balls.' Oh my god. He said 'hard'." Nora was on the turf. She clutched her tummy as if she were in pain. Her laughter was unnoticed by the boys, who batted in the box without helmets. The girls were dutiful. They wore plastic helmets; they never argued about whose turn was next. The boys were quieter, only talking if conversation necessitated speech. Jackson was the leader of the boys. He had a suave gentleness that calmed the kids, unlike Ginny's rude brouhaha. "We don't talk to Freshman. They practice with us, but we don't talk to them. That's Jackson going to bat. He hits pretty good." The ball would have been a home run, for sure. Jackson was cool about accomplishment. He didn't demand adulation. He seemed to attract it like Michelangelo's David attracts admirers of beauty. The swerve of the body. Crack. Ginny laughed; she basically chortled. "Pull your pants up Ginny. There are boys in the batter's box." "Yeah, I'm showing them my bruise. Looks like the Milky Way." Houston incredulously stooped to look at Ginny's bruise. The other boys froze. Coach Lineski stopped chewing his dip. We thought he would swallow it. Houston brought his finger closer to touch Ginny's darkened bruise. It was easy to tell a ball had hit her over the weekend. The otherwise dark markings had begun to soften and lighten. Houston's touch hadn't hurt like the initial punch to the gut. Nora still laughed. The quiet baseball drone droned. Mr. Lineski pulled Houston away. The girls were engaged in a maniacal giggle. The boys seemed scandalized. One young boy without a name, short, lithe, stood up with his "pimp stick" and swung the bat, blissfully unaware, almost hitting little Le Roy. Mr. Lineski spun around, conflicted at the chaos that had ensued. The unnamed boy swung again; not intending to hit anyone, the polychrome bat stunned Coach Lineski. Blood poured relentlessly. Coach Lineski lunged for the unnamed boy but the pain of the hit pummeled him and he fled to the hard astroturf. Blood stained the ground. Someone called 911. Nora was to the left of the crowd; she tugged Jackson close to her body. He had tears in his eyes. The head baseball coach barged in the doors. "Everyone outside now." The boy with no name did not show emotion. He had dropped his bat to the ground and dutifully waited outside for Coach Lineski to be born again.

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Poem: The Porter Cat

soft and malleable;

I stroke the porter cat

when he lingers near the patio,

spreads his body on my lap and I tell him that he’s home;

his leonine form stretched from end to end;

he purrs with content      

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Movie Review: Adaptation of a Children's Classic Now on DVD

Whoop. Woot. Rawrr. Claw. Battle. Rumpus. Fantastical beasts. An omnipotent little boy. A busy mother. A boat. Feed me. Let the wild rumpus start!

Where the Wild Things Are is out on DVD. I remember vividly as a child reading Sendak’s book. The potent image in my mind is Max’s whiskers. And the almost excessive use of dark, black lines to form the outline of the bodies, the monsters, and the jungle-like setting. I appreciate Spike Jonze’s adaptation of the story and Karen O’s soundtrack. The film is true to the heart of the story. I recently saw the film Synecdoche, New York and realized that Jonze and Kaufmann are similar artists. Perhaps we forget that Kaufmann and Jonze are in similar camps. Both directors understand an adaptation of a book or a story for the film is not the same as a retelling of the story. The film of the Wild Things is not the book. It is something different. For example, in the film, Max is swallowed alive by one of the wild things as an act of protection but as well as a projection of the Freudian id. But its difference does not offend the original heart of Sendak’s story. The simple message of a boy's journey from raw emotion to belonging, the meal was still hot, is still intact. A must see. The film is in the spirit of “Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

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