PATAFICTION

2010-06-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

pataphor in Still Life

2010-04-26T09:53:00.001-07:00

"... After she had completely soaked the foam rubber mattress with her bitter weeping, she hurled the mattress out the window into the blackberries below.

... Seizing the Camel pack, she squeezed it in her small fist, toppling the pyramids and busting the dromedary's hump. Mummies ran from the pyramids in panic, dragging their wrappings behind them. Water spewed form the camel's cracked hump like a fountain of tears."

202
Still Life With Woodpecker
Tom Robbins

2010-03-14T01:08:00.000-08:00

STOP.

Positive thoughts, happy vibes. This mantra rang through Ester's head as she knocked on Liz's door. The door wore a pink bow. Liz's sister, Teresa--a smiley face sticker of enthusiasm--answered the big sturdy oak.

"Hi, Ester!" Teresa exclaimed. "Come in, come in. I'll hang up your coat. Oh wait, let me take this big beautiful box for you while you take off your coat. How beautiful. They're all in the living room."

Ester had almost forgotten about "them". Some of Liz's friends. Kate, Margot, Olivia and Vanessa.

Pineapple, watermelon, blackberries, grapes, brie, cambozola, swiss smoked applewood cheddar, goat cheese, peppered salami, salmon pate, olives, prosciutto, lesley stowe crackers, baguette, rice crackers, melba toast, gruyere fondue, chocolate fondue, tomato and boconcini, raw broccoli, carrots, ranch dip, and hummus. All that was missing was foie gras.

Liz was radiant, in a robin's egg blue dress, that clung perfectly to her hourglass body.

"Liz," Ester said. "Wow, how are you?"
"Fantastic, of course."
"This is for you."
"You don't have to get me anything, silly."
"Oops."

Oops? Ester cringed inside at herself--she was doing it for them, putting on this stupid self-deprecating formulated personality so not to scare, to make them feel comfortable, to be the clown for them, so they would think she was judging them, and also so that she was too nice for them to judge her.

Behind Liz sat Kate, Margot, Olivia and Vanessa.

"Hi Ester."
"Hey gals, how's everyone doing?"
"Ester can I get you something to drink?" Teresa asked. "Some white wine?"

Everyone else drank white wine.
"Actually, can you make me a whiskey sour with extra egg foam?"

Teresa's face was blank.
"I'm just joking, Teresa. White wine would be great."

The doorbell rang. Teresa diligently vanished from the living room. Ester's humor was off today. Not to mention, Ester and Teresa had never connected. They weren't the same species of person.

"So what's new, Ester?" Olivia asked. You could barely see Olivia's eyes under her dyed blond bangs. "How's photography? You're still doing that, right?"

"Yeah. It's good. No complaints. Self-directed most of the time. How about you?"

"Well, I'm still at Still Lake in Marketing. It's great. Lots of traveling. And Marcus and I just moved in together."

"Oh great, what part of town?" Ester asked.

"We're on 6th and Larch. We bought the place, it's a one bedroom, 750 square feet, which is great for us."

"Olivia, I still haven't been to your place," Kate said. "Did you and Marcus buy the apartment with the patio you were talking about?"

"Yeah. This one has the patio, but doesn't have the high ceilings. That one was too expensive. But the patio is great. We like it. We're really happy."

Where was that glass of wine?

Kate said: "Yeah tough choice. Patio versus high ceiling. Guess it depends what kind of person you are."

"Yeah," Olivia said. "Well, we like it. We're happy."

weweweweweweweweweweweweeeeeeeee we

Apartment talk often turned into furniture talk which often led to accessory talk and then fashion talk. Stuff, stuff, stuff. And Ester's past attempts to extract some kind of interesting idea from the conversation was usually overlooked with another mention about some kind of stuff.

and we stuff was the fucking worst.

Teresa returned to the living room with the latest arrival, Julie Fredericks, as well as Ester's glass of wine.

"Hello, ladies!" Julie said. She gave everyone a kiss on either cheek, except Ester, who she met for the first time.

"Nice to meet you, Ester. I've heard so much about you from Liz, since you two have known each other for so long. You're so lucky to still know people from high school. Everyone does so much moving around."

"Yeah, our ten-year is coming up," Liz said.

"God, I know," Ester said.

"I went to my ten-year last summer and it was surprisingly pleasant for such a dreaded occasion," Julie said.

"I went to mine last year too," Kate said. "It was positively dismal. Especially because so many from my grad class have died."

"Really? That's terrible," Julie said.

"Yeah. A whole handful of people. Two of which were suicides. One guy jumped off a boat, they think. And the other guy hung himself."

"Hanged," Ester said.

"What?" Kate asked.

Ester sipped her wine and involuntarily coughed. Air bubbles. Kate looked at her blankly. God, I should just shut up about these things.

"Excuse me. I'm sorry," Ester said recovering from her cough. "Hanged, not hung. Hats are hung, people are hanged." Inside, Ester winced at herself.

"Oh," Kate said.

Margot and Vanessa drained their wineglasses. Their eyes rolled back as they did so.

"Interesting," Julie said. "What about animals?"

The question was a curious surprise for Ester.

"I don't know. I've never thought about it. I suppose they are also hanged."

"Onto happier topics," Teresa said as she filled up Margot and Vanessa's wineglasses. "Like, weddings!"

2010-03-02T21:04:00.000-08:00

2010-03-02T20:58:00.001-08:00

Olympic windows. Vancouver, February 2010.

2010-03-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Lectures you can attend at Harvard, February 2010.

2010-03-02T20:52:00.001-08:00

COELACANTHS at the Museum of Natural History, New York

2010-03-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

JASPER JOHNS - MAP - at the MOMA

2010-01-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

It felt dark at two o'clock. Liz got points in Ester's books for having a winter wedding. She asked herself if she would have her wedding in winter ... then she realized that it was the wrong question. The correct question was: Will I ever have a wedding?

Ester was happy when other people got married, but for herself -- she couldn't yet imagine it. When she was a kid, she had childlike fantasies like all her friends. What kind of dress, what kind of garden, what kind of cake, what kind of groom ... But she didn't have any similar fantasies as an adult. Besides, weddings were so expensive.

The real question in her mind was not, will I marry this person? It was will I have children with this person? That seemed more binding than any wedding certificate.

Oulipo

2010-01-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

some constraints of Oulipo (from wikipedia):

S+7, sometimes called N+7: Replace every noun in a text with the noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. For example, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago..." (from Moby-Dick) becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used. This technique can also be performed on other lexical classes, such as verbs.

Snowball: A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.

Lipogram: Writing that excludes one or more letters. The previous sentence is a lipogram in B, F, H, J, K, Q, V, Y, and Z (it does not contain any of those letters).

Prisoner's constraint, also called "Macao" constraint: A type of lipogram that omits letters with ascenders and descenders (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y).

Palindromes: Sonnets and other poems constructed using palindromic techniques.

2010-01-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Old men jaywalked across Broadway because of the sidewalk construction. Canes click clack. Ester couldn't even get her mom to jaywalk. An old man waved down a taxi, and then walked away. Maybe he waved goodbye to friends across the street. In any case, it put the confused cabbie out for twenty-seconds, until he pulled back into traffic and roared away. The billboard above the bus-stop was an ad for Coors Light, "Colder than people from Toronto" it said. Ester laughed. Her December breath was visible. The bus was taking too long. C'est la vie. Vancouver transit was getting better, they said. Screw it, she'd walk. It was only twenty-five minutes to huff up the hill. Maybe she ought to hail a cab. Punctuality is a virtue, and one she didn't want to start slacking off on. Bridal showers were special days, at least it was a special day for Liz. And Maybe Ester and the bride weren't as close as they used to be. But Ester could still make use of the special day. Taking taxis, receiving packages in the mail, and getting your hair washed at the salon, all made for a special day.

At the corner, waiting for the light to change, two 20-something women were having a fake argument. A pseudo passive-aggressive expression of their appreciation for each others' capacity to use faux sarcasm to mask that at the bottom of their hearts they meant the words they were saying, and sarcasm was their vehicle of warning.

What a hot crock-pot of spitting talk. Why was communication so complex these days? Words layered like hair. Blame the internet, they say. She crossed the street. tweet tweet tweet. A kid walked the curb like a tightrope. Ah, to have such a mind.

Looking west up 12th, the street opened up like a tunnel. A cab passed by, but she didn't hail it.

Andre Breton

2009-12-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

Andre Breton's Nadja. Andre Breton, father of Surrealism, author of the Surrealist Manifesto.

astraphobia

2009-12-23T10:52:00.001-08:00

An abnormal fear of lightning and thunder.

alfred jarry the father of pata

2009-12-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

Alfred Jarry (8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) created and coined "Pataphysics", as he defined as "the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments".

charlie kaufmann

2009-12-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

ERYTHROPHOBIA

2009-12-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

1. abnormal fear of or hypersensitivity to the color red. 2. fear of blushing.

Necromancy

2009-12-12T21:51:00.001-08:00

necromancy: divination by trying to communicate with spirits of the dead.

nostomania

2009-12-12T21:42:00.001-08:00

nostomania: an overwhelming desire to return home or go back to familiar places.

La petite morte

2009-12-12T21:38:00.000-08:00

la petite morte -- the little death, a metaphor for orgasm. sometimes understood as a brief bout of melancholy after orgasm (post-coital tristesse)

Danse Macabre:

2009-12-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

Dance of Death, the universality of death; no matter one's station in life, the dance of death unites all.

memento mori & vivere

2009-12-12T21:25:00.000-08:00

memento mori: 1. remember that you must die. 2. a reminder of death or mortality.

memento vivere: 1. remember to live. 2. a reminder of life.

cockshut

2009-12-12T21:23:00.001-08:00

cockshut: evening, twilight.

calced

2009-12-12T21:17:00.000-08:00

calced: wearing shoes

2009-12-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

pollicitation: a promise or an offer made, but not accepted.

tarantism

2009-12-12T21:08:00.000-08:00

Tarantism: an uncontrollable urge to dance.

Lewis Carroll's ALICE

2009-12-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

lewis carroll, born charles dodgson, took this photo of alice liddell, aged 6, 1858. carroll marked special days of his life by placing a white stone on his calendar. the day he met alice liddell is marked with a white stone. carroll met the liddell's in 1855; he entertained the children with picnics, and boat rides; he photographed them, alice--his favorite. in 1863, carroll and the liddell's had a sudden falling-out. the cause of the rift is debated, but alice is suspected as the main reason.

terpsichorean

2009-12-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

of or relating to dancing.

23 skidoo

2009-12-08T21:18:00.000-08:00

A friend's father attempted to explain to me what "23 skidoo" means. In the beginning it seemed to be a shooing away word, sort of like skedaddle. But it eventually morphed into a cool thing to say when one was departing. Sort of the way people said in the 90s (and probably continue to say), "Let's bounce" or "let's jet". Various origins of the term are suspected; the one I like to believe comes from the Flatiron Building in New York:

"The first building to become a romantic symbol of New York was the Flatiron Building... It was not only a building that appealed to high-art interests ... but this building also entered popular culture. It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area."

from: http://ci.columbia.edu/0240s/0242_2/0242_2_s5_text.html

After our "23 skidoo" conversation, I endeavored to elucidate my friend's father on how the word "word" has evolved into various forms and meanings such as "word up", or just "word" for "yes" or an agreement of sorts. awh, trade-sies.

The Hours

2009-12-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

the werther effect

2009-12-08T20:23:00.000-08:00

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was published in 1774. The epistolary novel was widely celebrated in its time, influencing young men's fashion, and suicides. As a source of copycat suicide, it carries the reputation of being the first case in history of this effect, came to be known as the 'Werther Effect'. Apparently myriad young romantic men like Werther were killing themselves in similar fashion, and the book was banned in several countries. Unlike Werther, Goethe did not commit suicide, even though the novel has parallels to Goethe's real life.

Sous les pavés, la plage!

2009-12-08T20:07:00.000-08:00

"Beneath the paving stones - the beach!" - Sous les pavés, la plage! - Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968

the golden suicides

2009-12-08T15:12:00.001-08:00

Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/01/suicides200801

Match Point & Crimes and Misdemeanors

2009-12-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

the opening of Moby Dick

2009-12-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Festen aka The Celebration

2009-12-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

a Dogme 95 film, the darkest Danish festen (celebration) of the family, by Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov, 1998.