Category: tPA 1.0

Reelin’ em in

Pocola, Oklahoma, where my parents live, is just another one of those highway towns. It’s sort of a suburb of Ft. Smith, Arkansas, but not really. It has more in common with the little country towns I’ve been posting pictures of than the “big city” of Ft. Smith.

Fishing is big there. My father was a fisherman. I never got interested in it, and neither did my brothers. None of us could stomach cleaning them. Fish has lots of associations for me. As I lay down reading my book my first night in Pocola, I noticed a tiny toy kerosene lamp on the bedside table. I recognized it. The little yellow and red streaked lamp was distinctive; I’ve never seen another one like it past childhood. It came from a little curio shop in Bridgeport, California, high in the Sierras where dad used to fish.

Mom remembered trying to make me into a fisherman. They bought me a nice new reel using S&H green stamps. I walked off and left it on the bank of a stream somewhere near Bridgeport. Dad wandered the mountainsides up there, until they fenced the meadows and prohibited fishing. I never did much fishing; I just wandered.

All my wandering lately has given me some bald tires. Waiting around the Walmart in Ft. Smith while getting some fresh tires installed, I was confronted with another connotation of fish on a T-shirt I hadn’t seen before:

If it smells like fish— eat it!

Words can be a tricky thing. I suspect I should reel myself in.

AKMA’s article on Biblical Interpretation posted while I was away converges with my reading in Pocola

Continue reading “Fishing” →

De white boy troubles!

Straining my way through Electric Rhetoric by Kathleen Welch, still. There is some great stuff in the book, but it is positively buried by lame academic schema writing. Attack! Attack! Attack!

But there is a bright side. I’ve now found confirmation that I indeed grew up in a cardboard hut. For some reason, it reminded my of Frank Zappa’s Thingfish and those strange mutations known as the “Mammy-Nuns.”

Looks like y’ done putty good heahh, HARRY-AS-A-BOY! I sees ya’ growin’ up like a weed, axmodently reproducin’ YOUSEFF ‘n evvythang.

Done found some low-rent housin’ in a one-dimensional cardbode nativity box on some Italian’s funt lawn . . . bunch o’ crab-grass underneath de off-spring fo quick and easy sanitatium . . .shit! Y’all provvly be savin’ up for yo first LAVA LAMP putty soon!

Welch has some nice twists in her writing though. I particularly liked her definition of a HUT: “Household Using Television”

For some reason, I was talking to my mother about language acquisition; she told me some stuff about myself that I had forgotten. I did spend a lot of time in front of the T.V. But, somewhere in the mid-seventies, my focus shifted to 12-inch cardboard sleeves stuffed with petroleum buy-products. I was seduced by sound-patterns. I started collecting piles of record albums.

I think that the additional mountains of cardboard to my nativity hut changed me deeply

Continue reading “The Mammy Nuns” →

I’m back.

Someone asked me a few months back, after I posted the pictures of a bridge across the Arkansas River, if there were any lakes nearby. As I was driving home late this afternoon, I thought I’d snap a view from the side of my car about fifteen minutes from my apartment. This is Lake Maumelle, the reservoir for Little Rock, Arkansas. Water quality here is near the highest in the US, especially compared to other metropolitan areas. We don’t drink from the river.

This lake (one of many nearby) is actually larger than it appears from here.

Back to Pot-eau

Another trip back to the sticks for me. Now, I get to play garage-door opener repairman. I’m wiser now though, I’m taking the back-roads.

Since I’ll no doubt accumulate more snaps along the way, I thought I’d leave some shots of the big-city metropolis Poteau, Oklahoma, that I took on the last trip. No appreciable immigration problems here, this burgeoning little spot is perhaps one of the nerve-centers of Eastern Oklahoma.

The presence of the Walmart Supercenter there pretty much guarantees it. Not to mention Carl Albert University, and the Pansy Kid Middle School. I’ve often wondered about that one. Named after one of those famous pioneer ladies, I wonder what it must be like to say— “Oh, I went to Pansy Kid school.” But then, I’m easily amused.

They just completed construction of a huge freeway interchange just on the outskirts. It’s a four-lane cloverleaf that any big city would be proud of. Of course, the roads that feed into this couple of miles of concrete glory are all two-lane potholed back-roads. You’re driving along, and all of a sudden— Freeway! But, it only lasts for about three miles in the shadow of the “World’s Highest Hill.”

The downtown is what obsesses me though.

Everyone should know Poteau (correctly pronounced “Poe-toe”). It’s a place where the downtown screams— “nevermore.”

Continue reading “Poteau” →

Another take on An Ancient Scandal

In order to be deceived as little as possible, I, for my own part, love to get as well acquainted as I can with an Author, before I run the risque of losing my Time in perusing his Work; and as I doubt not but most People are of this way of thinking, I shall, in imitation of my learned Brother of ever precious Memory, give some account of what I am, and those concerned with me in this Undertaking; and likewise of the chief Intent of the Lucubrations hereafter communicated that the Reader, on casting his eye over the first four or five Pages, may judge how far the Book may, or not be qualified to entertain him; and either accept, or throw it aside as he thinks proper: And here I promise, that in the Pictures I shall give of myself and Associates, I will draw no flattering Lines, assume no Perfection that we are not in reality possessed of, nor attempt to shadow over any Defect with an artificial Gloss.

As Proof of my Sincerity, I shall, in the first place, assure him that for my own Part I never was a Beauty, and am now very far from being young: (a Confession he will find few of my Sex ready to make:) I shall also acknowledge, that I have run through as many Scenes of Vanity and Folly as the greatest Coquet of them all— Dress, Equipage, and Flattery, were the Idols of my Heart.— I should have thought that Day lost which did not present me with some new Opportunity of shewing myself. —My Life, for some Years, was a continuous Round of what was then called Pleasure, and my whole Time engrossed by a hurry of promiscuous Diversions.

—The Female Spectator (from Book One)

Not much is known about Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator. She told so many conflicting lies about her life, and exists in so few records that it becomes impossible to sort it all out. She published her paper from 1744-46, and was as big of a liar as Swift, while covering her tracks even better. But, dear readers, you may recall my citation of Lanham’s concept that Western civilization is built on one golden rule: “Be sincere, whether you mean it or not!”

{as well as notice some serious literacy-fueled hypotaxis, goin’ on!}

Nuages and Nuances

Jill has pointed out a nuance that I left quite cloudy. I was using “and then . . .” in a sense identical with the drive-through scene in Dude Where’s My Car, not as an implicit causality. The transformation in that scene does move toward causality, and that’s when the anger really heats up, ending in the destruction of the drive-through speaker. Something like this:

I’ll have a coke.

And then . . .

Oh, and a burger, some fries . . .

And then . . .

a frostie

And then . . .

That’s it.

And then . . .

That’s all.

And then . . .

You give me my food and I drive away

And then . . .

NO MORE AND THEN!!!!!

Are a burger, some fries, a coke, and a frostie causally related? No way dude! Is driving away? Yes, dudes and dudettes. Paratactic in the Webster’s sense, is adjacency without a coordinating conjunction. Paratactic, in the linguistic sense I was using it in, is:

Adjacency with equal syntactic relevance, with or without a causal relation, which may or may not include a coordinating conjunction.

(loosely paraphrased from Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction by Michael J. Toolan)

Clear as mud? The key part is equal syntactic relevance— in other words, a burger and fries do not have any real precedence or direct relationship. They do not, in and of themselves, constitute a narrative or subordinate structure, though they are presented in a temporal sequence. Expectation of a causal relation in a temporal sequence is what causes the annoyance. That was the cloudy thought driving that blog entry and the reason why I got obsessed with using that conjunctive sequence (and then . . .) for a group of entries following it until I was clear enough on the concept to write about it.

Violation of a paratactic, expected, temporal sequence was one of the primary tools of early oral storytellers like Homer. Events were not related in strictly chronological order, or even in reverse chronological order. Jill is far more deeply read in narrative theory than I am. Genette’s Narrative Discourse rests at my elbow, along with a whole other stack of books on the subject that I want to read. I was shaving on a different splinter that is deeply related. Though largely paratactic, early oral compositions were indeed narrative, but what is unique about them is periodic structure that is not necessarily presented in a temporal, causal relation. That is why I feel they are an important analogue for blog entries. My usage of the term oral is not in any way synonymous with the general banter about conversations. I mean it in a very specific, nuanced way which can only be read in context with a great many entries that I’ve been writing in my blog.

Not all blog constructions result in easily identifiable, or definable, narratives. That, I think, is the beauty of it. Though built on a narrative, temporal, foundation— they don’t really comply with expectation.

{For the lay reader, I’m compelled to quote my Blake professor: “Sometimes confusion is the correct response.” I’m confused myself. So if you feel like you don’t understand half of my writing— well, dude, neither do I.}

And then and then and then . . .

Annoying, isn’t it? That is, of course, the literate reaction.

In Electric Rhetoric Kathleen Welch argues that the oral nature of Isocrates writing style (yes, he wrote all of his speeches, rather than just performing them as other sophisitic orators did) accounts in part for his misreading and lack of acceptance in modern praxis. They turn him into yet another golden boy Greek by neatly sanitizing what made him unique among his milieu— his literacy, and his orality. What seems fascinating to me is the way she describes the modern reaction:

Today’s readers frequently find texts such as this long-winded, repetitious, digressive, and finally, annoying.

Sounds a bit like some reactions to the latest stage of evolution in blogging, doesn’t it? An old guard, argues for a return to brevity and link-dependence. A new faction, composes more carefully wrought essays. However, I suspect that the real beauty of the activity is in the conflation of the two. As Welch argues, in Isocrates’ case:

The prose is associative, as of course much important prose has been, so for him the kind of logic invited by linearity is not privileged. Isocrates introduces issues, leaves them, returns to them, leaves them again, and cumulatively builds on them, in a manner not unlike the speech genres of a lecture or a sermon. . . .

The reader both ancient and modern will find as well an absorption with the lines that Isocrates writes, lines that are worked over, woven, in ways that are beautiful to decode when one stands away from print-dominant formalism that necessarily mocks this writing.

I’d say that this describes blogging perfectly. I like orality. I’m a very oral person. But I like writing too.

And then . . .

I wonder why I assume that smart people tell the whole story. I linked to Diotima: Materials for Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World on my sidebar a few days ago. I was trying to dig up some information, after Kathleen Welch’s wonderful tirade, and stumbled on that site which said that the reference comes from “a tantalizing passage in Plato’s Symposium”. Coincidentally, I had started to read Symposium a month or so ago, but stopped short of finishing it. I didn’t recall any reference.

When I returned to Symposium yesterday, I found that I was on the very page. And that “tantalizing passage” is actually a long speech, which goes on for at least five or six pages.

It is incredible stuff

Continue reading “Diotima” →

And then . . .

I find myself completely degenerating into silliness. First, I open up my mail to find a forwarded joke: “What do you get when you cross a feminist and a lawyer? A lawyer who won’t fuck you.”

This of course, in an obtuse way reminded me of the illustration at the right forwarded during my first (to my knowledge), and hopefully last entrance on the Daypop top 40 (at number 27). Today, I found this there:

“Spontaneous interruption of a public sex act to engage in an aggravated assault should be considered as a strong indication of a seriously unaddressed anger management problem,” the complaint states.

Which, circuitously, led me to discover that Gene Simmons plans to be Rock’s Martha Stewart. Which reminded me of a potential future feminist lawyer’s musings: Duo Ranti: Marta Esteeuar e Cultura Corporati Putanissima.

The web is surely a wondrous place. Vowel movements galore. Shite, too much time in the Latinate does drive me back to the Saxon.

—And then . . . Australians have teleportation breakthrough! Wow, now maybe I will be able to visit Luke and Shauny someday soon! And perhaps Delacour too. Now that would be some spooky interaction. I’d much rather have a transporter than an XP-38 landspeeder. You can beam me over anytime.

Punch the keys for god’s sake! You’re the man now dog!

And then . . .

Wood s lot ferreted out The Thomas Gray Archive. Gray is a favorite of mine. The most “major” of the “minor” poets, as one of my professors described him. His complete works can be read in an afternoon.

This reminded me of one of those fun little bits of Blake scholarship. The two small figures in the corner of Blake’s illustration for Night The Second of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts are the grandfather of Gothic, Horace Walpole, and Thomas Gray.

The subtitle, “Time, Death, Friendship” is applicable to those two in an interesting way. Walpole was rumored to be gay, and rumor also has it that he made a pass at Gray during their continental tour. They were great friends before that, but Gray quickly and inexplicably returned to England. They were not that close afterward. Blake seems to have agreed with this assessment of Walpole’s character, as evidenced by his playful modifications of the plate.

It was really hard for me to track down a copy of the Oxford two-volume edition of Blake’s complete designs for Night Thoughts. All the copies available in the US were over $1,000— I finally found one in England for $200, but it cost nearly a hundred to ship because it is so massive.

This is a great excuse to pull it out

Continue reading “Gray and Walpole” →